A lot of EV people forget that most of us don’t have $20,000 for a car, let alone a used one. The cheapest EV’s as of today around me are $19,000 and have between 80k-120k miles on them. I bought my 2007 car for $5,500 11 years ago and i’ve put roughly $2200 in repairs into it, $1700 of that was for a complete suspension rebuild, so it would be much lower. My last car i had for 9 years, i put maybe $300 in repairs on it, and that was just brakes and fluids.
So i personally wont be amazed by an EV that has less maintenance, i would love to have the ability to charge/fuel up at home, and not wait at gas stations, that would be an awesome thing.
Once one of my ICE vehicles costs too much to repair, i hope EV’s are more in the $10-15k range with lower miles. At that point the lack of gas would help offset the large investment up front. And yes, i know $15k is not considered a large investment for most EV drivers, but for those of us who don’t make more than $20 an hour, it’s a HUGE investment.
180,000 MILES on my EV! Best purchase I’ve ever made. The amount of money saved on maintenance and fuel (got free charging at work and now a neighborhood hub has a free charger). Love it!!
What are people reading online? I have never seen anything about EV drivers going to gas. An EV is not cheap and most people I know stick with them even if terrible.
This seems like bait.
No shit, people that wanted a boring car got a boring car and are satisfied with their boring car. Has anyone even claimed people are abandoning their EVs?
Not that I mean boring as a slight, many people see their car as just a utility. It gets them from point A to point B maybe to point C then back to A at the end of the day.
People that enjoy driving or “car culture” are going to have little interest outside of performance hybrids or electrified classics.I’ve tried them, and I despise touch screen controls. I don’t want to go through menus to change settings.
This is a problem for newer gas vehicles also, the newest car I drive is a 2024 and I hate it. Constant beeping, changing settings reverts with an update, and so on.
If they make an electric car with analog controls and door handles, I’m in. But until then, my favorite vehicle is a 2008 ride with working buttons that don’t reset.
If they make an electric car with analog controls and door handles, I’m in.
That’s been part of the pitch for the Slate
I’ve owned an EV for a while now, and it has been a great car, but I share the same complaints. Almost every car these days, regardless if it’s EV or ICE, is an over-engineered data-harvester.
I’m excited for the new Slate trucks. They’ll have physical buttons, roll down windows, real door handles, and no infotainment system that tracks you and sells your data. They won’t be perfect, but it’s a lot closer to what I actually want in a vehicle.
Yeah, that’s where I’m at, too. Though I’m caught between intending to drive my current car (2013) into the ground or trying to get something a bit newer (like 2018 or even newer) where I can find a pre-enshitification model to push off the “car dies and I have no choice” date.
2017 BMW i3, original version. Can’t do shit, I upgraded with Android Auto and a rear camera. Just… the doors… But otherwise I love it.
I don’t know who would make the opposite claim. Everything I hear has always been “hardly anyone would go back”.
I’m sure I’d like them but I love my manual transmission turbo 4. I turn 50 next year and my 2017 is still doing OK. With any luck, I can still get another manual transmission as the last car I personally drive. Hoping that by my late 60s self driving will be good and cheap enough to rely on.
Because they can’t sell?
Realistically, how much does it increase your home electricity bill charging it? Is there enough of a drastic offset, even before the explosion in gas prices, or could it be considered roughly the same price?
I drive my EV ~20 miles each day and charge at home overnight. It added roughly $10 to my monthly utility bill, but electricity cost in my area is lower than the national average. Overall, even with today’s higher electricity costs, charging an EV at home is still likely to cost less than paying for gas for equivalent miles driven. That said, those savings will probably not offset the cost of purchasing a new EV.
I know a few EV owners that aren’t able to charge at home, so they have to pay to use Tesla superchargers or other 3rd party charging stations; in those cases, they are paying a little less than they would for gas for equivalent miles driven, but it is much more expensive than charging at home.
You’ll have to look to your specific location and driving behavior, plus the specific statistics for your own vehicle.
But using US national averages of 14,000 miles (22,500 km) driven per year, $0.18 per kWh of electricity, and 30 kWh per 100 miles (112 MPGe or 3.33 miles per kWh): thats about $63 per month in electricity costs.
