Cost savings just when looking at fuel costs, but if you add in the lack of routine maintenance and moving parts that can wear out, the cost savings multiply. There's the big ticket high voltage battery, but typically that's a matter of reduced capacity rather than a complete failure.
this post was submitted on 17 May 2026
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Not only that but certain models use modular battery packs, so you can replace individual cells when they wear out rather than the whole battery.
So instead of having to spend somewhere around $20k, you may only need to pay $3-4k to replace a worn cell which is closer in cost to a hybrid battery replacement.
Which brands do that?
Tesla Ford and VW are the ones I’m aware of, but I’m sure there are others.
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if you add in the lack of routine maintenance and moving parts that can wear out, the cost savings multiply.
Time. There's a "time not spent dicking around with dealerships/mechanics" component here too. This is the reason why I bought an EV a few years go. I got fed up with the gas engine maintenance ecosystem and paid my way out. I was literally buying time.
Absolutely. I didn't even consider this when I bought my EV. After about six months I had to look up the suggested service schedule to make sure I wasn't missing anything.
Exactly. First scheduled service with my EV was a joke; it amounted to a minor recall and a tire rotation. I was using regenerative breaking so much, they said that the factory brakes didn't even look worn. The service manager actually looked surprised by this.
This is why i didn't even want a hybrid for my next car. I'm tired of changing the oil and still refuse to pay someone to do it. I just didn't want to have 2 cars and i didn't see myself making trips is about with and ev unless the infrastructure for charging is as easy as spotting a gas station.
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Great, now can we make them more affordable please?
You probably already know this but paper covers total cost of ownership. I think we agree cost of EVs is significantly inflated but for many use cases TCO is still lower than ICE vehicles. So if you're in the market for purchasing a car definitely worth investigating!
Meh. I'll easily settle for better public transit, thanks.
The new Slate mini pick up trucks are expected to be in production this year and come in around $20k new. Used EVs already come in under $20k and are good enough for daily commuting in that price range, perhaps not long distance road trips at that price
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Not to mention the added convenience of for the most part never having to actively fuel up.
By that I mean, you park at home, plug in a cable, and walk away, you don't actively have to drive to a petrol station and wait a few minutes while fuel is being pumped
So, homeowners and luxury apartment renters only. There aren't any EV hookups in the parking lots of any of the affordable apartments in my city.
I am not saying EV's aren't important, I'm saying that there are huge economic barriers between the people who would benefit the most from EV's and actually owning one.
Hopefully the next political cycle will subsidize charging stations like the Biden administration did.
I'm pretty sure there's only one apartment building in my city that has any charging stations. There's one gas station that I know of that's replaced a couple pumps with charging stations too. Other than that, I think there might be just a few businesses that have charging stations, usually car dealerships.
Its not as if this is an insurmountable issue though. Apartment parking lots already have electricity running through them. Where my sister lives in the Midwest, lots already have outlets available at each parking spot so that people can plug their block heaters in during the winter.
This is not a thing at any apartment complex I've lived in or visited in the south/southeastern US. Also, if you're renting a house that doesn't already have a charger installed, it doesn't make any sense to buy an EV.
Not arguing that it isn't solvable, but for many people, the infrastructure just isn't currently extant, nor is the political will to solve the problem.
If you're renting a house, a lot of people can get away with the standard 110V house plug. I put about 12K miles on mine last year and unless I was on a road trip, then it would charge up at home just fine. Adds about 1.5% per hour and I'm typically not driving it more than that adds back every day.
If you are renting a house, you don't even need to install any charger, your garage will surely have wall outlets to plug your tools in, they can charge the car perfectly fine, and slow overnight charging is enough for most people's commute.
I don’t know the answer to this but, how does the power demands for charging EVs compare to block heaters?
Also, how do EVs deal with the cold up there? Heating the cabin would take a ton of power.
I dont have numbers so take this with a grain of salt, but I would guess they're probably not too far off from one another. With 110V charging, it'll be slow but effective for overnight charging, and resistive heating elements use an insane amount of power especially when they're trying to warm something constantly in -10F weather.
