this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2026
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Electric Vehicles
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Yeah, I don't buy lifetime cost parity is only hitting now. That's long past.
Depending on the market segment, the price difference even just 5-6 years ago could be a few grand, or it could be like 20k. Depending on your location, electricity might cost nothing, or it might cost nearly as much as fuel. Also a lot of early EVs sold in Europe were Leafs, whose batteries tend to fail prematurely since they weren't cooled. A battery replacement is usually about half the cost of the car new (luckily nowadays, individual cell replacements are being done for at least some cars).
Also I don't have an EV, but I've done calculations, and if I'd use public chargers it'd cost almost as much as driving an ICE vehicle that isn't 20 years old (in terms of energy cost, anyway). If I charge at home, it's much cheaper. I have that option, but a lot of people don't.
Also the price difference thing is more or less gone now. EVs didn't get much cheaper (other than the low end of the market), but ICE vehicles did get more expensive once they realized people are willing to pay more. A BMW iX is nearly 100k new, but so is a diesel X5 now, so you're not really saving money on the purchase price by getting an ICE vehicle anymore.
It's just always been hard to compare like for like, because pure EVs compete on different features than similarly priced ICE vehicles. Is a Tesla Model 3 more like a $30,000 Toyota Camry or more like a $60,000 BMW 3 series? Which is the nearest ICE competitor to the Rivian R1S?
In the past 5 years we've seen a lot of new models released by different manufacturers, we're also seeing more directly comparable models.
One interesting thing is that Toyota is soon releasing EV versions of vehicles they also offer as ICE vehicles. Sometime in the next month or so, the Lexus ES will be offered as either a pure EV or a hybrid, and the EV will actually be cheaper. And there's an EV Highlander coming later this year, with a price comparable to the hybrid Grand Highlanders.
And obviously my comment is very much U.S.-centered because that's the market I know, but most of the ICE manufacturers rely on global manufacturing and supply chains so that we can try to see patterns and trends more broadly. European brands like VW, BMW, Volvo, Mercedes, etc., have also been pushing electrified models that sit somewhere in the long spectrum between cheap economy cars and expensive luxury/sport cars.
I'd never compare a Tesla with anything, it's a piece of shit anyway. I'm pretty sure the $30,000 Camry has a nicer interior than a Model 3 lol. The Rivian's cool, but not even being sold on the continent this article is about (which incidentally is also where I live).
I've only ever done EV to ICE price comparisons in a particular company's range rather than between different manufacturers, and I've never particularly cared about anything in the super low end of the market (I'm sorry, but a Hyundai Kona is not for me, EV or not), nor the super high end (As much as the Mercedes-Benz S-Class is my favourite car in the world (older models, anyway - not a huge fan of the W223), I'll never be buying one new or even lightly used). So it's always been things like the 5 series, X5, E-Class, GLE, etc. Executive cars, essentially.
So 5-6 years ago, there weren't many comparison points. But you could compare the EQC to the GLC and you'd find out that the minimum to shell out for a GLC was about 20k less than the EQC, but of course the EQC's base model had better performance.
Now, Mercedes still makes their EVs more expensive than their ICE vehicles, but there's finally another German manufacturer making decent EVs and that's BMW, who will sell you a base iX for roughly the same price as the base X5 and again, the electric base model has much better performance than the diesel. They will also sell you an i5 for just 7 or 8k more than the base 5 series diesel, and that is actually the same model of car (iX and X5 are same size, but different platform).
You lose comparability again when you go to Audi because those bastards renamed their E-Tron to Q8 E-tron, whereas the E-Tron was actually a much lower-end model. They also haven't made anything worth calling a car in 5-10 years unfortunately, EV or not.
Volvo still makes EVs look unfavourable in their lineup while also phasing out ICE vehicles. The EX90 starts at significantly more than the XC90 and the base EX90 is RWD whereas the base XC90 is AWD. There's also a pretty big gap in favour of ICE in their smaller vehicles (XC40) and of course they've entirely done away with all sedans besides the ES90 and all wagons altogether, which is amazing, because the V90/V90CC was super popular here. 6 decades of great wagons and now they're telling you "SUV or GTFO".