Using national average car fuel economy of 26 miles per gallon (9 liters per 100km), and an average price of $4/gallon, that same 14,000 miles per year would be a gasoline cost of about $180/month.
Filled my roof with solar panels this spring and now my car is effectively solar powered…
What was the cost of the panels, if you don’t mind me asking
The panels were the least expensive part tbh. My area is sunny much of the year but we have had several power outages in winter and what I was originally seeking was redundancy, so I overspec’d the battery (the largest cost.) I also got a larger inverter than I strictly needed. So, if my goal was purely economic I could have reduced the spend by more than half. But for transparency 16kw of solar panels + 20kw inverter + 60kwh of batteries+ labor ran about €30k. This buys me assurance of being able to withstand significant outages to the grid any time of year. Since early June when the installation completed we’ve been totally off-grid. Ironically it has made me way more stingy with limiting my energy waste having a more detailed awareness of the impact various activities and appliances use. Ive got things automated so that it charges the car only during peaks when we have abundant excess production.
My advice would be to find a way to track your power usage. If you can monitor and graph it then you’ll notice things like running the dishwasher takes close to 1kw. The more you know about your use the better you can determine how much solar you need to offset it, and also (the expensive part)'how much battery storage matters for you (for example overnight load.)
Not the OP, but I can share my experience after having solar for about four years.
I have a 33-panel system that cost around $28k after tax credits and rebates. I financed it for 12 years at 4%.
Before solar, my electric bill was around $260/month, and my solar loan payment ended up being about the same. The difference is that electricity rates have gone up over the last four years while my loan payment has stayed the same. During that time, I haven’t paid for electricity consumed, but I do still pay monthly grid fees and service charges, which are around $6/month.
My utility doesn’t pay for excess generation, but they credit the electricity I put back onto the grid against my usage. I have an EV that is driven about 20 miles a day, plus normal household electricity (AC, range+oven, etc). Charging at home every night only added about $10/month to my electric bill.
So for me, solar has been a good investment. New installations won’t have the same tax incentives that I had, but depending financing and local utility generation policies, solar could still be break-even or better for some.
It’s much cheaper than gas in my area. I installed a hybrid heat pump water heater the same month I got my ev and the difference in electric canceled each other out (except now I don’t pay for gas either so saving money overall).
How many km do you drive in a day? If you drive less than 50 km/day, I doubt you can reach $100/month no matter where you live. $50/month is very realistic. Electricity costs less than gasoline, distance-wise, almost everywhere.
It’s the cost of running a clothes dryer overnight, but only if your charge is actually empty. Few people use their entire battery each day.
I think that EVs have come a long way but might require a couple more generations to sort themselves out. A friend of mine once said that tech usually needs three generations to mature and cited light bulbs as an example. Gen 1 was incandescent, provided light but was hot and costly. Gen 2 was florescent, not hot, less expensive but had some nasty chemicals inside. Gen 3, now with LEDs are cheap, cool, and clean.
I think EVs are somewhere at Gen 2.
Edit: Just to note, I’m more of a bike and public transit person than ANY kind of car.
Gen 1 was incandescent, provided light but was hot and costly. Gen 2 was florescent, not hot, less expensive but had some nasty chemicals inside. Gen 3, now with LEDs are cheap, cool, and clean.
Imagine sitting out the use of electric light bulbs from 1900 until 2010, just in the hopes that one day they’d be better.
News flash: your “gen 1” light bulb was better than kerosene lamps from the beginning.
Also there were many generations of each of those. Carbon filament incandescent sucked. Eventually incandescent found a way to be longish lasting and white enough. It was dirt fucking cheap by the end as it’s main benefit if you didn’t mind replacing them every month.
Gen 1 fluorescent was the long flickery bars that only saw use in offices. It got slightly better over time. Then early compact fluorescent bulbs still were kinda greenish and flickery and couldn’t handle the rapid cycling a closet for example might experience, much less outdoor conditions. They lasted longer than incandescent but were always going to be more expensive than it and had the worst color rendering of any major electric general use home lighting technology.
