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xkcd #2948: Electric vs Gas
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this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2024
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Only thing stopping me having one is cost.
For me it's cost and having a place to charge since I rent.
Unless you take road trips often having a place to charge is literally any random Outlet. You don't need a fancy dedicated fast charger if you drive less than 100 miles in a day. Think about how many hours your car is just sitting at home, it has that many hours to charge it doesn't matter if it charges in 1 and 1/2 hours or 9 hours as long as it gets charged
So even as a renter as long as you have any kind of outdoor outlet or garage you've got somewhere to charge
I'm not who you replied to, but you are assuming a lot of the living situations for millions and millions of people. I live in a building built in the 40s and only have street parking. I do have a pretty damn good public transit system at my disposal, though. That's within reach for my short travel needs today.
While circumstances are bleak, I hope public transport become much more commonplace.
When I rented I only had street parking. In that situation an electric car is just another thing to manage. If you've got a garage to park in, sure, even with a basic 220V outlet.
As long as you have a driveway or garage, yes. Which a lot of people (most?) don't have.
Yeah I live in an apt with a dedicated off-street parking spot, but the lot still isn't close to any outlets.
I have an EV and charge at home. I love it. That said, I've lived in tons of rentals in college and immediately after. Not one of them would've had a practical option to charge, even on a regular outlet.
The cost, the fact that I don't have a parking space at my apartment, and the fact that insurance is expensive.
A way to charge it at home is also a major issue for anybody who lives in an apartment.
Not really. The cities across the world are introducing public chargers in lamp posts and at the kerb. While it is kind of an issue today, it won't be tomorrow.
Hopefully it won't be, but charging an electric car is still not a standard thing for apartment buildings to offer tenants. So, for the moment, that's a major reason for renters to not take the plunge.
My apartment block in London has underground parking with allocated chargers. There are multiple lamp post chargers over here and other types of chargers. So, for the moment it's already fine.
Parking space i have. The expense is in the truck i want at 90k or more and the hookup of the home charger, which i can do myself but the code inspection might differ
A 2 year old Polestar 2 with 12,000 miles just cost my buddy slightly less than $25k. You can't even get an Accord with that age and mileage that cheap these days! Hertz dumped a bunch of them on the market recently, they were too much fun to be a profitable rental so they're absurdly cheap right now
When I was looking recently I was shocked at how cheap used polestars are. Such nice cars.
Sounds good until you have to replace the battery. I want one of the rivian rts but they are still too pricy even used.
"Electric cars are too expensive!"
"I'm only interested in the most expensive of electric cars!"
Yeah good thing ICE cars don't have anything expensive that breaks after 300,000 miles like an engine or a transmission...
Well, mine has gone through 1 set of rear axle bearings,one stupid oem heater bypass pipe assembly thst i swapped out for a stainless steel replacement, and two propeller shafts
you drive your cars for 300000 miles?
Lots of people BUY their cars with 300k miles.
well maybe in 3rd world like USA they do
Plenty of countries out there with lower income levels than the US, including much of Europe tbh.
yeah, but all of those 400-500 kkm cars get bought up by Kazakhstan and similar country importers.
I myself recently went from a '19 car with 220k km to a '05 one with 460k km because I realized my car's getting driven so much recently, the depreciation is killing its' value. For context, in 2022 when I acquired the '19 car, it had 140k on it.
I'll have to do some wheel bearings, brake pads, belts and pulleys, etc, on the old beater, but all that is way cheaper than the depreciation on a newer car.
To be clear, I don't advocate most people do this, I already knew beforehand what the engine and transmission are capable of. And if need be, I'll even do engine repairs or get the transmission refurbished. The ONLY thing I'm afraid of is bodywork because I can't paint for shit lol
It's not all Kazakhstan either. I'm in Estonia and half of those "200k km" German cars that get imported here have had their odometer rewinded.
My current ice vehicle has 320k on it now
My 2010 wagon has 180k and I can still take it to the mountains and not worry about finding a broken charge port on the way home.
How the hell would you break a charge port? If you managed that then no vehicle is safe.
https://teslaweekly.com/2024/05/vandals-cut-every-charging-cable-at-tesla-supercharger-station-in-bay-area/
This is not an isolated incident.
Also: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/05/03/tesla-charging-us-network/
Oh, the charging station. Charging port I think would mean the port it plugs into on your car. Yeah, I guess that could be an issue, but it's not really something that needs to be considered by a consumer. The fact that you're much less likely to have mechanical issues I think more than makes up for the rare case of vandalism, which can happen to any piece of the infrastructure, for gas and electric.
How is being stranded with no way to charge your EV not a concern for owners?
And yes, potentially gas stations could be vandalized as well -- except they aren't, and charge stations are.
It's an extremely unlikely situation, and the same thing can happen with an ICE. An ICE is, in fact, much more likely to experience mechanical failure. For either the solution is the same: you have to get towed.
Luckily if it's just needing a charge there are other options than a fast charge station. You can go to an RV park and get a faster than a regular outlet charge, or go somewhere with a regular power outlet and ask if you can use it. Either of those could require spending the night, depending on how much you need, but it is very unlikely to be required and they are possible.
Regarding battery degradation - I've owned my EV for 4.5 years now, and its battery is still at 93% of its original capacity. That equates to maybe 10 miles of range lost, from an original range of around 230 miles. At that rate, it'll still be giving usable range in 10, 15 years from now. It's even warrantied to keep over 75% of its original capacity for 8 years / 100,000 miles - if it fails to achieve this (likely due to some defect), it's replaced for free.
And when it does eventually need replacing, it can be recycled into something like a home storage battery - where the power demand is not as high, but still more than enough to power everything in your home for days. Meanwhile, the car can be upgraded to a brand new battery, which will likely last even longer.
Edit: In fact, I tell a lie - I did have to replace a battery on my EV recently. The 12v lead-acid battery, that ICE cars also rely on.
How about you start looking at actual cars instead?
Sadly, battery companies are quite greedy.
Will go down in the next years.