This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
After 1 year ownership.
Zero maintenance costs this year, plus averaging around 3 to 5 cents per mile.
My motorcycle costs more to drive and maintain.
It's nice knowing that no matter how expensive gas gets, I'm unaffected by it. Power comes from solar.
Not even a service?
The engine has one moving part and doesn’t need re-lubrication every year. Makes shit a lot simpler.
2 recalls, no cost to me. Brakes were serviced during that time free of charge. All they did was clean and check them. Also rotated tires for free.
My biggest expense I would assume will be my tires. It does weigh like 5400 lbs
Yeah... Too bad that all EVs are spyware on the wheels. When car makers will be forced to stop or significantly reduce the amount of data they are collecting, I may consider buying one. Probably not going to happen in my lifetime.
Lol if you're in North America look for an older ev with 3g. The network is shut down so there's no way it can communicate as long as you don't give it your Wi-Fi password.
I am. And I didn't realize that's a thing! But there is not many models... WV e-golf maybe a decent option
Yeah, leafs are cheap AF, if you can make due with the small range. They have passive cooling for the batteries like the egolf, but I'd be wary of an egolf since I don't know how well they're supported by 3rd parties like the leaf is.
I-miev didn't sell well, and I've seen lots of problems with them, so I'd stay away from them. bmw i3 would be the most expensive of the older, 3g options both to buy and maintain.
The other option to consider if you don't mind an even shorter electric range would be a phev like Chevy volt or Ford fusion. But your commute would need to be less than 10 miles for that to work.
You can probably pull out the sim card that calls home. Plenty of guides out there too
I'd think most of the modern cars use eSim, not a physical card
Wasn't this already well-known? An internal combustion engine is less effective already from the start compared to "modern" fossil energy power production. Even if the energy came 100% from coal, there wouldn't be too much difference anyways.
The only thing electric cars are worse for, environmentally, is increased tyre wear due to weight. And then the battery production/disposal of course...
Even if the energy came from 100% black coal, EVs still have less emissions than ICE
About 30% less.
Goes to show how inefficient an engine is that runs on explosions. A gear shifter is a necessity just to keep it running at optimum rotation, otherwise it would be even less efficient.
Yup. We knew this. But they won't let us buy the affordable cars because that sort of free market would put US companies out of business.
In this country, we have the FREEDOM to buy any overpriced domestic or foreign (assuming they're on the list of good foreign countries) tank-sized SUV you want.
I've read this happened because sometime in the 80s comrade Reagan decided to own the Japanese instead of letting competition do its work (for cars, but with electronics similar things followed). He's somehow often associated with liberal capitalism and so on, but the guy believed that "monopolies are efficient", but at the same time by some magic if a monopoly stops being efficient, then all the capital and technology base for competition to replace it will just materialize in one place in one moment all by themselves. So I'm not even sure if "comrade" is irony. The ironic part is that the US president whose term coincided with Soviet system conclusively losing the Cold War is also the one who supported state capitalism and ideologic pressure in society.
Who ever thought the US would be a place where the federal government would prevent you from buying the coolest cars and coolest drones? Lame.
Yeah, you're living in state capitalism in the USA these days.
Bold of them to assume the people concerned about money are the ones buying new cars.
The cost savings, even at $5\gallon don't make up for the payments, much less taxes and insurance. But the old truck needed $10000 in repairs to stay on the road and so I'm stuck anyway no matter what.
Trucks are still tricky, but new EVs cars are about the same cost as new ICE cars. Used EVs are basically entirely reasonable and in some cases cheaper than used ICE.
Nothing new is going to beat a paid off car for affordability, but that's a pretty apple to oranges comparison no matter how you slice it.
You have higher taxes for electric cars? It's the other way around here.
We have higher taxes for newer cars. If your car is more than 10 years old, your taxes go way down. When I replace my truck because parts were rusting off, taxes went up because the vehicle is newer.
depends on the state/locality in the US. Since we pay for road maintenance with tax on gas (which EVs don't pay obviously), some places add an EV tax to make up for it. Problem is it's usually a flat tax that is higher than most people would pay via gas taxes.
I did the math in my state and the higher taxes are almost exactly what you would be paying gas tests assuming you are average in every possible way, which is unlikely, but what else are they going to do when they don't track mileage?
well yeah, you also have to factor in maintenance and repairs.
OK, want to throw this discussion. The battery cost. Very rough say battery last 100k miles and cost 10k to replace it. Then for the ICE car at 20 mpg that means battery cost equiv about $2 per gallon? (If battery cost half then it will be $1)
Right now charging time is most burden that I am not toward ev. I know this is become better but the battery cost is another factor which I am not sure.
Others already addressed battery cost, so I will address charging time:
For modern EVs, charging time is basically a non-issue outside of longer road trips. Most EV owners utilize a slower (level 1 or level 2) charging station at home, which allows them to charge the car while they are at home/sleeping. EV owners can also use charging stations near/at their destination to charge while they are doing other things anyway. And assuming your daily commute isn't like 100 miles/160 km, you really don't need to stop at charging stations at all besides the one at home, which is cheaper. Obviously this does not apply if you rent a house or live in an apartment, etc.
Even road trips aren't so bad assuming the car has an 800 volt battery pack instead of a 400 volt (higher voltage at same current = more power to charge and faster charge time). It also helps a lot if you only charge to 80 percent instead of 100 because that last 20 percent almost doubles your charge time and is harder on the battery. A lot of new EV owners don't understand this and get frustrated when they are sitting there for 40 minutes getting almost no additional range compared to waiting for 20 minutes.
The thing most people miss is that the lifespan rating on most batteries isn't the time until it's completely dead and useless. At 10yrs/100,000mi the battery is usually rated to retain at least 80% of the original capacity. Most testing I've seen shows ~85%+ remaining after that. (So long as it's not an air cooled battery like early Nissan leaf)
Batteries last more than 100k miles; if they didn’t no one would buy an EV.
According to the manufacturer, my battery should last 300k to 500k miles.
