Person says that a $45k car is affordable. Dude, I struggle to pay more than $8k for a car, and I have a decent job. While I'd love to have a cool new car at $45k, I've got things like a mortgage, insurances, utilities, taxes, food, and other things to pay for first, leaving not nearly enough for an expensive car. And yeah, to me $45k is VERY expensive! I fix my own stuff because I can't afford to pay someone else to do it, and I can fix ICE cars, so I drive ICE cars.
One of the most pedantic arguments I have had on Reddit recently was with regard to this question. Somebody said that I was misusing the word affordable when I claimed it did not apply it to $45,000 cars by responding with a link to some survey showing that $45k was the average new car sale. To be so out of touch with the reality of most people's finances, that you don't understand why a large swath of Americans do not consider a $45,000 car affordable is insane to me. There are 10 and 15-year-old cars that will function that you can buy for $5,000 to $13,000. Or, if you are willing to drive a 20-year-old Corolla, you can buy that for $2,000. I can't imagine that. To be clear, I do not have a universal disdain for people who are wealthy, or rich, or successful. I am happy for you if you are well off enough to consider a Mercedes S550 being sold new at the dealer to be affordable. Good on you. I ,too, am beyond the point in my life where I would be forced to purchase a $2,000 vehicle because of my financial circumstances. I could buy a $45k car. Honestly, I could buy a $150k car if I wanted. I wouldn't do it. It'd be a really dumb financial decision that'd keep me from hitting my goals in life. But I could get a Mercedes S560 in my parking spot if I wanted to. But, to rub that in the faces of so many people who are struggling or broke, by calling $45,000 affordable seems unnecessary and almost like you are gaslighting people to create conflict for no good reason. I am very much so in touch with what it was like to be poor and I remember when I was broke. $45,000 for a vehicle was not what I would consider affordable! I thought this was common sense.
@@rossmanngroup I gotta admit I'm pretty disappointed with the model 3. I remember while it was in development there was a lot of talk of it starting as low as ~$30k (cant remember if that was before or after that $7.5k tax credit) then lo and behold it's here and it starts at $45k??? I thought I was going to buy one and just scrape by for a bit, but forget that. I think a $30k EV with ~300 mi range would be great for many people. I think the government should step up and subsidize the charging network and make em use solar or other renewable electricity. They gotta start pumping money into this and come up with real solutions because we're up against the clock. The ice in Antarctica and Greenland ain't gonna go back after it melts/falls into the ocean.
@@rossmanngroup I think the big thing that can help a lot of us poorer, or the lower income people would be kits to refit existing ICE cars into electric ones. Yes, I know this is a lot of work, but if a company could sell full kits for certain ranges of vehicles, then people could have the electric for clean driving that they want, without having to buy a brand new car. I've got a beater of a terrible old Land Rover, which I was an idiot to even pay a grand for, which I'd love to electrify - if I could get 450 miles of range out of it. The tech isn't there yet, but I have hope that within the next five years, battery technology will be better, and cheaper, and there will be more universal controllers out there which will allow someone like me, who was an auto mechanic at one point, to do my own conversion and keep what is a functional vehicle still on the road, for hopefully under six grand. Am I dreaming? Maybe, but it's a dream I'm willing to work towards. Electrified old Land Rover Discovery with that range? Boom, that's a forever car, and I can use my hard-earned money on other things, like my own small business, instead of a new car.
Electric vehicles are cellphones with wheels. After a few years their value is all lost and the battery is no good. Replacement is not cheap and will never be.
something i'm surprised you didn't bring up that is a huge factor is how the owners would charge their cars. One of the huge draws to people for electric vehicles is the ability to charge at home and start your day with a full tank. Poorer people who live in apartments probably dont have access to a charging station they can plug in at home. They would have to rely on external charging networks to charge up their car. In addition to the fact that they are more expensive, electric cars for the lower class are also drastically less convenient.
I was about to say the same. A very large segment of the population can't afford to own a house and live in condos or apartments where they cannot charge at home. This point is so often overlooked it baffles me.
Never mind the fact that someone working a shift work job, or working 10-12 hour+ days that might not even have the time to charge it. I drove 70 miles daily to get to my $14/hr job and back during the summer last year, where I had to leave to go to work at 6am and would get home at 8pm. Luckily I have a garage, but I don't have 240v in my garage. That job wouldn't have been possible on with the cheap or mid tier options without significant overhaul of infrastructure.
@@kcpwnsgman You don't have to have 240 to charge the vehicle. It takes longer on 110 which is actually good for the battery. If I had access to a 110 plug in my garage I'd just charge it overnight.
Louis, I completely get your point and I appreciate what you have to say, but I just want you to know it is very triggering when you ask me how it is going and you don't leave any time for me to answer. Please think of the actual people behind the screen next time.
@@Drebin2293 They have access to lower level market. Directly buying the chips and making their own solutions. Shortage is higher up on the production ladder
Anything that uses chips really... so I fear cars will the the same. Until they come up with a different tech that does not require silicon and very complex manufacturing processes that can only be done in a few parts of the world, I think we're in for a rough ride. What I'd love is a no frills EV with basically no electronics other than the BMS and motor controller. That stuff can be done with somewhat discrete components and bigger nm process chips that may still have decent inventory in big warehouses.
Its weird how the people calling electric cars affordable use "unfair" as an argument when its proven that they aren't affordable. cognitive dissonance has gotten out of control and people on the internet have become completely detached from the average person
The people have no credibility when they cannot identify that an EV is not even a true ICE car replacement until manufacturers build charging networks so you can use an EV exactly the same as an ICE. Tesla is the only company in north america with proper chargers to enable full ICE replacement. The bolt was sub 30k, but was only usable by people who only need local driving and will never leave town. 60kw charging would require 2 hour charge stops vs a tesla's 20-30min. Build chargers first. That enables sales off EV in higher volumes and that reduces the cost. You must focus on the fundamental reason no one but tesla is having any success selling EVs. Tesla is not going to lower prices while they still sell 100% of their EV at the current higher prices. Tesla has to wait and see if they sell out their new factories when they hit full production at the current prices before they lower prices. Even cheap high quality chinese EVs cannot help if there are no chargers to support them. They will just displace bolt and leaf sales, not enable more EV buying overall.
It's so true about the early adopter tax. I purchased a digital camera in 1997 for $1,300 at Camera Mart. It was a Kodak 1.2MP with 5x optical zoom! I was just into the hobby (not that I was wealthy) and put it on layaway. I got derided by my own family for paying so much for a camera 'fad'! Now everyone has high end digital cameras in their cellphones! You're welcome. What gets me anxious is the vehicle manufacturers - in cahoots with government - are pushing full adoption timelines that are just unrealistic for the vast majority of people. I have 3 ICE vehicles (all fully paid for by the way), who's going to ridiculously subsidize replacing that for me? I'm on disability! To me, transportation is freedom. Being able to freely assemble requires being able to travel to where the assemblage is after all! So it is unpatriotic to foist limited traveling options upon a free republic!
Another aspect of this is used gas cars for many decades would eventually come down in price so low that someone with just a few hundred bucks could get a car that was probably going to get them back and forth to work and was cheap to repair. I don't ever picture the day an electric car with a fairly good battery will sell for the equivalent of $600-$1200 and need minimum repair. In my teens, through my late 20s, I picked up most of my cars for around that and some much cheaper. They would eventually need an alternator, or breaks or an exhaust that I could all do myself for fairly cheap. I don't picture repairing anything on cheap used electric vehicles for $50-$100 cost equivalent.
I mean you can buy a 2009 Corolla for like 5000 USD, and that cars has good mileage, good security, and even if it has 250000 Miles is going to drive another 250000
@@Ms666slayer which isn't bad but its still not $1200 and it's still a gas car. I don't know if Electric cars will ever be that cheap adjusted for inflation, or even $5000.
No, you're not wrong. People keep going on about "the average cost of a new car in the US is $45,000". But that gets inflated by rich people with their big trucks and SUV's. MOST people are not buying $45,000+ cars. Most people that are buying new cars are in the $20,000-$25,000 range. Actually, it's more accurate to say that most people can't even afford that and are paying $5,000 or less for used cars. While the Model 3 is definitely the most affordable electric vehicle given its features and capabilities, it is definitely well out of the range of a large segment of people. This is why we won't see penetration of EV's into the "mass market" where basically everyone buys one, until there is one available for around $20,000 new. And I'm not talking about those little cheap Chinese 2 seater things that have a 40 mile range and are only designed for cheap transportation in dense urban areas. They aren't necessariyl bad vehicles for what they are designed for (quality control notwithstanding), but they would not work for most people in the US.
Most new vehicles in the US that are of good quality are $25,000 minimum and those are usually stripped of a lot of features. Realistically the median new vehicle price is probably closer to $30-32,000. Also, it is very unlikely any new quality EV will fall below $25,000 in the next decade, especially with inflation.
@@vanderumd11 Just need to look at the top selling vehicles in the US from 2021. More than half of the top 10 are SUVs that easily MSRP for $30-40k. The rest of the vehicles are sedans that MSRP for $26-28k.