Then LEDs are a whole other thing. For a long time you could have any color you want as long as it’s red, then amber was an option. Later green came around, before much later blue did. Once there was blue we could make white using either RGB addition or phosphors and slowly moved towards LED light bulbs, which at first were fine. Like, yeah early LED bulbs were better than incandescent or fluorescent, but they were expensive, less durable, and didn’t have as good of light quality as we’d expect today.
These technologies are as different from each other as gas cars to hydrogen cars to electric cars.
Also gen 1 of electric cars is over a hundred years past. And if that doesn’t count it’s the 90s EV that people loved but GM destroyed all they could of them. In that framework Gen 3/2 is the early Nissan Leaf era. We’re well into gen 3 of EVs at the very earliest.
A friend of mine says my EV is fully sorted out and you’re making this up. “Gen 1” “Gen 2” and “Gen 3”? 🤣
Well there aren’t really any generations because they’re all basically the same thing, it’s mostly just regulations and common sense that need to be worked out. For example the Nissan leaf was a truly stupid vehicle in every way, it used a weird proprietary charger that nothing else supported, and it had the storage capacity of an electric toothbrush.
Later EVs were considerably better vehicles, but I wouldn’t really call that Gen 2 because all that really changed was that a standard had been identified for charges (not even an international standard, just a few local ones) and a decent amount of batteries had been put in the car. But essentially the same technology.
I don’t know anyone who was holding out on lightbulbs untill LEDs
I still use candles…no data spying.
Many technologies were not possible until their invention. So on a way.
Not as much of an investment as an EV
I don’t know about that. When I was a kid and we were still on incandescent light bulbs a filament bulb would be maybe £25 (or whatever your local currency is, the actual values don’t really matter). By the time LED bulbs had come out that price had gone down to maybe £3 for a filament bulb, but LEDs were about £30 so a 10 x cost increase. But it was worth it because the LED bulb lasted more or less forever.
Most EV cars are around double the price of an equivalent ICE car, that a 2 x cost increase. But there is a lot less of an immediate benefit to an electric vehicle over a traditional engine vehicle. The fuel is cheaper, but the car is more expensive and fuel prices haven’t risen enough yet to really cancel that out. Clearly we need to start a few more wars in the middle East.
Gen 3, now with LEDs are cheap, cool, and clean.
And not as reliable as they used to be.
LEDs might be less expensive to run but they certainly have a lot of upfront costs and depending on what you get they don’t put out as much light.
you can get LEDs at any lumen output.
What do you mean about what you read online? Am I going to the wrong places? This stat sounds perfectly reasonable to me, and I don’t even drive one.
My EV is quite possibly the most poorly planned decision of my life.
I live in an apartment and cant charge it overnight. Its a leaf so it only has l2 slow charging and Chademo charging; i live in the US so it doesnt exist – an adapter costs $750 minimum. I charge for 3 hours every week to go a maximum of 70 miles at a time. When its cold out, thats 4 or 5.
I don’t regret it at all, unironically, genuinely.
There’s something to be said for not going to gas stations. Ever.
Yeah, but my version of that is sitting in a dead parking lot for 2 hours to spend $3 on 60 miles with my j1772 connection. I cant wait to have $750 to spend on my stupid computer adapter so i can instead spend 15 minutes at an electric gas station
I have said it a million times. Whenever I drive a car with an internal combustion engine it feels so incredibly primitive.
Why?
It was the smell for me. They all smell like horrible chemicals, I was just blind to it until I spent a few weeks away from one.
Loud, too much vibration, slow start up, doesnt even sound like a spaceship
I was so excited for EVs to be quiet. The spaceship noises make me so sad. Like finally, we figured out a way to make a car that didn’t make too much noise, and we legally added in stupid scifi sounds. These neurotypicals ruin everything.
Ive definitely sneaked up on people, even with the added spaceship sound. Its 100% for safety and honestly too quiet.
That being said a lot of hondas have like an angelic hum that I really hate
I think most of that is due to regulation, it is so you can’t sneak up on someone like Andy in his Prius. Early Model 3s don’t even have a speaker to make the sound so they still don’t, a friend of mine has one and it doesn’t make any woowoo noises
Monke brain like vroom vrroom
Jokes aside, car manufacturers figured consumers would miss that feeling enough to install software in EVs to mimic it.
