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I decided a few years ago that I was sick of standing in the snow at a gas station waiting for the person inside the building to finish selling that lottery ticket and turn the pump on so I can stand there some more babysitting it while it fills up and I freeze. The answer, of course, was to buy a car that didn't need gasoline, one I could plug into the house and go inside where it's warm.
I'm not a rich man, I'm a pensioner who is still paying a mortgage, so I looked for an affordable EV. Used ones are almost nonexistent, and I found out why when I finally bought one: it has a ten year warranty. They haven't been making them much longer than that.
I swore off new cars decades ago when my month old VW stranded me ninety miles from home with a bad alternator, but if you want an EV, new is your only choice. I kept seeing the Chevy Bolt advertised, but could never find one for sale at all. Then I found that they had stopped making them two years earlier.
Why? Well, battery problems, they claimed. Why just the not so expensive one, $30,000? GM is still selling electric Cadillacs and Corvettes, why no cheap cars?
I discovered after buying an EV that the only two advantages of a piston car to an electric one are the lack of infrastructure for long trips, and the high purchase price of the vehicle. Why high? Because only their flagship autos have electric motors, the ones that formerly had V8s.
My car cost $40,000. It's absolutely the nicest, roomiest (except for the minivans) car I ever owned. My Dad had a Checker when I was about ten, they no longer make them. They were designed for taxicabs and I've never seen more back seat leg room than in one. My new Hyundai has more leg room except Dad's Checker than any other car I've ever seen, and although the '74 LeMans was a much bigger car, my new EV is much roomier. It's a lot roomier than the '02 Concorde that was the same size as my new car on the outside. Why aren't the auto companies advertising how roomy EVs are? I never realized how much space engines, transmissions, and gas tanks take up.
I started trying to buy one when I realized that you don't have to babysit them when you're charging. I didn't want to stand there in the snow filling a gas tank, but judging from most Facebook comments I've seen, I must be the only one who realized that. People seem to think you have to stand there when they charge. Why aren't they advertising this benefit?
Why aren't they telling you that your car can now heat your garage, unlike a piston car? Why aren't they advertising the fact that rather than the heat coming on when you get to where you're going, you have heat before you're out of the driveway?
Why aren't they telling you how well EVs handle, thanks to its crazy low center of gravity? Or how much faster they can stop, thanks to having two sets of brakes?
Why aren't they advertising the fact that electricity is five times cheaper than gasoline and diesel? The only way I found out was by buying one.
Why aren't they advertising all the advantages of EVs?
Why are only the top of the line autos like the Mustang or Cadillac EVs? That's an easy question to answer. The automakers are under laws from our and other governments that their fuel mileage average of all the vehicles they sell has to be under a certain number. The easiest way to do that is to make the expensive cars, the ones with big V-8s, electric. When your fastest car doesn't use traditional fuel...
But this, of course, begs a second question: why only the expensive ones? Because they don't want to make electric cars at all. The obvious reason is that they hate EVs. But why do they hate them and love the incredibly inefficient (my car will go 20 miles on the electricity it takes to refine a gallon of gasoline), obsolete Rube Goldberg device with thousands of moving parts to wear and break?
EVs threaten their business model. The businesses are set up so that GM makes almost as much profit from aftermarket parts, like spark plugs, belts, hoses, pumps, and so forth as they do on the cars themselves.
Gasoline and diesel vehicles all need periodic maintenance. They're needy things, expensive to maintain, and the car company gets a cut of every repair of every car they sell. The drive train is a Rube Goldberg mess with thousands of moving, interlocking parts, any one of which fails can cripple the vehicle. A bad fuel pump stranded me in the bad part of town last year, and the repair was nearly $900 not counting the towing charge. The repair shop got half, Pontiac and other companies got the rest.
My new car doesn't have a fuel pump. Or spark plugs, or belts, or fuel injectors, or any of the other moving parts all the other cars I've owned since 1968 had and needed replacing. The motor's shaft IS its drive train! When was the last time your ceiling fan needed servicing?
More than likely that new 1976 Vega that cost $3,000 garnered more than that for GM in aftermarket parts. There may still be some on the road still earning money for GM. An EV has few aftermarket parts; tires, brake pads, windshield wiper blades are all I can think of. Hyundai won't make any more money from my new EV like they would if it had a big six cylinder piston engine.
Which is a shame, because electric motors are all far, far superior to piston engines and transmissions in every way. But the nearly zero cost of maintenance is why the thieving billionaire car companies don't want to sell affordable EVs. In fact, they want to sell as few EVs as possible. If it wasn't for fuel mileage restrictions, Tesla and the Chinese would likely be the only electric cars you could buy.