As someone who lives in a city with a housing crisis (see: all major Canadian cities), I recently bought a new gas car because I can't afford to live at a place that has a garage / plug-in for a purely electric vehicle.
To be fair, you don’t need a garage, I charge my car outside. You do need to be able to get closest enough to your house to do so, which depends on if you have a drive way or not. I’d say a drive is necessary. You may be able to get away with street parking only if you can park directly in front of your house.
@@PerfectorZY lol I know right. Like look people just get a 300ft extension cable and hope the bums don't steal it for the copper. People are so ignorant.
I can do more than 500 miles in my awd Passat easily. Spent about 1k dollars for it and had no major problems. I absolutely love this car and i am pretty sure it will ve functional even after todays EVs made will be dead. Its made in 2001 and i think it has everything everyone needs in their car.
You spent a lot more than "about 1k dollars". This is why you, Louis, and 80% of the comments section are wrong. Affordability is the inverse of cost. Cost is not (just) sticker price.
Nope. I did not, just a basic diy maintenance and upgrades that were not needed. I get 28 to 36 mpg of diesel in awd car. Not bad even for todays standard in a car that is remapped to ~140-150hp. I love diying on this car and trust it more than any other modern piece of brown sauce. But yea, you are right, i gotta change my timing belt set. I paid 150 bucks for INA with water pump, vibration damper and belt tensioner. I mean, why would i want anything other? As the previous comment said, if you take care of it, it can run forever ... There are TDis which have over a million of miles. If i had EV, i would pay similar cost for electricity to what i pay for diesel right now. I mean there is a simple question. Why would i want anything other?
@@vratislavrusz9284 You wouldn't pay a similar cost for electricity as you pay for diesel, and if you did (which you could in a few parts of the world), you would be free riding while polluting and externalizing the true costs of your diesel to the rest of us.
@@weksauce in fact, now it is, there certainly are fuel efficient diesels which have even over 55mpg ... Even if you consider unfair advantages of EVs, there still are cars more "Fuel" efficient, than Tesla 3 for example.
I took a roadtrip from eastern North Dakota to central Montana in my "335-mile range" rated Model S. Based on my experience driving various Tesla models in extreme cold, you can lose up to 65% (Model X) of your rated range when driving into a 20mph wind at -20 Farenheit. So, 300 miles becomes 105 miles. The Model S and 3 don't lose quite as much as the Model X, but the range under such conditions is cut roughly in half for those 2.
Good God, a EV owner that actually tells the real facts. The thing to really grasp here, is you are talking about the top of the line EV's with the most efficient systems in the world. I live in the Midwest, and know what cold does to batteries. I have no trouble believing your numbers. The problem is nobody wants to talk about problems like that.
@@golfmaniac I was about to say, no one wants to talk about the elephant in the room. I live in the mid-west and even here winter can be brutal. There are going to be all kinds of issues with EVs in the cold.
Meanwhile petrol cars get more range and efficiency in cold weather, it's as if there are factors that determine what tool is the the best pick for each person !
I have a question for all you US people : since range is so important for your cross-country travels, why isn't diesel most popular ? Diesel cars consistently outclass petrol cars in range and efficiency. You're getting royaly screwed there...
I've had this argument for so many times, thank you for bringing some common sense into the equation... As you have shown, cross-country is like a big NO if I want to visit my grandma who lives about 60 miles away, need a bit of range there to drive around and then come back to my home because I don't wanna make her bankrupt charging at her house (electricity is not cheap in Germany). So I am looking at a vehicle with about 150-200mi range minimum. The Leaf with 75 mi is just... a toy. Thanks for pointing that out. So, cross-country is... NO ;) What about using it in the city? People often say, hey, you can charge electric cars whenever they are stationary, at your home, at the shop, when you go to the doctor, at work... Again: no. I don't have a charging point at home because I park at the side of the road and that can be different every time I park a car and we don't really have public chargers nearby. Only one and that is is occupied several times a week by a market. Like now, for instance. So charging at home? No. What about charging at a shop? We don't have charging points at any shop I am frequently visiting in a range of about 1,5mi. Doctors the same. So charging then? No. Charging at work? Kinda yes, when you are at work. With Covid I wasn't working in my company since March 2020, but just imagine I would be doing that. There is ONE charger with 2 plugs for hundreds of workers. And the charger may only be occupied for 3 hours max, after that you get a parking ticket for exceeding the allowed time. So, charging at work? Difficult but maybe possible. With all the circumstances, an electric car is more or less unchargeable in my everyday life and they are frickin' expensive. In 2016 I paid 3900€ for my Mk4 Golf with about 430mi range and it takes me literally minutes to fill it up with the same range again. Yes, of course it is an ICE and fuel is getting expensive, but when you look at electric cars that cost about 30, 35 or 40k€ and upwards... I paid a tenth of that, so I will be able to afford a LOT of petrol and repairs for the price difference... So E-cars are currently a big big no in any way possible. And yes, technology will evolve, they will be cheaper and charging points will appear more regularly, but TODAY they are not. I cannot charge a car with a future charging station that is not there yet...
DC fast charging infrastructure isn't quite there yet, so given your circumstances, you shouldn't buy an EV, but most people in the US, live in urban areas, where they can frequently charge their vehicle, even if they can't charge at home. Also, home charging is cheap everywhere in the US.
I thought Germany has great mass transit, so you could take the train to your grandma's place and also use public transit to get to and from work. I may be wrong, but it's a lot easier to live without having to drive everywhere in Germany. I predict the infrastructure for EV charging will become better and better in the future (Norway has lots of public chargers). New apartment complexes are installing more and more EV chargers in their parking garages. Used EVs will come down in price. Also, around the world, more and more people are moving to cities, and investments in mass transit are increasing, so you may not need to drive every day. Yes EVs may not be ready now for mass adoption, but they will be very soon!
@@empirestate8791 They may be "very soon", but that doesn't help me now. And yes, public transport is quite OK here, but when you want to visit rural areas, simply forget it. And: a car is a lot faster than public transport. To visit my Grandma by train and bus I need about 2 hours door to door. With my car about 1 hour, 1:15. And I haven't brought Covid into the equation yet, no one will get me to use public transport at the moment, I don't want to catch that stuff.
That's fair. As with every major financial decision, everyone needs to look at their own life and use cases. For EVs, availability of charging options and maximum daily range are big factors. I can easily charge at home and at my work (my work makes charging free) and I'm only like 15 miles from my office. I don't need my EV for road trips because I live a 2 hour drive from major cities, so I do everything locally. But not everyone has the same situation. Luis himself said he bikes almost everywhere, so he only owns a car for longer distance travel, but that doesn't mean everyone is in that same situation.
@@ferrari2k I think that's currently the biggest issue with EVs, that long range models are just too expensive. Most people live in urban areas in the US and don't need a long range on a daily basis, but they may go on occasional long trips, and because public transit here is terrible, it's very difficult to leave the city if you don't own a car (with maybe Chicagoland and NYC Metro Areas being the only exceptions). I don't own a car and have a zipcar subscription which I can use for long trips, but then again, only the gas powered cars are cheap, and I'm pretty sure that a Tesla zipcar would cost 2 to 3 times as much. But we'll see - as more investments are made into public transportation and EVs increase in range (and Teslas and other older EVs depreciate), we'll see them surpass gas power cars, like what's already happening in Norway. Subsidies will help speed things up.
I grew up in Africa, the cars we drove we're mostly older and cheap to repair - it was vital for them to fit this bill. Getting a decade old car was a luxury - we even bought second hand cars with a mental note that it'll have to last many years to be worth it financially. Not being able to fix it or get a part often meant walking for miles daily as our family like many others only had a single car. The electricity grid isn't the best and is often off for hours, the infrastructure in general is lacking - never mind a super charger network. Sadly unlike ice vehicles these cars when they are worn out in US/Europe and many end up dumped in Africa will be of little to no use at all - they simply won't be affordable/practical to use and maintain. Guessing many will simply end up in a less than ideal recycling system and parts used for other things.
People i know will decrease the cars dumped in africa by a lot The "used" battery packs will fetch a higher price here than in africa and most of the motors are readibly reusable, making them interesting to reusers
If cars are not widely available, how come the cities/towns arent built with things more closer together? I'm just curious, because I hear other cities built before the invention of the car had shops and homes much closer together in distance.
