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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: October 25th, 2023

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  • The total cost of the battery in most EVs is in the $7k to $8k range. That’s $1600 the first year, $1300 the second year and $1000 the 3rd year best case even if your numbers turn out to be true. Even with that best case and assuming labor and other materials hold the same cost year-over-year, inflation of 3% on a $40k EV will hold the price the same.

    Never before have cars gotten cheaper over time. It’s only happening now because we had 30%+ inflation and 200%+ inflation on specific inputs on cars. As those inputs have come down, so have prices to some degree. Tesla was printing money and decided to merely make a lot of money so they can support the volume increases they already had in the pipeline. Don’t expect them to keep getting over their skis on production going forward and I’m sure they fully intend to return to printing money as soon as they can.






  • Engines are complex large expensive components so putting to of them in a car would be about the worst thing ever. Electric motors are small simple and cheap. You can hold a 500hp electric motor in your hands and all you need to make it run is plug in a wire and maybe some low pressure cooling pipes. Some EVs have 3 or even 4 of them and there is little downsides to doing this. To make the car AWD you would have to at least have a tunnel and jump inside the car for a drive shaft which is terrible.









  • It’s hard to buy a car full stop. It’s a big purchase decision and there is a lot of choice and that seat that felt fine on the test drive is a pain on a long trip. The hardest part of buying an EV is you have all that AND you have to REALLY consider the drive train because they are NOT a commodity.

    Around town ALL EVs are awesome and the drive trains are non-issues. As soon as you start talking about road trips though, you have to start doing multi-variable calculus.

    • How long are your road trip legs? - Do you drive 400 miles and get a hotel and then drive another 400 the next day or do you drive 800 mile legs in one go for 12+ hours?
    • What type of driver are you? Are you fine with a drive that you could do in a gas car in 7 hours taking 9 hours or is 8 fine or do you need something that can do it in 7.5 hours?
    • How much are you willing to trade rough road experiences now for the car you like better knowing that in 1-2 years when the car gets NACS it will be fine?
    • Are you willing to wait 3-4 years for the 800V EVs to have good charger experiences?

    Tesla is the only brand you don’t have to worry about today. VW, Audi and Porsche are still unknowns as they haven’t signed up for Tesla SuperCharger network yet. All the other brands you have to decide what type of driver you are and how good the car you like is at charging. If you need good charging, figuring out which cars charge well is very complex in itself.