But isn't this just a conspiracy theory? No, there was never a conspiracy, nothing needed to be said. Those people aren't moral, but they're not stupid, either. Ford and Chevy aren't making cars for a hobby, nor are they charitable organizations. All they care about is profit, and EVs threaten their gravy train.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ledow on Thursday December 07 2023, @10:29AM (16 children)
"it has a ten year warranty"
So do a lot of cars.
"I discovered after buying an EV that the only two advantages of a piston car to an electric one are the lack of infrastructure for long trips, and the high purchase price of the vehicle."
Please remember this, it's critical to what comes after.
"Why high? Because only their flagship autos have electric motors, the ones that formerly had V8s."
Most flagship autos throughout Europe have nothing like a V8 and the electric cars are not only the flagships. They are still expensive because... electric cars are new and expensive and include "all your fuel" for the next 10 years (remember the warranty?) literally inside the car, including extra "fuel" to counter the weight of the "fuel" (my fuel tank is 50kg... an EV battery can be 10 times as heavy. It's a block of metal that occupies a huge portion of the car that you have carry everywhere you go, remember.
"My car cost $40,000."
That's more than I've ever paid for any car ever, including one from brand-new (a Mondeo which is sold as a Fusion in the states... interestingly the Mondeo is identical except the engines go from 1.2L to 2.0L but the Fusion STARTS at 2.5L. This, also, is crucial to your problem.
My car that cost half that is a perfectly serviceable car for four or five grown adults to ride in, I've put 9ft Christmas trees in it and dismantled a 12ft shed into it, and even MOVED HOUSE - literally every piece of furniture, belonging and appliance, using just my Mondeo hatchback. Empty space you don't use is wasted money.
"I started trying to buy one when I realized that you don't have to babysit them when you're charging."
Yes, but the charging takes far longer. Why don't you mention that? Also, for the sake of once or twice a month standing for about 3-4 minutes in the cold to refill my car is not a great chore worthy of dropping $40k on a machine to remove. Especially given other problems.
"Why aren't they telling you that your car can now heat your garage, unlike a piston car? Why aren't they advertising the fact that rather than the heat coming on when you get to where you're going, you have heat before you're out of the driveway?"
What kind of cars are you driving that can't already heat the car in literally seconds, and why would you want to heat your garage from your car? Because you can already do that, but why would you?
"Why aren't they telling you how well EVs handle, thanks to its crazy low center of gravity? Or how much faster they can stop, thanks to having two sets of brakes?"
Because almost every car on the market handles just well enough. The low center of gravity is because of that 450kg+ of weight you carry around. Two sets of brakes are available on many, many decent affordable cars.
"Why aren't they advertising the fact that electricity is five times cheaper than gasoline and diesel? The only way I found out was by buying one."
You don't read your electricity bill? P.S. it would cost a significant portion of the car cost to legally fit a compliant home charger to my home - not least probably being required to upgrade my house electrics to do so.
"Why aren't they advertising all the advantages of EVs?"
They are. But also, see your lines above. There aren't many, very, very few of them are unique to EVs and they're rather limited in scope, and vastly cancelled out by the cost.
"Why are only the top of the line autos like the Mustang or Cadillac EVs?"
Again... American problem.
"But why do they hate them and love the incredibly inefficient (my car will go 20 miles on the electricity it takes to refine a gallon of gasoline), obsolete Rube Goldberg device with thousands of moving parts to wear and break?"
They don't. Consumers are not purchasing enough of them yet to justify the switch, and with a ICE switch-off in a few years they are maximising their patent portfolio and existing tooling before it becomes obsolete forever. There will come a point where you can't get spares for the old ICE cars because they simply aren't making enough any more. That point is not yet. Hence it's still cheaper to repair ICE cars than buy EV cars for the moment.
"Gasoline and diesel vehicles all need periodic maintenance."
So does your EV, it's a condition of that 10 year warranty, I'll bet.
"A bad fuel pump stranded me in the bad part of town last year, and the repair was nearly $900 not counting the towing charge."
That was a new car, you said. Thus it was under warranty because you were maintaining it, yes? Why are you paying for anything?
Also, mechanical failures can happen to all cars. More, less, maybe, who knows with the current numbers on the roads. There was a time when towing an EV destroyed it, by the way. They were expensive to deal with.
"When was the last time your ceiling fan needed servicing?"
Your ceiling fan does not move at 70mph on a motorway for hours on end for countless years dragging 450kg of battery with it. It's not even vaguely comparable.