I spend about 5k per year on gas in California. It cost's me $50 to get 220 miles of range. I looked up the going rate for 220 miles of range from a super charger and it was just about $16 here in the Bay Area. That's a savings of $34 every 220 miles. 100,000 miles / 220 miles = 454.5 fill ups every 100,000 miles. 454.5 x $34 = $15,454.5 in gas savings over that 100k miles. However, with the Tesla, you need far less maintenance, so factoring that in, you right about even at 100,000 miles between the gas and electric, assuming when you 60k mile warranty expires on the gas car (if you even get that good of a warranty), nothing major fails, like how my transmission (6k to repair) and engine (5k to repair) went up at 62k miles and 68k miles on my last car. You SHOULD easily get 200k miles on the Tesla with no major failures, including the battery. So with an addition 15k in gas savings the next 100k miles, at 200k, the gas car is at 19k + $22,725 (first 100k miles of gas) + $22,725 (second 100k miles of gas) + maintenance (hard to determine, but defiantly much higher than the tesla), so at least $64,450 in costs, and you'll probably be well over 70k in reality as you'll likely need serious engine and transmission work (cars are not built the same today as they were in the 90's and early 2000's). Now with the Tesla model 3, lets say you start at 40k + $7272 (first 100k miles of electricity) + $7272 (second 100k miles of electricity) = $54,544 for 200k miles of driving. Worst case, let's assume the Teslas battery fails and the gas car needs a new transmission and engine. They would then be about neck and neck, except gas cars require oil changes (now with synthetic at around $60 every 6000 miles, brake pads every 30k miles at $400, and rotors every 60k miles at over $1000 for all 4... Not to mention all of the other maintenance needed on gas cars like timing chains or belts. There's no doubt the math shows clearly electric cars today is cheaper than gas cars today. This doesn't factor in that you could have solar at home, use that to fuel your car, farther lowering fueling costs. BTW, I'm not a Tesla fanboy or EV fanboy, I'm buying another gas guzzling Turbo car very soon. But the math seems clear based on my situation in the bay area.
I know that this is a whole different conversation, but... The idea of "oh you/I can't afford it? Just finance it!" has been growing pretty strong over the past 20 years. (the amount of time I have been aware of this behavior.) Car manufacturers/dealerships are aware of this, and it's scary.
This is true, I have a friend who's in car sales and he basically told me that dealership make all their money off financing and not the sale of the car. You will actually have a much harder time buying the car out right than financing it. He also mentioned that they also prefer people with less money because the rates are gonna be much worse for them and they are gonna be paying much longer. So when they say it's expensive to be poor this is what they mean.
In my country, 90% of people just finance them because it's impossible for almost everyone to buy a new car with cash, I bought used car, really old used car, I can pay for that extra gas from its high consumption, and it is still much cheaper than financing a new car.
Toyota Prius and Prius Prime have 530+ mile range on fossils. The Prime has 25+ miles EV range on top of that. These are on stone age, port injected, naturally aspirated 4 cylinder engines. They are now literally the oldest production engines in Toyota's USA lineup and still get 50+MPG and exceed CARB emissions requirements. Very rational choice for a road trip.
For big countries with lots of long empty roads like the USA, Canada, and Australia, a hybrid is definitely a better option. I'm in Australia and EV sales are tiny. The range limitations, the high cost, and the lack of charging stations the moment you leave the major Hwys mean that not many get sold. I want an EV but I need more range for the driving I do
I'm glad you discussed the range issues. So many who insist the country go full electric tend to not realize that us in flyover country have a LOT of distance between populated areas, and that to even run out if gas is already a concern when going on a trip.
I frequently drive from DC to upstate NY to visit family. Considering it is 500 miles of highway (where EV range is much worse than advertised) I'd be stopping 3-4 times and that's going to be a BIG problem if one of the chargers is out of service along the way.
The apologists say that it doesn't matter. If there's only one fast charging point along a 200mile route not only will everyone else in an 200-250m range EV need to use it, you'd better hope it's working. When an affordable and tiny Ford Fiesta can do 300-400 miles on single tank these EV ranges don't look so good.
One should take an electric car for what it is today. For those who regularly need a car for longer trips, an EV is not a suitable only vehicle. I drive max 40 miles a day for errands, so a cheap 2nd hand EV with ~100 mile range (eg. 201x Leaf) would cover 90% of my needs. The other 10% involve longer trips or require a tow hook, meaning a second car or rental.
@@randomvideosn0where You can tell the EV drivers on the highway too (you probably take I95); they're in the slow lane going 62 mph. They talk about 300 mile range, but if you have the air or heater on you lose 10% of that range. And if you go 70-80 mph, you lose another 20%. So when those EV guys talk about how fast their car is, ask them what the range is at 80 mph, and suddenly they get all moral and complain that "80 is illegal!". So why brag about how fast they can go?
@@upsidefoobarbaz you would run into a major problem when you need to drive somewhere further than your car could reach. Optimistically that 100 mile drive range will get you 50-60 considering weather and real road conditions. Beyond 50 or 60, you would need to rent a normal vehicle and the price and availability of rental vehicles is so bad right now that you'll basically ruin the savings on gas money for a year or worse.
As a not rich person who needs to regularly travel in the ~400 mile range I can say that you are completely correct. There are zero affordable electric vehicles that make any sense to me at all. I'm currently using my ancient Honda Accord that gets nearly 40 mpg. If I were to spend $20,000 on a car, can I get something that I can at least charge while on the road and not overnight (I can't afford the time or money for a hotel and 8 hours of downtime for a car to refuel, and that's just one way)? Not that I know of. That's enough to make the idea of an electric car dead to me. I don't care about 0-60 mph times. I care about usability, reliability and range.
@@rsxfreak03 My 1994 Honda Accord does on the highway if I don't speed (and I don't). An early to mid 1990s Honda Civic can easily get in the 50+ mpg range, that's especially true for the Civic VX.
@@rsxfreak03 Total miles between fill ups divided by total gallons it takes to fill the tank. I know how to calculate gas mileage, it's not that hard. I regularly get in the high 30s. It's not that difficult of you have a manual transmission and are willing to drive conservatively.
@Chad OT You're simply incorrect. It cost on average 0.25 per kwh at a Tesla SC station. With my 82 kwh battery it would cost $20.50 to charge to 100%. That 100% gets me about 320-330 miles of range. That breaks down to $6.40/ per 100 miles. So, $25.60 to travel 400 miles. I also own a 2017 Honda CRV that gets 32mpg highway. That'll use about 12.5 gallons of fuel to travel 400 miles. Locally, gasoline is $3.05/gallon. So that'll cost $38.13 to travel 400 miles. A difference of $12.52, or $3.13 per 100 miles. With the average American driving 14,300/year that works out to $447/year of fuel savings. Again, this is EXCLUSIVELY charging at SuperCharger stations. Most EV owners charge at home AND gasoline prices are extremely vilotile. could be $4.00/gallon in 3 months, making the difference even more extreme. I visited your channel. You're a Tesla owner. You understand these price differences. Even if we use YOUR NUMBERS, $10 difference to fill up, and use my ICE as a comparison the difference over a year is still well over $400. That's $2400 over a 6 year ownership. That's a significant difference.
Dude, my $4,000 car got hit by a deer and rear-ended by an eighteen-wheeler and insurance wouldn't cover it. It's been over a year and I still don't have a car. How is a $45,000 car supposed to be "affordable"? It'd be one thing if owning a car was optional for getting around, but in many, many parts of the country, it very much isn't.
Sticker price is only one part of cost, and affordability is the inverse of cost. Can you really not imagine how something could cost less but have a higher sticker price?
Sorry to be that guy but I hope you dropped that insurance company. Even though I've had major communication issues with State Farm, I got 4000 dollars because a tree branch took out the back window of the Volvo I paid 1200 for (it was declared a total loss, and since I would have only gotten about 400 dollars for signing it over to them, I just took a salvage title).
@@weksauce sure we can. The problem is that the difference is so drastic. If you're wise about it, you can own a car for a decade for well under 8 grand (including the original purchase price of the car). You would have to do a lot of driving or have very bad gas mileage for the cost of ownership and operation to come anywhere close to a Telsa. That's why people using the argument you brought forth either are doing so in bad faith, or haven't thought their position through.
@@awesomeferret I'm arguing in good faith, and I've done the calculations. EVs are more affordable than their ICEV counterparts. What people on your side are often missing is that the comp/counterpart to a Tesla is an ICEV with ridiculous performance. Teslas are expensive. Cars in general are expensive. Neither of these facts has anything to do with the main point: EVs are more affordable than their ICEV counterparts. A Civic/Camry/CRV doesn't compare to any Tesla, except maybe if you're looking across a decade plus of model years (2011 Tesla S vs 2022 Civic?). The only comp to the current 0-60 and 1/4 mile champion is the Ferrari in 2nd place, which is slower and costs $755k instead of $135k. You can't own (and legally and safely drive) a normal ICEV for "well under" $8k in the US normal distances over a decade. You can own an EV for less than the corresponding ICEV. I calculated a $0 sticker price Corolla to cost $268/mo, and the brand new Chevy Bolt I bought to cost $275. The Bolt ended up costing less, because charging was essentially 100% free, instead of my original estimate. Maybe you have a very specific definition of "car" that allows you to classify the tiny cars as "car", and maybe they cost substantially less than a free (sticker price) Toyota Corolla. But I doubt that very much. And, even if there is such a car, the same car but electric will dominate it in affordability.
Forget 10 grand, for $500 you could pick up an old shitbox that would run and drive. it won't be comfortable or fancy or fast but it will get you from point A to point B. That will never happen with electric car.
I think you are showing your age here. Any car that runs and drives is worth at least $1000 now. The used car market was climbing for several years in the US even before covid.
