Do people actually think EV drivers would want to go back to gas? Even intuitively it doesn’t make sense. A lot of times it involves sinking some amount of time and effort into the home infrastructure. Of course someone wouldn’t do that and then what, change their mind?
I would never go back to ICE. But I do miss driving a car with a clutch sometimes.
Same. I love my EV as a commuter machine but I do miss having a more engaging car. If I can ever afford it I’d love to have a little weekend car like a Miata in addition to an EV that I drive 90% of the time.
Also same. I can even afford an older used Miata if I squint. But man, where would I put the thing? We’ve fortunate enough to have two cars, but storing a third would be very awkward. The current EV charger location means my car must be parked in the garage. My wife will not be bumped out and shuffling cars seems like a massive PITA.
I also live in SE MI and our roads are firmly grid oriented. I moved here daily driving a 96 Miata and got very little joy out of driving it here.
I don’t have a garage so any car I own would be living outside, right along with my EV and its charger. But it sounds like you wouldn’t get any joy out of having a sports car so I think the best solution for you is to just not.
As an owner of a hybrid I want to go full electric
If I could do wall power I could potentially run a cord from my back deck to my parking spot, if I’m allowed and if it would reach. I’d have to figure out how to prevent it from being a tripping hazard but that’s minimal
I don’t think I’d suffer range anxiety and some of the newer evs are sooo nice
should be doable, the cable on our charger is like 14’ long and I kinda wish it wasn’t SO long lol because we park snugged up to the garage, it’s always way more slack than needed.
iirc the brand is emporia, they’re a common charger w/ bluetooth connectivity so you can see how much you’re paying / how fast it’s charging etc., complete with detailed metrics every month.
my only wish is that I could ev-ize my old honda element.
The cheapest EV where I live costs about 30x more than the cheapest ICE car, and about 5x more than the average ICE car.
At the same time, it has half (or not even that) the range and most of the controls inside the touchscreen.
Almost everybody lives in apartments. No chargers in the underground garages or near outside parking spaces. I only know of 4 EV chargers in a radius of 2km around my home, and I live in my country’s capital.
I think I’ll stick to public transport and cycling. EVs are not the answer to any problem. All that work just to have marginally less ecologically destructive vehicles.
To me it just looks like smoking vs vaping. Improvement? I guess. Worth investing insane amounts of resources into? Yeah, probably not.
To me it just looks like smoking vs vaping.
your stack of strawmen there is huge, but this turd cherry on the shit sundae reveals how silly the entire argument was from the start.
we get it, you don’t like 'em, go suck on a tail pipe and save the rest of us your exhaust
“30x more than the cheapest ICE car, and about 5x more than the average ICE car” - If you want anyone to take you seriously, you’ll have to post models and prices.
They are Polish probably, because their username translates to “asstitties”
Looks like new cheap EV can be 100k in the local currency, ICE beaters can be like 3k. So the cursory numbers at a glance check out.
Well that’s comparing apples with oranges then.
I can get a used Leaf or Zoe for £1600, and a new petrol Range Rover is over £100,000 so clearly EVs are more cost effective.
There are no used beater EVs in Poland
https://en.guazi.com/blog/insight/used-electric-cars-poland.html
Asstitties is completely correct about their analysis of the Polish used car market. They are nowhere near the tipping point of when it will make financial sense to purchase one.
I’m in Canada and the cheapest EV is less than 50k new, the cheapest new ice is 25-30k. It’s definitely worth it, I’m in Toronto and level 2-3 chargers are plentiful, there will be less/different per km costs.
Yeah, you Canucks have been getting screwed by the Yanks on this subject long before Trump took the mask off. I’m sorry you live next to a bully. Hopefully Carney will improve things.
However that doesn’t mean you can extrapolate North American experience to Europe, they’re utterly different markets that have had the phase out of ICE written into law for years and have been actively pursuing it.
I’m sorry but your personal experience isn’t relevant to a
CanadianPolish exampleEdit to correct, left error with strike through 'cos its funny (yes canadian experience is relevant to canada of course lol)
Poland seems a lot different than here.
There’s a ton of stock on very low cost older EVs here, I’d have an easy time finding something used that would work for me. I probably should have looking at some of these listings…
AI slop article with all the usual AI slop logic issues.
A subset of the issues because I don’t have the time or the interest to poke every hole.
