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What is the logic in buying an electric car?


sliverjazz

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   So, factoring in driving to a far out located charging station, it costs nearly 50% more than gasoline, and takes 18 times longer. It takes an hour and a half for a tank for 5 minutes to fill up with gasoline.

   The macro time cost alone isn't worth it because if the person who can afford the Tesla is making a minimum of $25 per hour, the wage hours of money lost was nearly $40 on top of the $21 for a minumum wage job with tips. The 5 minutes for gas is about a $2 out of an hourly minumum wage job, making the total cost for gas about $15.

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2 hours ago, sliverjazz said:

   So, factoring in driving to a far out located charging station, it costs nearly 50% more than gasoline, and takes 18 times longer. It takes an hour and a half for a tank for 5 minutes to fill up with gasoline.

   The macro time cost alone isn't worth it because if the person who can afford the Tesla is making a minimum of $25 per hour, the wage hours of money lost was nearly $40 on top of the $21 for a minumum wage job with tips. The 5 minutes for gas is about a $2 out of an hourly minumum wage job, making the total cost for gas about $15.

I don't know from which country's reference you are speaking (remember, this is an international forum), but here in Norway the low taxes on electric cars (Teslas are relatively cheap here) must be factored in when looking at the financials, as must domestic electric prices vs gasoline prices. Additionally, most people charge at home, not at "far out located charging stations[s]".

Lastly, when looking at the logic of buying something, economics is not always the only factor, or even the most important factor. In regards to electric cars, bragging rights (group belonging) and environmental concern is also frequently part of it.

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Nio use battery swap stations whereby you just switch your old battery for a new pre-charged battery and then drive away - Tesla looked into this technology but rejected it I believe. It is somewhat propriety. Nio have built hundreds of these swaps in China. Nio also want to expand into Europe and the United States.

Also moving away from premium cars to cars for regular joes. 

Edited by DieselDaisy
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We had an electric car until recently (UK). Had one for about 4 years on lease - so new model each year. The battery life improved massively in that time. We have a charging pod fitted to the front of the house, obviously only doable if you have a driveway.

We both loved it and I really miss it. We didn't renew the lease this time because of home working, there isn't much justification for a second car and our larger petrol one is owned and paid off.

They still seem very expensive to buy as a regular customer. In our case a business lease made it feasible. Unless you have the very top of the range like Tesla you are somewhat limited by range if it's your only car although in the time we owned one the frequency of charging stations has really taken off.

Our last model, a Nissan, claimed a 200 mile range but I found this was stretching the truth slightly. A brand new battery might get you 200 miles for a few weeks if you only drive on completely flat roads, the wind isn't against you and you never use anything internal such as air con, heater, radio, wipers etc... The easiest way to think of them is as giant smart phones. They boot up in basically the same way then the battery life starts degrading from the moment you get it and is dependant on what features you're using.

Despite that the last one we had was good enough for 95% of what we used a car for as we don't do a lot of travelling outside the range it had. I can see in countries like the US with much more land mass and less densely populated in some areas (therefore less services with charging) they aren't going to fully replace other fuel anytime soon. The UK being small I would say is ideally placed for them to become much more well used - and hopefully cheaper.

Also, and this may seem obvious, you do have to remember to plug it in! We've had a few disasters where my rather forgetful other half forgot to charge it overnight then couldn't leave for work in the morning straight away. :lol:

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Personally, as someone who only drives the most 18 minutes to work without traffic, my logic would be that charging it over night and pretty much only at my house would save on gas, considering I have solar panels (although it is a solar lease, which I took over when I elected to buy the house) it would make a little more sense to charge it rather than buy gas in California. Im sure there are alsp incentives to having an electric vehicle such as possible rebates, as well as the fact that you can use the HOV lane eith only your self present in the car.

 

This isn't taking into account of the prices of electric vehicles, which may or may not be higher than their gasoline counterparts.

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