Last time I went hunting for cars, 500 would get you a "mechanics special", which is a broken car you give to self-taught enthusiast mechanic who wants to rebuild a vehicle.
Falling in line with this: There are no affordable cars anymore. Regardless of whether they're ICE or EV. The lowest rung cars you can get right now are the Mitsubishi Mirage at $15,000 and the Nissan Versa sedan at $16,000 (good luck finding either at anything near MSRP). Then it jumps up to $25,000 and increases by about $2,000 for each level above that. For most Americans, they make $36,000 a year. This isn't the mean, this isn't the median, or the average. These are the real numbers not inflated by crap like CEO incomes or high wage cities like New York or Los Angeles. These are people stuck working part time thirty five hour or less weeks for $12 an hour. That $25,000 for a new car is more than half their entire income for a year. And with loans and interest rates on average of 2.25% over 72 months, that $25,000 becomes $29,700. A $4,700 increase over the original sales price. In short, new cars are unaffordable.
He talks about this and how essential the used marker is for most Americans. The problem is that EVs won't have a used market after around 10 years olds. If the cars cannot be used for 75-100 miles 10 years old they are worthless to most people.
Used cars are genuinely appreciating in value. It’s not just new cars! Manufacturers aren’t making base model cars, so those advertisements under $20k aren’t real, the ones available will have extra features, generally adding around 20% to the base price. It’s gunna be funny to watch as “car culture” helps to kill our car culture.
@@isaiahsmith6016 When you exclude the upper ten percent of incomes, those being $530,000 a year and above, and when you exclude cities with massive populations such as Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Portland, St. Louis, Austin, and Houston, it pushes the actual incomes down by a *lot.* A dramatic amount. Most of America live in satellite suburbs or live in smaller towns and commute to smaller cities. These are mostly the people working retail, working customer service, working the food industry, and working in repairs services. Most of those places serve an average of $12/hr. as the base level income, working 35 hour weeks on an average of 48 weeks a year. So that's a little over $20,000. That sets our bottom prices. Even if we push it up to 40 hours (which is full time, and most of these places avoid appointing full time like it's the plague), that's still only a little under $23,000 a year. Most specialized career trades like electrician outside of the major metropolitan areas make $28/hr. as an average. Working 40 hour weeks for 48 weeks, that's $54,000 rounded up. That's our upper range. When you average out the low end of $20,000 and the high end of $54,000 you get $48,000 because it's 54+20/2. But that can't be right, as the number of specialized trades is about 1:4 per basic non-specialized labour. For every four retail/fast food/customer service jobs there's a specialized trader like electrician. So it's $48,000 - 25%. Which leaves us with $36,000.
There are very few affordable new cars overall, ignoring the whole EV thing. Many reasons why this is the case, but essentially carmakers no longer make them and the ones that do won't be for long.
@@deth3021 I wish people would stop talking like Tesla are the only carmaker out there, they're not, and they might be the worst. The traditional carmakers figured out this out a long time ago and realized that cars need replaceable battery trays - they might not have been first to market, but they have stronger engineering with more considered positions. Most cars it isn't anywhere even close to that and modern batteries with active cooling and heating (never buy an EV that doesn't have those) the batteries are going to last for eternity anyway.
I did some work about 300 miles away using an electric car. In my standard ICE car, it's a slog of a drive at 5 hours. But it's doable and we scheduled to stay over in Newcastle in any case. The journey was a nightmare. The advertised 250 mile range was total nonsense especially when loaded with equipment and extra bodies. Instead of two stops, it was four. And waiting an hour each time to get some charge on it once we did find a bay that wasn't in use, we kept clock watching to make sure we weren't over the 2 hour time limit at the services. We did the work in Newcastle and found there were no charging bays near the hotel we were staying at. The first task in the morning was to find somewhere to wait another hour for the thing to charge up. I think the best range we got was 128 miles (or so the dash said) from the full charge. For me, an electric car even if it they did become cheap to buy is just not viable. If I need to do mileage while hauling gear, I can't double the time a journey takes and risk not getting to where people need to be because we're busy hunting trying to find a vacant charging bay. Oh and at one of the services we stopped at, there were two cars queueing for the two out of four charging bays that were actually working. But an hour to get a quick charge of somewhat reasonable distance just isn't reasonable. There is only so much coffee you can ingest in a day waiting for a car to finish charging. In fact, my girlfriend's parents have two EVs and their son has a diesel VW Golf For anything further than the end of their street, they borrow the son's Golf. £60k worth of car and they are consistently more reliant on a £7k Golf to get to where they need to go. Given the legislation put in place in the UK, I think transferring to EVs is inevitable. But I don't see how it isn't going to have a major impact on peoples' movement, quality of life and therefore acceptance of EVs. Ford are daringly stating that they're only producing EVs from 2030. The big joke is if you check out the Ford Mondeo Estate all-electric. Most of the boot space is taken up with the battery... totally killing the point of it being an estate. It makes no sense to me right now.
EVs are not for road trips (yet). Road trips are very rare. For 99% of personal use cases, EVs trump ICEVs, and even for many of those people who went anything other than Tesla, the optimum is to rent/exchange for an ICEV for the rare road trip.
@@weksauce I see. And for someone like me that road trips regularly that needs certain items fitted to my vehicle to perform my duties, should I just stop doing those things? Or pay a fortune to rent a suitable car almost daily when I'm working? And what does it matter how often you drive further than 100 miles in a day. An ev is still unsuitable, overpriced and not actually up to the task. Not to sound like a raving lunatic, being from the uk, the US system of gun control and alien abductions is not something I come across in normal everyday sane life, but they can take my car from my cold dead hands.
@@jonsick445 No. It's your work vehicle, so your employer can and should pay for a fleet of ICEVs. If you're your own employer, then this statement still applies. And you would still come out ahead owning an EV for your personal use, which doesn't require the "performance" of any "duties".
@@weksauce this is still weak. I work a day job and freelance in entertainment. So I am my own employer. But from your thought process and seemingly the British Government agree with you, is that I can no longer own a vehicle that is fit for purpose. The best I can do is now pay for a personal use EV which will cost me £30,000 and an ICE based commercial vehicle which in order to purchase will require commercial insurance despite the fact that my usage never qualifies as business class. Lets be real. The only reason governments and manufacturers are pushing EVs with the deadlines that they are doing is pure and simple. It is to gouge the consumer for something that they do not need. And if they did need them, they would arrive at those conclusions themselves. Thrusting them onto the driving public come hell or high water through penalty of sheer cost or having to essentially be forced to quit doing anything other than your day job like a good little office drone is pure and simple malevolence. I'm not here trying to argue about something daft. A huge swathe of the populous is reliant on personal transport. And regardless of whether its for a day job or not, the reliance is equally as valid. The old guy across the Road from me with a 15 year old Vauxhall Astra doesn't have £30k to buy an EV. As his only method of getting to town or family is by car, how exactly is he meant to do that without a car when there is no public transport available where we are? This is a make believe world where its demanded that a use case that fits so few is legislated to fit the many regardless of the consequences.
@@jonsick445 No, you don't have to forfeit your existing car. It's important that (essentially) every new car be electric, but it's better if people keep driving what they've got until it gets more costly to keep than to discard. Only a tiny swath of the populace is reliant on cars for transportation, and the percentage is shrinking every day. It's very inefficient (and ineffective) to live sparsely, which is why economics have been and continue to be driving people into higher densities. Even if a car is a smart transportation choice (which is very rare), it doesn't have to be individually owned. It would be better from every perspective (health and wealth) if we biked around dense cities day-to-day, and only used EVs to travel between cities on longer trips. Those obviously would be cheaper if they were collectively owned (or rented as needed, it's the same thing). Look around the UK. Nearly every car is sitting idle, nearly all the time. This is economically and ecologically retarded.
Man, I am glad SOMEONE is saying this. I'd love to own an electric vehicle, just simply because I don't find going to the gas station an enjoyable experience. 50k isn't a reasonable price for most people. MAYBE if I was making 6 figures, but right now? Not even remotely. It's kind of baffled me the amount of news stories that come out with "affordable" electric cars that are 50+k.
You can't buy a decent gas car that anyone with standards would want for any cheaper than you can get a good EV. Plus an EV is always a better standard because you're helping the environment. And before you say you can't afford to have standards, dude I'm barely old enough to drink and making minimum wage. I still bought an EV. It's just a used one. And one with modern features like self driving. Find me an 18k ICE car with features like that lmfao.
THANK YOU FOR THIS! No one in my family has a car worth over $20k, always buy used, and use them until they are falling apart. I commute 100miles a day (50 going 50coming), so I got a used fuel efficient car that’s only a few years old, 16k after tax tittle and license. It gets 365miles on an 11gallon tank.
1999 great year to buy a used chevy or gmc bought mine for $600 been driving it for 2 years sure it has 275000 miles and some rust but its paid for itself 10x over and lights the tires up on command lol
"$45k is affordable!" My first car was a '98 Bluebird/Altima, it cost $300, and it ran after a (irony alert) battery change that I did in 5 minutes using basic tools with a battery bought at any independent store. It has a fuel line block somewhere so it won't idle properly (cuts out at traffic lights), but you just keep the revs up at 1k and it holds. If I can ever be bothered I'll fix it up.