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It doesn’t address the initial apples to oranges / beater to brand new ridiculous comparison because it only considers prices of recently new BYD and Tesla (2024). Comparing a 15 year old car to a new car on price whether they are EV or ICE is just stupid
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Your own AI slop link admits you can get older imports in from the rest of EU - usually Germany because of proximity and wealth. Something that used to be extremely common only a few decades ago and is only recently reducing most probably due to the increase in Poland’s wealth. So saying older EV beaters are unavailable is straight up untrue.
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The focus on battery health is both one-sided and ill-informed. Plenty of older ICE cars have massive costly issues - ask AUDI owners about timing belts and what that does to an ICE when they (very expensively) break. Furthermore you can easily check the health of a battery in almost all EVs - so no surprises on the motorway at 120km/hr when it goes bang and stops. You buy something that you know the state of (or dont buy it).
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The focus on battery health is also wildly overcooked - battery issues almost always surface quickly (as they are usually build faults), and get fixed/replaced under warranty. Plenty of studies show that most EV batteries will last 150-300,000 miles/200-400,000 Km (links below) - longer than the expected life of most cars (average about 125,000 miles / 200,000Km before they are scrapped)
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The REAL issue with comparing an EV beater with an ICE beater is that EVs have progress at a lightning fast rate over the last 20 years - early EVs like the leaf against a recent EV is like a model T against a Lamborghini. Whereas ICE changes in the last 20 are pretty small. A leaf has a shitty tiny battery compared to what you can get now - it is very definitely worth buying as new as possible, particularly given the mileage and hence the number of years you can reasonably expect to get
https://voltchek.app/blog/ev-battery-degradation-statistics
If you like I can generate an AI slop article to match yours and pull apart all the holes one by one - the problem with them always is you have to do multiple iterations before they stop saying “good input, I didn’t dig into that, let me have a look” (actually that’s not quite the wording Claude uses - hmm I instantly recognise it when I see it but can’t yet play it back - oh well you get the gist)
The link was just an example man. I don’t speak Polish I didn’t look up any sources in Polish.
https://plc.auction/auction/from-pl/fuel-gasoline
https://plc.auction/auction/from-pl/fuel-electric
I see a ton of listings for sub 10k for ice, very few in that range for EVs.
I’m trying to say asstitties has a credible perspective.
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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.
Dont forget your cost per mile of maintenance. ICE aint cheap to roll around forever. Emissions and tires/brakes will get ya. Idk, thought I had more substance when I started typing
I love the idea of EVs, drove one for awhile, but as a note, tires do wear out faster on EVs because they are heavier.
But yes gas is more expensive in most areas, and EVs save on brakes with regen.
nd EVs save on brakes with regen.
and oil changes, and transmission fluid, and alternator rebuilds… the complexity of ICE vehicles alone will be their downfall.
My last car was an 04 I bought 7 years ago for 3k and put like 120-140k miles on. Did all the maintenance myself.
It’s at 300k now and getting cranky and unreliable. But it owes me nothing. On top of that, my commute increased, and with gas prices being high, the 20-25mpg ain’t cutting it.
I just found a beautiful deal, an 07, 190k miles, but only $1300. Right now I’m averaging 42.5mpg over several hundred miles of driving. It needed a few hundred dollars of suspension work, but I did it myself. This is the way.
I want an EV more than anything. I can change at home but not work. Though there are free chargers downtown I could use on the weekends and evenings. But the used prices are still too high for someone like me.
I had a Volt for a couple years, loved it. Got it dirt cheap, it was broken. I fixed it. It got totalled one winter, a real shame. Can’t afford to replace it.
Prices need to come WAY down before it’s feasible for your average person. Even us who fix are own cars can’t afford it, and we save tons!
Near me there are multiple Chevy Bolts selling for around $10k.
I didn’t have the upfront cost of my car, really never have in my entire life - always got a car loan.
have you been paying cash for cars this whole time?
How much money do you reckon you spent on gas in the last 11 years?
$25 per week over 11 years works out to be $14,300.
You’re absolutely right about the long run. The problem is the up-front costs. The proletariat is living off of the Epstein class’s table scraps.
Ya got a point, but it would need to be offset by charging costs.
Yeah, but I should also offset the $5,500 by 11 years of (higher than normal) inflation, and also get more accurate numbers for the amount of money spent on gas ($25 seems a little low, doesn’t it?).
I think it’s fair to say that a used EV has a lower TCO than a used ICE car.
Sure there’s more upfront cost and we have to consider the boots theory but if you can afford to buy a used EV, it’s safe to say that it’s cheaper in the long run.
I mean… a full charge costs me like $11 ish? Tesla stats tell me I drove 8300 miles last year And the total cost to me to charge was about $650.