Yamaha went the extra mile and patented a fake engine for electric bikes that moves and moves air just like a real engine, except it generates negative work.
I hate everything about it and everyone who had a hand on it.
Forget what you read online
… What was I doing, again?
tries to check history
navigates to profile page and reads it
What’s my name again!?
As an EV owner, I have a bit of a mixed bag when it comes to people’s opinions on EVs here. Many will approach me to genuinely ask about the car, the range anxiety, recharge, etc because they are curious and thinking on getting one.
Then there’s “the others”. People who for some weird reason hate EVs (especially now that gas is over 2€/lt) will approach me to throw hate on them parroting the usual silly remarks about battery degradation, range, lack of “engine sound”… And it’s funny because I never open up a conversation about my EV, you won’t see me trying to forcefully talk about it… so when I tell them that I don’t care if they like EVs or not, they get even more pissed because they just want to shit on them and hope that I get upset or something? Idk, in Italy there’s this kind of people who need to show others how noisy their car is and how manly they are for driving a car that is noisy.
Now you know how vegetarians and vegans feel. Most don’t bring it up (I only bring it up now in this context), but still get pulled into discussions about it.
Remember, you don’t need to engage. You get pulled in because you want to be pulled in.
I’m usually the one who talks the least on the table when it comes up. I’m really not interested discussing my personal choices. Some people really are though.
Idk, in Italy there’s this kind of people who need to show others how noisy their car is and how manly they are for driving a car that is noisy.
Oh how I wish that was only an Italian thing
And it’s funny because I never open up a conversation about my EV, you won’t see me trying to forcefully talk about it
I guess this is a reality similar to that of most vegetarians or vegans…
Was just about to say the same. It’s a great source of unwelcomed conversations alongside queerness and toe shoes.
Oh well toe shoes can go to hell, that makes sense.
Oh no, shoes shaped like feet! Won’t someone think of the children??
As I’ve grown older, I’ve come to realize that many people (too many, IMHO) are not only only somewhat aware* of cultural stereotypes but also seem to willingly, if not proudly adopt them as a vital ingredient to their persona. Like some vibe coders/script kiddies copy-pasting themselves an identity from barely-skimmed “data” they got from a friend of a friend who “totally knows what they’re talking about, bro.” 🙄🤷🏼♂️
*at least, that’s what they’ll tell you, ofc.
I find this fascinating because no one has ever said anything about my car. I was actually worried they would before I got an EV, because of stories like this.
But I’ve had the car for six years now and I have only had pleasant interactions about it.
They are extremely common here though, so that might be partly why.
In fact, once I thought an elderly man was going to ask something snarky. He said “hey, can I ask about your car?” and then he very kindly asked about what the brake calipers were, because he literally had no idea. Then he said “it’s a really pretty car” and then I felt mentally bad for doubting the sweet old guy.
Living in the inland northwest US I’ve never had anyone approach me to talk about EVs one way or another. I’ve been driving a Kia Niro EV for a year now. Not even the few times I’ve been into North Idaho.
I don’t think I’d be bothered too much by some EV hater trying to be an ass either though given I’m not the one eating shit at the gas station. Charging from flat to full would cost me $6.40 at home… where I essentially do all my charging at 10¢ / kWh
For some people the politics or aesthetics of their choice of car outweighs the economics or convenience.
I am not rich enough to be one of those people.
Have ya see much difference between Chinese EVs and European ones? I’d like to get me a BYD but it seems very expensive here.
In price? To have a car that had a similar amount of equipment than my atto3, the average difference between the atto and the european brands was around 6-8k euros. And that’s just considering the ADAS (like 360° cam, park sensors, autoswitching beams, etc). If I wanted an euro car with all the other “silly” things like the opening roof, the heated wheeldrive and seats, etc, we were going to almost 10k more expensive.
The U.S. & Canada put a 100% tariff on Chinese EVs. But with the trade war with the USA in full swing hopefully we’ll i state free trade with China.
Canada dropped the tariffs on 50,000 cars. Most of them as Chinese made Teslurs.
Ah the South European Uncle™, I know him well