Back in the 80's i bought a 79 Toyota Corona for $2900 and drive that untill the mid 90's . Then in the 90's I bought a 71 Landcruser fj40 for $1500 and drove it 5 years. then I bought a 86 volvo 240 wagon for $400 and drove it for 3 years. then i bought a 85 Datsun truck for $250 and drove it two years. Then bought a 86 Subaru wagon for $300 , put a 2" lift kit on it and big tires and drove it for 2 years. Then i bought a 94 Jeep Cherokee for $2500 (best vehicle i ever owned) and drove it for 10 years. in the meantime i also bought a 79 Toyota Corolla wagon for $250 and drove it for a year then i bought 81 Honda Civic cope for $150 , adjusted the clutch and drove it for a year then sold it for $300. Ownership of these cars often overlapped and i often found myself with having more than one vehicle at a time sometimes even 3 cars at one time. My point is... The worlds commerce would have you think that you must have the newest, but if one can be content with older vehicles, as long as they are safe, then that person can enjoy life without heavy debt. Currently im driving a 2004 Dodge Dakota crew cab and its in good looking and running shape and averages about 18 miles to the gallon. Which is oddly just about the worst fuel economy of any older vehicle i have owned. Even the old 71 landcruiser averaged 17 mpg and I could pull nearly 29 mpg out of the 81 Honda civic.
@@JV-uq9cf If you fix stuff yourself you can find amazing deals. Shops charge a lot therefore a lot of people dump broken cars cheap without even knowing exactly what's wrong with them because they know it could cost a lot to fix. And older cars have minor things breaking all the time so it only makes sense to own them if you fix them yourself.
Bolt. The cheapest car out of the several I analyzed, by far. Guarantee you will spend less owning/driving a brand-new Bolt EV than a brand-new Sentra. It'll be about $100/mo in capital costs vs $66, but you will pay almost nothing in fuel and maintenance, easily recouping the $33/mo difference.
@@weksauce It may be the cheapest option, but not the most safe with the recent major recall on the bolt a few months back. Affordable does not always mean quality or reliable. The op is in a better position with the sentra long term.
@@porschepusher924S It's plenty safe. The recall was out of an abundance of caution. Only 1 in millions caught fire, and people shouldn't park 60kWh of lion batteries indoors unattended even in not-yet-recalled items. I had a newer bolt and wasn't parking it indoors when the old bolts got recalled, and continued not parking it indoors until the newer bolts got recalled. There's not meaningful greater rate of newer bolts or post-recall bolts catching fire vs any other 60kWh+ lion-containing things. If you park your Tesla or PowerWall or LEAF indoors, you're taking a risk.
Same here. i'm making 50k a year in the midwest which is just about average. Hearing that "20k difference" in price made my jaw drop. That was enough money to put a down payment on my house.
@@tj4507 Even with my own position with the feds making only 43-45k a year (strong job security is the point), there is no way in the name of jebus I'd put down 40k for a new EV, bc unless the loss is completely covered by insurance in some way (which itself cannot be too expensive if you're a good driver), then I'm out a years salary for a product not as reliable in our highly varied part of the nation. ICE vehicles can work with a small amount of electric charge in their batteries bc the charger is built into the engine, and used fuel that both holds its energy potential in the cold that pure batteries cant and can be used to recharge the battery while driving. Evs just do not make sense in terms of energy demanded, missing infrastructure to supply that demand outside your home/business, and high costs of repair/replacement. If an EV can work for average joe in the midwest and/or plains regions, maybe it's a viable model/company. Otherwise, better get one that works specifically within the south (humidity/rainfall), or the far colder northern reaches of the US to prove viability. Not interested for at least my next vehicle, maybe next two if the used market permits.
@@nickstone1167 Completely agree. EVs should, for now, focus on urban areas. Commuters would be the best market share to 'cut' into, at first. Since they know their required range, and have plenty of time to recharge. Perhaps it would be even better in western Europe, since a road trip here is usually on a smaller scale than in the US (and so one counter argument might weigh less heavily for potential buyers here). Also, European countries tend to tax gas instead of subsidize it, so there's actually an incentive working in favor instead of against EVs here! Gas prices in NED have gone _insane_ now: the national average is apparently above ~€2 per liter, and since there's 3.785 L per US gallon and currently 1.13 dollars per euro, that's ~$8.5 per gallon! Imagine the riots you'd have in the USA... (we'd have them too, if we had bigger distances like you guys, or didn't have public transport)
I'm also in an interesting situation. In Belgium, we have very high taxes (over 50% of any raise I get goes directly to tax), and company cars are a way to avoid taxes. The company gives you a car as a benefit, there's a calculation for how much you benifit, and this gets added to your virtual wage and also taxed. But that virtual calculation is always a bit on the low side, making it interesting to get a company car. At my current pay grade, I can buy an electric car, but I only have the option for a Volkswagen ID.3. According to the reviews, a car with severe technological issues, and overall a lot lighter than what I need (I'd need at least a tow-bar to get out my garden waste, which isn't possible with the ID.3). So I choose a regular gasoline car. My manager however, who's in a higher pay scale, could opt for a decent electric car. In the end, the virtual wage calculation takes the fuel into account, and has a tax exemption for electric cars. And the government is making gasoline cars even more expensive. So I get to pay a hefty amount, while someone who makes more from the start has to pay less. Like always, wealth creates wealth, and being poor is expensive.
You should look into getting an LPG conversion on a used car - you can get better performance for the same money, and in Belgium i've seen it as cheap as 0.3€ /L, it's one of the lowest in Europe
Yeah, we've head an EV stimulus "competition" in Slovakia two years ago. If you registered, you could get 8000 euros for an EV, but only a certain number of spots were available. Of course some people with the right friends knew what to put in the form in advance, so they were able to register in seconds, while I needed 3.5 minutes and ended up not getting anything. And the best thing is, some of those who made it were allowed to ask for a subsidy for 4 cars, i.e. they got 32K and I got jack.... I'm so glad it's funded from the taxes I pay, while they can deduct their expenses for their cars from their taxes.
Look into the MG5, a nice EV in the form of a break (station wagon / shooting break) and starts at €30 000 euros. If you qualify for the ID3, you should qualify for the MG5, maybe also the Model 3 Standard Range is possible. Hyundi Kona is another option to look into.
Even when you don't have tax return / benefit style subsidies but the equal ones, only the wealthier still can buy the finer electric cars. This means wealthy men buy electric cars. However unequal that seems I think the subsidies still have all the intended effect. If those wealthy men were not nudged into buying an electric car, they'd just get a bigger and more powerful suv than their neighbor bought last year.
What I don't get is why they are still so expensive when they're used. I mean the battery has a defined limited lifespan. If the battery is bad you essentially bought a car shaped frame and electric motors.
and need to spend ~15-30k depending on the car to fix it, for ICE cars that repair bills unless it was some exotic car simply mean, car is totaled, it goes in the scrapyard for parts
Because the used market for EVs is not mature. The oldest Tesla Model S is newer than the average used car. If EVs are really impractical to keep on the road for as long as ICE cars the used market will eventually recognize that. For now, buyer beware.
Probably because the new ones are so expensive and there are very few old Tesla's on the market. So presumably you could buy a used one, swap in a used battery from a crashed Tesla that had little mileage, and have a complete car for maybe 30k? I wouldn't do it but its probably cheaper.
@@b4804514 yes they will last, but the capacity of the battery is reduced over time. So yes, the battery will work, but the range will be unusable later in the life of the battery
Got a 2013 Nissan Leaf a few months ago and the range estimates on it are complete and utter bull. A 60 mile range estimate while going 60 mph on the highway will likely only get 40ish miles or so. I'm still pretty happy with the car because there are often city programs that make charging nearly free and I got it out the door for 8k. Just driving everyday throughout Austin has cost me maybe 6 dollars in the last 3 months and driving to San Antonio and back costed me around 7 dollars but needed careful planning.
You used "everyday" wrong. EVs are more efficient at lower speeds, just like ICEVs, because air resistance rises with the square of velocity. Maybe you just never look at range estimates in ICEVs, because, if you did, you'd have the same complaint. This is not a unique disadvantage of EVs. It's the physics of pushing things through fluids. I think it'd be easy to dramatically improve the range estimates by including estimated speed and elevation changes of routes, but usually people navigate with their phones so the car only can only predict where it's going a few miles ahead of where it is right now.
Until the battery takes a shit and you cannot get a new one since they are such old tech they dont make it anymore and a new replacemnt costs more than the car
@@williamnicholson8133 If that were to ever happen, then you drove your car until too-big-to-fail automakers went bankrupt, so you got plenty of value out of it! By then, the new car will likely be more affordable. *It seems you mean the battery pack costs more than the (rest of) the car. That's fine. You say that as if it's insane or incomprehensible, but it's totally ok. It's unlikely, given the current ratio of battery pack / car price is small (~10%-33%) and falling, but it's ok that like a 2011 LEAF costs less than a 2022 Model S Plaid's battery pack.