If you can trust their calculator it says gas cost for a comparable car in my state was about $1350 for the same mileage, so $700 savings.
No, EV people don’t forget, but the nature of posting publicly is that some readers are closer to the fence than others. You’re the only who knows how close you are to that fence.
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!!
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.
My EV has buttons for most stuff, and the rest of it I can use the screen, or just tell the car to do stuff
I’m lucky enough to live in a civilised country, so I have a BYD that yanks cannot yet buy
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
Modern cars have more options than ever, no analog control can cover them all. That’s why menus are needed. That said, some newer cars do have analog controls too, combustion and EVs.
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”.
there’s a population of ICE lovers in this community who chime in every time with ‘ev’s suck’ etc., who I suspect have never actually driven an EV or are being paid to fanboy smog.
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’m not sure that’s true. Maybe for like a Nissan leaf or something but the guys rolling around in cars with like the plaid performance packages and stuff are enjoying the road and teleporting over it. Getting motorcycle torque on demand in a sedan is pretty neat.
That is admittedly not every EV owner though.
You’re sort of just proving their point with that example. The people who own manual ICE cars enjoy a lot more about driving than just “put foot on pedal make go fast”.
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.
There is a section of the internet that is very loudly anti-EV. I think it’s a MAGA-aligned movement. If you watch a lot of EV-related stuff on YouTube, as I have been doing in recent months, the “quitting EVs” videos will pop up eventually.
I mean I hate how silly and connected EVs are, I can see the hate to a degree (I am also too broke to buy one). But I have not seen people who have already bought one say they dislike it.
Is that an EV problem, or a modern car problem? Modern ICE cars also have massive displays, OTA updates, etc. I’m not sure EVs are much worse.
Oh for sure, I hate EVs due to them being new and shit nothing to do with being electric. I also hate new ICE vehicles for the same reason. I wanted an EV myself but short of making my own so far there is nothing I would ever own (maybe soon?).
I tried a few years ago for example to move to an EV motorcycle but found they don’t make one that is not stupid, I need to ride 250km one way, spend the night and ride back. The route I take has zero service (like zero not just chargers but no gas, food or washrooms) stations for the last 190km so I would need about 300km range for it to work. Thought that would be doable since I don’t need to go the speed of plaid and don’t care about my 0-100km time, but nope, they don’t make any EV bikes like that. They all are direct drive (no gearing) torque monsters built to go so fast your skin will come off. They even make some they claim are for adventures but have 150km range. The ones I looked at all have better city then highway efficiency do to them being geared like toys, They could have made one with a higher gear ratio (since the high rpms seem to require a stupid about of heat management at highway speeds) but noooooo, not one on the market is a real vehicle.
I have been looking into EVs myself recently, but the secondhand market here still prices me out for now. In a way, I am content with that as it means I can enjoy my aging 2005 Forester for longer. I have a feeling I will badly miss the manual transmission and low tech, low distraction feel when I eventually switch over. Anything from around the mid-2010s onwards seems to be when cars started going massively downhill in terms of the cabin experience.
My newest car is a 2002. I have a bunch of old shit since I would rather be fixing and driving 5 shitboxes then deal with one new car. Newest I would go is 2008 (that auto bailout fucked the quality of cars)
Oh and I can’t afford one.
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?
it’s increased my bill by ~$48 a month, give or take a few bucks either way.
for that, I’ve stopped gassing up completely, so I’m saving at least $150+ a month on fuel, probably more considering gas has gotten more expensive.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.)
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.
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).
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.
I don’t know anyone who was holding out on lightbulbs untill LEDs
There were folks who held out on electric lighting until incandescent. The first widely used electric light was the carbon arc lamp, invented in the 1800s (as in, 1800-1809) by Humphrey Davey, and put into practical use in the 1870’s. It creates an intense broad spectrum light including more than a little UV. Not really suitable for home lighting though often used in outdoor spaces. Per Technology Connections, incandescent electric light was praised for successfully mimicking the appearance and form factor of gas light.
Oh by the way: adoption tended to follow infrastructure. A few rich people would electrify their houses as a flex, but most folks adopted electric light as their towns electrified. This started in major cities first and then filtered out to the sticks. East coast cities in the US were lit with electricity before the dawn of the 20th century, and there were people lighting their homes with kerosene well into the 1950’s.
It turns out that electric devices aren’t that appealing to folks who don’t have a suitable place to plug them in. looks directly into camera
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 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.
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.
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