There is no conspiracy theory here - electric cars are very viable. My next car WILL be an EV. Because the law dictates so and I'm not going to try to cling onto an ICE once it becomes taxed to oblivion, penalised on the roads, parts aren't available, support is non-existent, etc. etc.
But the simple fact is - as a homeowner who purchased an ICE car from brand new and uses (and abuses) it every day to move house, go to work, etc. I can tell you: I can't afford an EV at the moment. I have a plan before 2030 (when ICE will be banned in my country) to put a charger on the wall of my house. This is a long-term plan, and will cost a lot in itself.
If my car makes it to then, I still won't change. I'll drive it until it's not economically viable any more compared to an EV. Fact is, I could buy my car and nearly 300 tanks of fuel for the price you paid for your EV. A tank every 2 weeks, that's 11.5 years of fuel. When you then account for your electrical costs, and take off my "maintenance" costs, let's say five year's worth. I could literally buy my car over, plus fuel and parts enough to get through the ICE ban, cheaper than I could buy and run your EV to that point.
Until that changes - EV coming down in price, my fuel being taxed to oblivion, my car being banned from the road, etc. - I will ask just one question:
Why would you think I would move to an EV except out of "the goodness of my heart" at the moment? Economically it makes no sense whatsoever. Environmentally, yes. But economically, no. And, sorry, but I'm not in a position to enjoy the luxury of dropping $40k on a car just to feel better about my carbon emissions. If I were, I'd have done it a long time ago.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Rich on Thursday December 07 2023, @11:20AM
One reason for EV is luxury.
The pinnacle showoff of ICE propulsion is putting a coin on its edge on a Ferrari Flat 12 and pulling the throttle without the coin falling over. Messieurs Rolls and Royce stated (I hope I quote correctly) that their ideal was an engine that is not noticeable while always having sufficient power. An electric motor delivers on both of that. The heavy battery not only lowers (if it's in a skateboard design) the centre of gravity, but also improves the sprung-vs-unsprung weight ratio for a smoother ride. (The power usage penalty isn't that bad if the brake energy gets recovered, e.g. if one doesn't slam the brakes hard to heat it off, at 80% efficiency, 400 kg battery becomes an 80kg penalty on average).
Of course, with a Mondeo Estate, and claiming cars handle good enough (which is true for practical purposes), all this luxury stuff, or ride & handling fetishism, doesn't apply to you. ;)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by PiMuNu on Thursday December 07 2023, @01:01PM (1 child)
At some point I did an estimate of integrated cost for EV vs petrol, including reasonable estimates for a few years of operation. The EV came out a bit cheaper. It relies on doing a reasonable amount of mileage to offset the up front cost. It sounds like you have done the same estimate, and come out with 5 years of running as the "crossing point". Well, I run my car for more than 5 years (in fact I have a 20 year old car on the driveway), so for purely cost grounds it makes sense to buy an EV.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 07 2023, @01:26PM
> ... I have a 20 year old car on the driveway
So do I. It was given to me at 115,000 miles by an older friend who was unable to drive anymore. It's not a great car (the same friend gave his Porsche to his brother!), but it is one known for long life and I recently passed 130K miles with minimal expenses (one starter motor and a set of tires).
Since it's unlikely that anyone is going to be giving or willing me a BEV in the next 10(?) years I'm so far ahead of any BEV cost scenario that there is no economic reason for me to change to electric.
Another piece of the cost of ownership is insurance and my 20 year old car is less than $500/year with collision coverage. Electric cars, or really any expensive car, are considerably more expensive to insure.
(Score: 2) by tizan on Thursday December 07 2023, @06:13PM (12 children)
Just a pure "give no fuck capitalist" will tell you ...do your math properly.
A gasoline car toyota corolla for e.g is >$25K (so $15K extra upfront) ...how much servicing a year cost ..first few years $1000 a year ...after 5 to 8 years can be as high as $3K per year (you know water pump, fuel pump, carbon build up on piston, MAF clogging, timing belt, etc etc)...so easily $20K over 10 year in servicing..vs 5K i am presuming for electric...you know breakpads or heat pump failure etc. I'll assume . Just in terms of servicing you would have saved money with an electric car if you keep it for 10 years. now fuel...if your are charging at home on the average it is cheaper (20% the cost of gasoline)...in Europe etc it can be as low as 5% of the cost of gasoline. 10K miles per year....25mpg car cost you 400 g of fuel.. say $3/gal $1200 vs $300 for electric.. so $900... or nearly $10K over a period of 10 years ...so you'd easily save 10K to 15K over the 10 year of ownership...In Europe or wherever gasoline is not subsidized (like in the US or Arab) countries...the amount you spend to keep and run a gasoline car over 10 years would pay for the electric car !