I suspect Tesla to only open up for other carmakers here in the Netherlands because there is valid competition from a company called Fastned. And I guess 80.000 public charging places helps as well in a country 1/3 the size of new york state.
They also have to use the standardized IEC 62196 Type 2 connector mandated by the European Commission as charging plug within the European Union. It makes it a lot harder for them to say "Oh no, you cannot use our charger because it is unsafe! Think of the battery" when the charging is already standardized
I'm failing to see how Fastned would create an incentive for Tesla to open up to other manufacturer's vehicles. The more plausible reason is that doing so will be a money earner for Tesla, both in terms of additional revenue streams from an increased pool of consumers as well as potential government grants and subsidies aimed at things like green energy or transport electrification. I'm hopeful that this may also be a sign that Tesla may finally be moving to standard charging connectors in the future. I'm sure some people are laughing at that statement, but I can dream.
I love you Louis! It’s really wild… it’s been great watching this grow from a tiny (kinda weird) channel into a full on movement. Don’t stop ! We are such different people, with entirely different interests and lived experiences. I’m a poor dropout with a GED from the south, I can barely use tech anymore, screen replacement is as far as I can go. I’m an outdoorsman, biologist, botanist, horticulturist, love to forage mushrooms or just be outdoors. It just blows me away that we are in sync at all…
Don't forget charging at home for people in apartments or even a house without a garage. I don't know if I'd trust a $40 car to an extension cord passed through a window. I guess with good range, you could hit up a super charger once a week, but I'd have to guess that would reduce some of the savings you were expecting by going electric and not having to pay to fuel up.
Also having to wait around for 30 mins to an hour at the supercharger. This is my big problem with EVs, they're great if you're a homeowner with a garage, but not so great for everyone else.
They are just for the rich and people with a lot of free time. If you already work for +8 hours and take some more commuting because you can't live where you work to save high rent costs I doubt anyone would waste even more time waiting in line and charging vs a handful minutes filling up gas being told "it's to save the planet". Our lives are miserable enough for many to make them worse. Either improve it so there is barely any difference or look for a different solution, not impossing the switch to electric when it's not for everyone.
Speaking with a utility lineman I was showed that our electrical infrastructure all the way up to our homes is not equipped to handle even 1/4 of the homes owning just one electric car because it would overload the local transformers every day.
I personally got a plugin hybrid. I'm all electric on my daily commute and in town driving but don't have to worry about the charging networks when we go on road trips. I figure by the time this toyota dies the infrastructure and battery tech will be where i want it.
Practically speaking, this is the sweet spot. The only real downside to hybrids is the added complexity, but if it's a Toyota hybrid I imagine it'll be a long time until any major issues emerge.
I suspect by that time, the world will be moving to hydrogen since the MASSIVE electricity distribution network, congestion at charging stations and the need for charging cables everywhere, including where they cannot be used (street parking) cannot support mass adoption of electric vehicles.
I am an auto tech in NZ, I love the idea of EVs and would probably own one if I could afford it. Although this is contrary to how I make a living, I love the technology and how good this will eventually be for the planet. No one seems to have mentioned though, where the power is coming from to charge EVs. If you live in a country that burns coal, gas or oil to run power plants, all you are doing is shifting the point of emissions. Your zero emission vehicle is a fantasy as the emissions are being produced at the power plant. Nuclear or renewables are a different story, although those are not as clean and green as we hope either, due to the amount of concrete many of them consume during construction. Here in NZ we are lucky to produce more than 90% of our power through hydro, wind, solar and geothermal, but switching to EVs too quickly would probably mean running our coal and natural gas plants more. And there is a bit of a conundrum, we stopped coal mining so we now have to import any that we have to burn. Incidentally what we used to mine was much higher quality and therefore cleaner burning than the garbage that we import. And off course it has to come from thousands of miles away on a huge ship. Progress huh, :-)
this argument is missing the point that making gasoline consumes power. to make the gas for a 100 miles consumes about as much power as is needed to drive an ev that same 100 miles.
It would still drop overall emissions to be charging EVs from a coal plant (at least one in a developed country that has to use carbon capture and filtering, not China) than it would be to have everyone having their own combustion engine.
Also i would like to add that i live in an area surrounded by a big bowl of mountains with large lakes, we sometimes get a big inversion effect especially in the Winter which causes us to get really bad air quality at times, 55% of our air pollution comes from combustion engines, the power plants are regulated to have stacks at a certain heights and so most of what does get out and isn't scrubbed gets pushed further up into the atmosphere and doesn't add to the air quality at ground level.
Do like Belgium and germany. Shut down nuclear plants to open up NEW gas burning power plants .... and depend on Putin to keep the gas valve open, and when that fails; move a whole village to get to the browncoal under it to burn that (Germany). Only 2 words come up in my head. "Ridiculous" and "guillotine" .
I've owned my 2012 Chevy Volt for about 6 years now, and I bought it used for about $20k with 30K miles on it. Over that 6 years only maintenance I've had to do is oil changes and tires, both of which I can do myself or at a local third party. There have been a few issues where I've had to take it to the dealer, but overall it's been pretty trivial stuff, benign recalls, etc. I've used the car as a mixed use daily and some road trips, which is a benefit of the plug in hybrid like the Volt, it can be my only car and do everything. But as it's getting to it's 10th birthday ease of maintenance and my ability to repair the car is something on my mind. Starting to look into it, battery repair is the biggest thing on my mind. The average cost I've seen is around $3500 and I've seen as much as $10,000 for a battery replacement, Chevy lists the MSRP as $6900 for a refurbished unit. Luckily the Chevy battery pack is more modular to where you can replace individual cells, or larger sub-units, or the entire battery. However, it is not something most people would think of doing themselves, and does have it's own challenges. With current used prices, I could sell the car before the battery has an issue and get about $12k-15K, or I could put in 50-80% of the vehicles value back in as a battery or repair. It does make me not want to buy a newer electric car because of the long term cost of the car. Unless new electric cars become easier to repair with respect to their batteries, I'm not sure I want to own another electric vehicle. I don't drive a lot, infact I drive less than the typical American
Out of curiosity, about how much range are you getting out of it these days vs when you got it? I've heard that Chevy Volts have been over-all good with their battery longevity (at least compared to other plug in hybrids).
@@JV-uq9cf I think the EPA range was like 35 miles for the car originally. But with any electric car it's always very dependent on the temperature. When I first got the car, during the winter I would get about 20-25 miles before the gas engine would engage, then 35-42 miles in the summer before the gas engine would engage. Now I get about the same in winter, but in summer I am getting around 33-35 miles before the gas engine engages. As a frugal person I'm always gutted when the gas engine turns on, especially when I'm maybe a mile or two away from home. Then one quirk / caveat of not using gas often is that if the average age of the gas starts to go over a year, the engine will run and force you to get more gas just so stuff doesn't get varnished and gunked up with old gas. Which is understandable, and just part of it trying to maintain the fuel system. The newer model Volts 2016-2020 have more base range of like 53 miles.
I own a 2017 Volt and love it. I can get 62 miles out of the battery in rush hour traffic and I only filled it with gas 3 times last year. I usually get about 52-55 miles out of the battery but that is enough for my daily commute. Sucks that Chevy stopped making them. Why Chevy Why!
@@D3voidofsoul it was just too expensive for what it was in my opinion. The car had an MSRP of like $49K for what was admittedly not a premium car. Don't get me wrong, it's a comfortable interior and it's nice, but I think a little out of its price range. And GM heavily leased the vehicles so the used market was flooded with them, which I took advantage of. A 4 year old car for 50% off was a good deal. But it's always received high praise from journalists and owners, because it's a great car! But being a great car doesn't always mean great sales, to our dismay.
Ya, I had a 2013 for about 4 years. Two oil changes and two tires replaced. Never any other issues. A ton of people didn’t understand what the car was or how it worked. Drive a model s now but would go back to a volt in a heartbeat beat over a Corolla or Camry.
Thank you. This is the most honest and maybe the best ICE vs electric pricing comparison video that I've seen. Every point you make is spot on and factual. When you compare ice to electric, and make an apples-to-apples comparison, ice wins in almost every category that matters to the average consumer. I too think electric cars are interesting, but a replacement for ICE…. not now anyways. I'll stick with my Supra for now.
This isn't completely related to this video, it's just my thoughts after watching your last 2 videos about evs. I just can't support any electric vehicle until it hits these 3 things: 1) When I without issue can repair it. When I can go to a local O'Reilly's down the road or at the very least a local dealership and buy almost any part from them to fix the ev; 2) when I don't have to worry about my car's speed being limited simply because I didn't pay for the "premium" software package, or even being able to use heated seats or some other "luxury" feature without paying them. (After purchasing the vehicle); 3) when I can find a $7,000 ev on craigslist with a bad battery, buy a battery for a few thousand and pay a specialist of my chosing to install the new battery, and have a drivable ev for under $15k. Oh and as a bonus point, when it naturally becomes viable and isn't forced down my throat by the government with their stupid idiocracy and plans of banning every ice vehicle.
