I am a California resident.
I am going into analysis paralysis and it’s making me crazy when I sit down to decide if I should go with an ICE car or an EV. HELPPPPPP!!!
Sure ICE vehicles cost more in fuel and maintenance, but EVs have some other costs as well:
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Costs relatively more to insure
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Registration cost every year is higher
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Opportunity cost: a $40k EV is generally compared to a $30k ICE car in terms of break even in 5-6 years. But people rarely mention the opportunity cost of spending the extra $10000. That $10k can make you around $1k each year if invested (subject to market risk ofcourse).
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Supercharging is still not cheap: while still being 50% cheaper than gas, its not cheap. I see 50c/kwh near my area. And not everyone has a home to charge.
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Rate of depreciation: All cars depreciate. But some loose value faster than others. My personal feeling is EVs depreciate faster than ICE. Simply because the tech is growing so fast. The argument for ICE is that there will be less demand for ICE in future due to increasing EV market share. So, little conflicted on the right answer here
I don’t know if am the only one who is unable to see the savings in EV (long term). Am I missing something?? Can eV owners share their perspective?? HELP ME come out of this shit and just book a carrr!!!
Insurance varies a lot; I pay about the same as I did for my Hyundai i20, for the same level of coverage.
“Supercharging is still not cheap: while still being 50% cheaper than gas, its not cheap. I see 50c/kwh near my area. And not everyone has a home to charge”
This is a big part of the equation; DC fast charging is expensive, period.
Over here (Denmark) It can be 2-3x base electricity cost.
Add to this, that vehicle consumption varies a lot from car to car.
I have a Model 3; If I had had something like a Ariya instead, my consumption would be around 27% higher for the same miles.
So, always DC fast charging on a Nissan Ariya, would cost barely 4x as much as always home charging a Tesla Model 3.
My experience with 30-35% Supercharging and the rest Level 2 (usually paying what amounts to half to 3/5 of supercharging costs) is that my “fuel” costs are around 40-50% of what they were for my old Hyundai i20
In any case, the financials were only a motivator insofar that my monthly cost of having a car wouldn’t be more than they were with the leased i20.
They’re not, actually saving barely 10% per month.
Primary motivator was that our Lease was up and we either had to start a new lease or buy, and I would not buy unless it could be EV for various reasons.
if you’re looking at it purely from a financial perspective, why buy a $40k EV, when you can get an used ICE for $1-2k and replace it when it dies in a year or two, get 20 years worth of car for those $40k, and have the difference invested in the meanwhile making the car “free”