I live in the PNW and dont have to deal with much cold weather but from everything I've read, EVs handle thr cold just fine.
Last winter in Chicago the chargers could not work. Then the range loss is 40-50%. This is better with sodium battery but they are not common yet.
Range loss is not even anywhere close to 40-50% on a heat pump equipped EV. Even at -20°C I still get 75% range from my Ioniq
Yeah, if it wasn't heaters I would be confident that the wattage wouldn't be enough. But it might be fine.
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And yet American automobile companies are dinosaurs who want to kill EVs.
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Yeah if I had a charging station anywhere near my apartment building.
This has been in the back of my mind ever since I last rented an apartment. Short of dangling an extension cord off your balcony, there's not much that can be done here. You might luck out and get a job somewhere that has charging stations, but that's a big "if".
This also generates a deep concern in my mind for poor folks that can only afford to rent. As they say, "it's expensive to be poor" and having little alternative but to drive gas-burning cars to/from work is only going to crunch budgets harder as time goes on.
Meanwhile, we can't count on landlords to install these things. My last one was the sort that couldn't be bothered to hire painters that understood what masking tape was; moving day was half spent picking paint out of light switches and electrical sockets.
That's the perfect place for government regulation. Start a tiered approach where larger apartment complexes have to electrify a certain percentage of there parking spaces. Every year make the size of the apartment building that has to do this shrink and increase the percentage of parking spaces that require electrification. Also make it a requirement that these electrified spots can't be more than x dollars per kilowatt hour or have them tied to the owner's electrical usage.
There are a lot of ways you can do this, but this is really something that needs to be done through the government for it to happen for low-cost apartments.
Free charging at work for me so it's just a no brainer. I also just do lots of 10-15min trips which destroys ICE cars.
Love my EV. For my use case, it's great. A couple things to watch out for that factor into cost calculations : Home charging is almost a requirement. Fast charging is almost as expensive as gas (probably because they've dialed it in to be so), slow charging is, well, slow. You really have to plan around slow charging.
I just had to renew my tag and my other vehicles were $21. My EV was $255. The logic is, since EVs are paying for tax on fuel to go towards road works, they have to make up for it elsewhere. I'm fine with this, but I don't drive a lot in a year and $255 is way more than the tax I would have spent for gas. Also, I'm pretty sure gas tax has been suspended in my state. So I'm subsidizing the cost for ICE vehicles. Check your state for rules.
Lastly, (and this may be more impactful for my EV which is kinda performance biased) driving Interstate miles eats up your range a lot more. I used to put the cruise control on 75 MPH pretty much all the time. I've found 65-67 is about the break even point to get the miles I should.
The real horseshit about the fuel tax thing is that that gas tax gets suspended all the fucking time, but do I get a break on my road tax too? Hah ha, no, fuck you says the Republicans who implement the fuel type fee and then suspended the gas tax.
I could have a sensible small to mid sized EV car.
Or get a jacked up monster truck and be rolling coal everywhere.
/s
As well as government remote disable and always-on corporate tracking!!!!1!1
Until I can kit my 1991 Accord with a wholly owned conversion I will not be touching one, nor any other car built later than 2010.
That's new cars, not just EVs
Hence why I said no car made past 2010.... Its in the comment.
It took me all of about 20 minutes to remove the SIM chip from my 2015 Leaf, following a youtube video that showed everything step by step.
AFAIK, all cars before 2021 still have physical SIM chips, so easy to remove and disable the telematics.
Even if you can't remove a SIM (as in a case of an eSIM), simply disconnecting the mobile cellular antennas and grounding them would likely prevent it ever from connecting to a network.
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I clearly do not have good reading comprehension
Understandable
My early gen 9 civic is a year or two newer than that, but I think its the last model year it DID NOT have a sim.
You may be able to. I saw this the other day; really cool project: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8pY5Ntd/
'82 Toyota pickup conversion, BTW.
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