Well I can tell you for sure that #2 doesn't apply to the Leaf, at least. The only thing you may have to pay for is a subscription to get the charging map updates. As for #1 or 3 yeah that's going to be a minute. I don't think the government in the US will just outright ban ICE cars, they will tax the gas til it's so expensive then people will shift to EV unfortunately.
Thanks Louis couldn't agree more. I'm 25 and live in Australia and just went shopping for my first new car. I bought a petrol MG ZS for $22,000 which has 650km+ range. I really wanted the electric version of the identical model but it was $44,000 and only has 243km of range. Despite really wanting an electric car it was too expensive.
I dont like mg cars for multiple reasons and don't think they should be brought into discussion with other cars. 1. It's a SAIC subsidiary, so essentially a CCP brand, i definitely don't wanna fund a government that is as of this moment causing a genocide. 2. Every single car on their lineup is completely derivative of western cars,if these things get more popular they will destroy the industry by causing even more complacence
So basically with an electric car your freedom is severly limited, wether it's the autonomy (you need to be very careful in planning your country road trip to know if there are recharging stations) and in the lockdown department, where you will depend absolutely (from opening your trunk to turning on your vehicle) and exclusively (only at your authorized electric brand shops), you have no other option than to pay what the manufacturer wants and/or otherwise f'k yourself up (like the guy who dinamited his own Tesla for that batteries issue)
Add to this that batteries are still made with resources mined by slaves and once the battery dies the recycling of it is a joke, most of it is just dumped in poorer countries. But hey you can feel good that you didn't polluted your 1st world country while polluting the rest of the world :)
I spend about 5k per year on gas in California. It cost's me $50 to get 220 miles of range. I looked up the going rate for 220 miles of range from a super charger and it was just about $16 here in the Bay Area. That's a savings of $34 every 220 miles. 100,000 miles / 220 miles = 454.5 fill ups every 100,000 miles. 454.5 x $34 = $15,454.5 in gas savings over that 100k miles. However, with the Tesla, you need far less maintenance, so factoring that in, you right about even at 100,000 miles between the gas and electric, assuming when you 60k mile warranty expires on the gas car (if you even get that good of a warranty), nothing major fails, like how my transmission (6k to repair) and engine (5k to repair) went up at 62k miles and 68k miles on my last car. You SHOULD easily get 200k miles on the Tesla with no major failures, including the battery. So with an addition 15k in gas savings the next 100k miles, at 200k, the gas car is at 19k + $22,725 (first 100k miles of gas) + $22,725 (second 100k miles of gas) + maintenance (hard to determine, but defiantly much higher than the tesla), so at least $64,450 in costs, and you'll probably be well over 70k in reality as you'll likely need serious engine and transmission work (cars are not built the same today as they were in the 90's and early 2000's). Now with the Tesla model 3, lets say you start at 40k + $7272 (first 100k miles of electricity) + $7272 (second 100k miles of electricity) = $54,544 for 200k miles of driving. Worst case, let's assume the Teslas battery fails and the gas car needs a new transmission and engine. They would then be about neck and neck, except gas cars require oil changes (now with synthetic at around $60 every 6000 miles, brake pads every 30k miles at $400, and rotors every 60k miles at over $1000 for all 4... Not to mention all of the other maintenance needed on gas cars like timing chains or belts. There's no doubt the math shows clearly electric cars today is cheaper than gas cars today. This doesn't factor in that you could have solar at home, use that to fuel your car, farther lowering fueling costs. BTW, I'm not a Tesla fanboy or EV fanboy, I'm buying another gas guzzling Turbo car very soon. But the math seems clear based on my situation in the bay area.
@@heyaisdabomb Totally agree with what you're saying, however I would just like to point out one thing that is a bit flawed with your logic. When you say, "There's no doubt that the math today shows clearly that electric cars today is cheaper than gas cars today", that in it of itself is inherently a misstatement. As you demonstrated EVs are in fact cheaper (i.e. more affordable) than gas guzzlers - what with supposedly less maintenance, and especially with how cheap it is to fuel with electricity compared to gas when applied over a long period of time (and no doubt especially with your case living in the Bay area). But the key point to that statement here is that ypu applied it OVER A LONG PERIOD OF TIME. Therefore, your statement of EVs being cheaper "today" is false as today means right now. And as Louis showed in the video, that is not true. So in actuality you only proved correctly that EVs are cheaper IN THE LONG TERM. (Sorry to nitpick just wanted to point that out) Nevertheless I will pose this to you and it would be interesting to here your thoughts on it. Now bear in mind that all this speculation/educated guesses of cost all assumes that EV charging (in terms of Kw/$) stays the same. But where it gets hairy if you think about it is that at the moment EV drivers are effectively road-tax exempt and being subsidized by gas drivers (given you live in CA I'm sure you're very familiar with taxes on gas 😗). But what happens when so many people switch over to EV and the government isn't generating enough revenue to fund the roads among other things? They'll tax the alternative fuel of course. My point being that in the long run its not really clear as to how MUCH cheaper EVs are gonna be compared to gas because right now EVs are being subsidized by gas drivers. It'll be interesting to see how the increased consumption of electricity + future alternative fuel taxes ultimately raises the cost of EVs and general electricity...
@@isodoubIet It's already like 30 seconds, but how much are you willing to pay for that? For most people, and present processes, the answer is "not enough". But someday that could change, so never say never.
I've noticed a lot of used Nissan leaf's advertised as "good" starting to go for around $5,000. I've actually been thinking of getting one. I figured it's only 10 miles to work (one way) and all the little bit of extra driving I do each week is only about 25 miles and not even all at the same time. Someone like me would be perfect for the Nissan Leaf even though the older models had a very limited range. I still can't quite justify it yet. $5,000 is allot of money and I'm the type of guy who will buy a $1,500 car and drive it till it dies then spend another $1,500. My current car was $2,500. . . . . #oooooooobigspender
a LEAF would be perfect for those kind of commutes I had a leased one for 3 years loved it great little in city commuter car will charge over night off of a normal 110 outlet but I hear you even with gas savings at that small of a range you would take a while to make up $2500 in gas savings and in some states like GA they charge you $200 when you get a tag to cover the gas tax you are not paying for your share of road up keep another things you need to research for your state.
As someone who bought one, wouldn't recommend it as a primary car, but I would recommend it as a second one. They are useless on the highway and lose tons of range the faster they have to go, but if you can get to and from work with it? You will save a ton of money. Though, you do need to save some of that for a battery replacement down the road. Which by the time you need to do it (around 100-150k miles), it will be a significant upgrade in range. I also recommend getting an OBD-2 Reader and only buying battery packs with less than 85% degradation. Mileage really affects these things. Good luck!
You have to be very careful with the older Leafs. Nissan did not have a cooled battery pack in the first 2 gens, so they tend to cook themselves very early. Cost for a replacment pack can exceed the actual resale value for an under 70,000 mile model
That's a great use case for a Leaf. For that you don't even need to put in 240V charger. Just trickle charge with a standard 120V outlet. We've been doing this for six years with no issues. We have a second (gas-powered) car so we are covered for road trips.
I tried to buy my last car in its hybrid version in 2018. The manufacturer had discontinued it for manufacturing that model year, so I bought the top line gas model. At the bottom of the pandemic, I bought the same car (specced exactly the same at no cost to me, to meet smack dab in the middle at 2k under stock MSRP) but with the hybrid I originally wanted. All I ever cared about was MPG. I don't care about "the environment" or whatever, I just like driving 600 miles on a single tank (that's under 15 gallons). I don't want to think about gas, I want to full up when I see it's cheap. Which is the same reason I spent years learning to cook, and buy the cheapest meat and vegetables I can find to cook. I want the lowest cost in reality, not hypothetical
that's exactly right attitude. You buy something because it works best for you. Electric cars right now have a long tail of pollution in terms of mining rare earth minerals and battery disposal that one suspects are far worse than gasoline and diesel engines.
As a salesperson of several brands of new cars you are absolutely correct. It just makes the wealthy people upset when you say that. It especially makes Elon fans upset for some reason.
@@BloPsy_Actual theres a serious issue in battery tech across the board. electric car isnt bad because theyre undeniably more efficient, but battery tech just isnt there yet
I like Elon. I dislike the forced shift towards electric vehicles, but he's not to blame for that. He only makes the things. I genuinely believe that he wishes to advance humanity, he seems to possess the boundless autism of an innovator...And as such, he probably doesn't exactly think through the consequences this new technology might bring with itself, or how others might use it for their own ends, like pricing the poor out of independence of mobility as gas cars are increasingly taxed and eventually phased out. "For our climate", of course.
I had an 2015 i3. Bought it for around $20k as a three-year-old CPO. Electric range was just 70 miles - it was intended as a city car - but I did have some success with the range extender. It would let me fill with dinosaurs 2 gal at a time for as many times as I wanted until I could refill the battery at a sparsely-speed EVgo or other DC charger station. Required planning, but made the Boston > DC and DC > New Orleans trips without issue even in AL where there were no DCFC. I recently replaced it with a Model Y (selling to Carvana for almost what I paid) and the Tesla charging network (and the 300 mile range) really does make a difference. No planning required to make the trip work. But, the cost of the was considerable.
