I am a California resident.

I am going into analysis paralysis and it’s making me crazy when I sit down to decide if I should go with an ICE car or an EV. HELPPPPPP!!!

Sure ICE vehicles cost more in fuel and maintenance, but EVs have some other costs as well:

  • Costs relatively more to insure

  • Registration cost every year is higher

  • Opportunity cost: a $40k EV is generally compared to a $30k ICE car in terms of break even in 5-6 years. But people rarely mention the opportunity cost of spending the extra $10000. That $10k can make you around $1k each year if invested (subject to market risk ofcourse).

  • Supercharging is still not cheap: while still being 50% cheaper than gas, its not cheap. I see 50c/kwh near my area. And not everyone has a home to charge.

  • Rate of depreciation: All cars depreciate. But some loose value faster than others. My personal feeling is EVs depreciate faster than ICE. Simply because the tech is growing so fast. The argument for ICE is that there will be less demand for ICE in future due to increasing EV market share. So, little conflicted on the right answer here

I don’t know if am the only one who is unable to see the savings in EV (long term). Am I missing something?? Can eV owners share their perspective?? HELP ME come out of this shit and just book a carrr!!!

  • textonic@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I am a CA resident as well. My current and previous cars were both EVs. My in-depth analysis shows, that IT DEPENDS.

    In my case, its absolutely more expensive to have an EV. But thats my use-case. You can make a simple spreadsheet if you really want to , and it will come down to parameters and assumptions you make. I won’t share mine because Im too lazy to find right now but in general it came down to this:

    - Mile per mile, the cost of charging at PGE at home is marginally cheaper than driving a car car. I would say about 20% cheaper (and I absolutely had over 18 months of data to back this up).

    - Higher MSRP = Higher registration costs.

    - For a comparable ICE car, EV costs anywhere between $100-300 more per month to lease / rent/ own ( I only believe in leasing EVs, and leasing in CA, I don’t believe buying in CA since I frequently change cars).

    If you look at first and third point, they cancel out. How much its entirely upto you. In both my cases, the higher cost to lease was not offsetted by cheaper charging costs. I still drive on but thats due to other factors not related to price