Since I was banned from the Gas thread for simply saying I was glad I have a EV car now I thought I'd answer the question that was posed to me by another before I was banned.(still have zero idea why.
We have a Model 3 long range, it gets around 340 miles per charge and our all in was 50k for the car, $500 for the Wall Charger (you don't need but its cool looking)
Our previous car was a Porsche Cayenne, here is what we spent in the year we owned it. My wife is a rep and uses as her company car. ( she gets paid mileage) so we paid 40k for it. Was a year old when we got it. She drove it 50K in a year, we had to use premium unleaded gas and it got around 18 miles per gallon. We had to get it serviced 3 times with a average cost of $500-700 on each service. I don't know how much we paid in gas but lets assume we still had it today and Premium was going for 4.50 a gallon, it would be around 12-14k on gas a year, along with $1500-2000 in services so our all in each year was 13.5-16k per year in service and gas.
With our Tesla our electricity has seemed to go up $40-50 per month, so lets call it $600 plus tires rotated $100, windshield wiper fluid $5 so for the year its around $800 vs. 13.5-16k.
So the 10k cost difference was made up in less than a year and now we are saving 12k plus per year compared. Plus she loves the car much more than the Porsche.
I know compared with a ford focus the math may not ever make sense but for a nicer car its been awesome for us. [Reply]
Yeah I have a Model S. I mainly charge at home but I don't really even notice my electric bill much higher. I've been doing alot of driving lately so I've just been going to a FREE supercharger at Hy-Vee and then eating a $10 lunch that I would have eaten anyway.
FREE GAS RULES
Very low maintenance on EV's but I have to admit my Model S goes through tires more quickly than most cars it's size due to how heavy it is. [Reply]
The big question(s) are ... what is the cost of the battery pack, electronics etc when it goes belly up (as everything does). Do parts only come from the dealer? Are they the only ones who will work on it? Those only get answered with time, but with a conventional autos the long term costs are more quantifiable.
On the other hand, owning a car may be a thing of the past, more like a three year lease arrangement. The times they are a changin' [Reply]
We don't have an all electric car but are sure thankful we got a hybrid added to the fleet last June. 52mpg is sure better than the 18 the one it replaced was getting.
If you are up for a salvage mission, there are a heck of a lot of them poluting the ocean now.
"The ship was transporting electric and non-electric vehicles, according to Portuguese authorities. Suspicion on what started the fire on Feb. 16 has fallen on lithium batteries used in electric vehicles, though authorities say they have no firm evidence about the cause.
Authorities feared the ship could pollute the ocean. The ship was carrying 2,000 metric tons of fuel and 2,000 metric tons of oil. It can carry more than 17,000 metric tons of cargo."
Juneau, Alaska, made one of their city busses an EV. And the cold would drop the battery range enough that it couldn’t finish the route. I live in a place that is colder than Juneau and am concerned about battery range/life. I have 2 friends who own Teslas and both of them have stated that they lost about 20-25% of their range in cold months.
The batteries in EVs are a real problem if they catch fire. The fires are not extinguishable like a normal car fire.
There is a real problem with disposing of the batteries in EVs right now. Very hard to recycle and can’t really use them for parts like you can with a gasoline engine, not to mention that many of the batteries require rare earth materials that are only available from China or countries that we do not like.
I agree the technology is promising but I am going to wait for a few of the issues to be worked out before I consider one. [Reply]
My wife drives a Nissan Leaf. I'm too impatient and drive across I70 in western KS too often for a full EV, but I drive a RAV4 Prime as an EV around town. You definitely get spoiled by how quiet and smooth a ride they are. [Reply]
I've also driven a Porsche Cayenne Turbo for 11 years. I absolutely love it. I do all of my own maintenance, and have already replaced most of the parts that go bad over time. (Fuel pumps, Coolant pipes, Air struts, water pump,. serp belt, throttle body, etc) so it's not that costly to maintain anymore. It does get 17MPG highway on Premium.... so that sucks, but I don't commute much anymore as I work from home 4 days a week.
however... I've had my eye on a Tesla Model S for awhile now.
I REALLY want a Plaid, but I just can't justify spending that much money on a car right now, but If I come across a Model S P100D for a steal, I'd do it.
And I am one of the few who LOVE the Cybertruck. I think I may actually go for one if they ever get close to actually releasing it...
To answer someone else's question above, I think battery replacement in a Tesla is around 10k job for Tesla to do it. It can be cheaper at alternative shops (if you are willing to ship it). [Reply]