I heard someone said that, at the end EV will cost you almost the same as gasoline vehicle, if you have to change the expensive battery every so often. Can someone please give me more info on this? Thank you so much.
The “it’ll cost you a bazillion dollars to replace your battery” thing is stupid. Most batteries will last as long as the car.
I have solar panels at home which generate way more than enough for my home and EV (and still costs less than my old electric bill before solar), so I count charging as free.
People here keep mentioning battery degradation and replacement costs. I got a Kia EV6 and I love it. I tried many other EVs at the time earlier in 2023 when I bought it and the EV6 blew them all out of the water on both features, quality, and (surprisingly) price. And they also have a 10 year warranty for the battery. They mentioned that it would also qualify for free replacement under the warranty based on degradation if it’s past a certain amount. I need to pull out the paperwork and check the criteria.
As far as price comparison to ICE vehicles, I think a fully kitted Mazda CX5 is a good comparison. It’s about 42k with 22-27 mpg, so would cost me around $150/mo in gas. Over 10 years that’s $18k for gas. Compare to the EV6 that I got for around $65k. I’ll definitely save that extra $5k in maintenance costs over 10 years.
Due to the fact that it doesn’t have a bunch of moving parts wearing down constantly like an ICE vehicle would, it’ll probably last longer than 10 years. Most ICE vehicles I’ve owned start to become a real hassle after 7 years. I also appreciate not having to constantly get maintenance too.
Helping reduce pollutants is nice, but that’s a bit of a heated discussion due to what’s required in lithium mining. Even so, it at least feels like I’m trying to do the right thing.
And lastly, EVs are just plain more fun to drive! The linear acceleration is a little weird to adjust to, but it means steady and fast acceleration from standstill since you don’t have to change gears, jolting the passengers just to get up to speed. And I don’t feel like accelerating a bit quickly is financially irresponsible either since I’m not burning extra gas to do it. When I’m in my gas car, I can practically see the dollars burning away.
I’m very curious about your experiences of having problems with ICE cars after 7 years … I’ve never owned a car that’s less than 10 years old, and have rarely had problems with them.
It’s morbidly fascinating reading how rich people see the world …
The statistical maintenance costs for cars just go up over time, with some pretty big bumps generally every 60k miles or so you put on the car. There are just a ton of straight up wear components on ICEVs from spark plugs to belts to fluids, clutches, seals… if you get unlucky, you end up with a good chance of a semi-major repair or maintenance item every year. If you get lucky, then I guess you post about it on the internet.