Exxon and subsidiaries say thank you for doing what you are doing and feeling you are saving money ! What do we call it when somebody does something against his economic interest and feel good about it ? Charitable donation to Exxon ...yeah for you.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 07 2023, @06:31PM
Bullshit.
I'm currently driving an ICE that is more than 20 years old. The engine is 4.1l, it has AC, a good stereo, is comfortable, powerful and easy to drive. I bought it for $3000, 13 years ago and it has cost me an average of about $800 per year in service and repairs since then.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Thursday December 07 2023, @06:42PM (7 children)
My car, bought from new, being a "cheap" Ford, is 8 years in and has required nothing but tyres, oil and filters.
All of which are consumables on an EV too.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Thursday December 07 2023, @10:02PM (6 children)
I don't believe you. You would certainly need brakes on an ICE vehicle in 8 years.
(Score: 3, Informative) by ledow on Friday December 08 2023, @01:05AM (2 children)
I'll give you a small point - a single advisory (i.e. not required) on one MOT out of 5, nothing more.
£20.
Again, a consumable, that you could argue wasn't on an electric car, but not anywhere near the suggested maintenance pricing.
I just checked all my historical MOTs since the car was "born" (I'm the only owner in its history), that was literally the only thing I missed.
Even the windscreen wipers are original (but I have a spare pack in the back, just in case).
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Friday December 08 2023, @04:30AM (1 child)
20 pounds!! An advisory?
Perhaps you don't own a car at all, because those figures are pure fantasy when considering an ICE vehicle.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Friday December 08 2023, @08:47AM
MOT results are public knowledge and I'd love to be able to share them with you but it would literally identify me and my home address immediately.
Yes. An advisory.
Date tested
18 December 2020
PASS
Advisory: Front Brake pad(s) wearing thin (1.1.13 (a) (ii))
The vehicle was purchased late 2015, you don't even have to do an MOT until 3 years after purchase. This was thus the third MOT (done early because of the horrible dates).
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday December 09 2023, @12:22AM (2 children)
My first truck had brakes done twice in 34 years (240k miles).
Doing more coasting than braking probably had a lot to do with that. (I am a cheap bugger, I resent paying for consumables...)
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday December 09 2023, @01:12AM (1 child)
Also, if it was a stick shift it had engine braking, one reason you change brakes less often in an EV.
Are the Republicans really in favor of genocide, or are they just cowards terrified of terrorist twit Trump?
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday December 09 2023, @02:46AM
Mine are all automatics, but you can use engine braking there too (as I do in winter, because it's a good deal less slippy -- on ice I usually gear down before I touch brakes).
I just don't lean much on the brakes. I had to spend gas to get going, I'm going to get as much coasting out of it as I can before I stop. :)
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Reziac on Friday December 08 2023, @04:54AM (2 children)
I don't know where you're doing your maintenance, but I worked out what my first pickup (bought new for $5600) cost me across 34 years, and it came to $700 per year -- including a full rebuild end to end. And that was mostly SoCal shop prices. 240,000 miles (and it worked for a living).
Current truck (bought used, for the primo sum of $3000) across 10 years has cost me on average $580/year, including a full transmission and brake rebuild. It has 258,000 miles on it, but had a new engine just before I got it, and is functionally a new truck. It will probably not need any significant repair for the next 8-10 years.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday December 09 2023, @01:26AM (1 child)
A new pickup for $5600? Before the bicentennial. So if you got it in '72 and traded in '02 those first few $700 years were a whole lot more in today's money, cigarettes were thirty cents a pack in 1972 and gas was a quarter. 1974 destroyed all math having to do with the price of anything.
And 240,000 miles on a work truck in 34 years? You must not have worked much, I bought a '74 Le Mans in '78 with 30,000 miles on it and it had 300,000 when I traded it in '84 or '85. I'd replaced a thermostat, a water pump, a clutch and fixed a hose with duct tape, the only maintenance except oil changes and tuneups and all the other maintenance hassles piston engines have. That maintenance is a hell of a lot more expensive than it used to be, too.
Are the Republicans really in favor of genocide, or are they just cowards terrified of terrorist twit Trump?
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday December 09 2023, @02:43AM
1978. Brand new what was then the F100 (tho it had an F150 rear end, somewhat to the mechanic's puzzlement). I work at home, with occasional business trips, so no, there wasn't commute miles on it. But it got to haul bed loads and sometimes trailers pretty much every time it went anywhere.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.