Just consider not everyone can charge their car at home. this requires a trip once a week minimum in a city to charge it. Everyone will do this on the weekend at the same time.
That's exactly the argument I had with a couple EV fans a few days ago. One claimed to have saved $2.500 on fuel last year and had practically zero maintenance costs. My answer was that the maintenance costs of a properly serviced ICE vehicle are somewhat equal to the overpriced insurance cost of his EV vehicle, thus don't matter. When a similar ICE Vehicle costs $25.000 less than his model 3 (as you presented as well), it would take 10 years to break even. In 10 years though you'll have an EV with, best case scenario, 10% less range. EVs are great and fun but the math still favors gas, sorry folks.
Add in that at the ten year mark, is when battery pack replacement starts becoming necessary, and that can mean $$$$ - look at the recent controversy of a Tesla owner who got quoted $20k+ to replace the pack in his older Tesla, so he blew the car up in protest.
@@davidfaustino4476 Not sure if you paid attention or you meant to say something different, but at the start of the vid a brand new base model Jetta goes for $18k ish. So….unless it was some kind of sarcasm, I didn’t get it.
@@machinist7230 older battery tech and cold climate means the battery will degrade faster. For the average Joe the battery on a 2019 tesla or newer will last 15+ years before it NEEDS to be replaced.
"350 miles in one go" in an affordable car, and then refueling in under 5 minutes. That's what we're used to. EVs have a long road to hoe, before they get anywhere near that level of utility and bang for the buck. They'll be crammed down our throats sooner than they're fully ready to replace the old tech--of that I have no doubt. So if you want a practical ICE vehicle to see you through the tough transition to electric, make sure to have a durable one now, or buy one soon.
I don't think EVs will get much cheaper than now, the opposite will happen, i.e. ICE cars will get prohibitively expensive when gas price begins to skyrocket. But we may still be decades away from that, and it's a good sign at least part of the industry is already starting to shift towards EVs.
I dont ever stop to charge my ev... takes 2 full seconds to plug in when I get home and I have 300+ miles of range every morning. Saves me $800+ in gas while only using $60 in electricity.
@@---ii8hl yeah that's why I bought solar and all my big purchases last year inflation is about to slammmm (already is) Good thing all my things are locked in prices :) Wait till the governments stop keeping inflation on loans artificially low, inflation gonna really really hit. As illidan once said "you are not prepared". EV is happening whether y'all like it or not. Every automaker has promised to kill off ICE production in the coming years. BTW I was making 55k annually, but thanks to good credit and foresight was able to get 0-2% interest loans and bought house, ATVs, Tesla, 100k+ solar system all in one year. I think inflation is going to be around 50% by 2025 compared to prices in 2020. So the loan interest is super negligible and if needed I can sell everything at a profit if for some reason I can't pay loans. But started my own company recently and it's rollllin so should be good. Sorry y'all don't try harder.
Looking at the cost based on range alone and comparing to gas is interesting. We just bought a new Ram last year. We paid an extra $100 to have them change the gas tanks out so that our range would go from +/-500miles to +/-750 miles a tank. Minor cost to upgrade when watching this video!
But what is your, presumably insane, fuel consumption like. Yeah, yeah I get it ; you are in N America where you have the cheapest fuel on the planet (maybe not including Saudi) and wide roads/open spaces so you can drive a monster truck/canyonaero ! The rest of the world is more frugal and circumspect with regard to macho image and drive economical diesel trucks for delivery and haulage !
Since most people drive less than 40 miles per day, a 750-mile tank will likely make them have to deal with stale gas. Use cases are important to consider.
@@linmal2242 Not sure if you are just being a troll but I will take your comment at face value. The united states is big. Very big. If you need to do long distance drives everyday for work you would want a larger tank so you don't have to fill all the time. I used to work with someone who's commute was 150miles round trip. Also desel is horrible for passenger cars.
@@MezzoForteAural true diesel for a passenger car isn't a bright idea since their used in the city alot. diesel burns way more fuel in the city then the highway.
@@linmal2242 It's 2022. Most newer trucks and cars have ECO mode that thorttles down your power and gives you more milage. Not every truck in America is burning diesel and rolling coal on the open roads. Trucks have went from like 15 Miles per Gallon to like 24 MPG or even higher in some cases. Again, you have ECO mode on a lot of trucks and if he's rolling with a V6 he is def lasting long on that tank he has.
I've owned a hybrid, two plug in hybrids, and one fully electric car. We are still at a point where many people who want to drive electric and take regular road trips still need a Tesla, a plug in hybrid, or a second car and this is what keeps them unaffordable. "Affordable" *low range* electric cars exist, my 100 mile range completely electric car was $11K used, it was an amazing value for what I got BUT it was only acceptable for my needs when it was a second car. I sold my other car after a break up and eventually needed to trade the BEV in for another PHEV, I would have loved to keep driving a BEV but the only car in my budget with the range I need would've been the Bolt and I am not a fan of the idea of burning down my house with it. There are some very passionate EV drivers who seem to forget that other people have financial and lifestyle limits that prevent fully electric cars from working for them. A couple of things for people to consider: I may have missed this but I did not hear you mention that some EVs qualify for a federal tax credit in the US, along with some state and local incentives. This has the potential to bring down the purchase price for buyers who have enough tax liability to take advantage of it. Tesla and GM vehicles do not qualify for this anymore and it still does not help lower income individuals because it is a non refundable credit, one needs to have high enough tax liability to take advantage of it. Another thing for potential EV purchasers to consider would be plug in hybrids. They are a compromised solution but they offer the ability to use electricity for daily driving while having the option to use gasoline for long trips. Some models are cheaper than comparable BEVs because of the smaller battery pack. After the tax credit that I will be able to claim I will have paid $24K for my current PHEV which covers about 70-80% of my driving on electricity alone. $24K still is unaffordable for many people, but it is on par with a less equipped and smaller Corolla while having significantly lower fuel costs.
I agree, I paid 5000 for a car and I thought I was buying a luxury item. I doubt electric cars will become "affordable" for at least another 10-15 years.
I wouldn't be surprised if it takes longer than that unfortunately. I would be surprised if you can get a good value electric car for under $10,000 in the next 15 years.
Thing is, they NEVER will be affordable because the greedy companies are greedy, and they will not drop their prices. Both combustion AND electric car prices (new) have been going up and up and up for decades, and thats not going to stop anytime soon
@@nemtudom5074 Affordable is a relative term. Typically as prices go up so do salaries. Obviously things are pretty broken right now, so you can't take current reality as an example, but with most other markets in saner times you can in fact see a downward trend. Big markets mean big competition. Competition means lower prices, and better products.
@@kaydinlear Yea, except that if all the corporations increase prices then they all win and we all lose. Also, its not just the US thats in this capitalist hell, the rest of the developed world is too, its just that the US is hit the worst because of their government loving to favour big corporations
Another thing to consider is that if every lithium battery that can currently be produced went to just vehicle battery packs, it would not come anywhere near the number of vehicles sold. So taking price out of the equation it is just not possible to produce electric vehicles to meet demand. Now consider that lithium batteries are being demanded in a growing number of places like grid and home storage and the ability to produce them and the availability of the raw materials needs to be expanded exponentially. Take a look at the mining operations that the raw materials come from and then you have to ask how much better for the environment is it all.
People that works in the battery sector are predicting that Lithium prices will actually go up soon, if we continue making lithium batteries at the current scale. I watched recently interview with professor Passerini Stefano (he have Phd in electrochemistry and works as director and professor at the Helmholtz Institute Ulm in Germany), he talked about sodium ion batteries their pros/cons and said that lithium ion batteries won't continue dropping down in price.
Firstly: look at the drilling of oil and think how good is it for the environment and look at the concision of the often authoritarian regimes? Oil can't be reused or recyceld. Batteries can. Old car batteries, that means under 80% of the capacity, can still be used somewhere where fast discharge and volume isn't as important. Something like a home storage and grid storage makes sense for this usecase. Only after it is to bad for this are they going to get recycled. There are also a lot more batteries already out and coming in the next few years that use either way less of those materials or none at all. Solid State is now far enough that they are starting to work on the mass production and from CATL the sodium ion battery is perfect for a cheaper alternative, but not as good on capacity per volume as lithium one, which is fine for most cases
@@Adrian-jn9ov I agree that that drilling for and burning fossil fuels is not environmentally friendly, but scale and capacity do not and will not exist for battery capacity lithium or otherwise. It will take a decade or more to even play catch up based on current worldwide energy demands. Regarding recycling yes in theory they can be recycled but not only is it costly and will require a much higher material cost to justify but if not done properly there are health concerns with the handling of materials like cobalt. I think there are answers and technical advances that can address the concerns but it is my opinion that energy storage costs will go up before they go down based on current and growing demand.
@@Adrian-jn9ov Oil cant be recycled? Want to try that one again. I would say drilling for oil has less of an environmental impact than mining does. Mount Polley disaster in British Columbia comes to mind. *spelling
I bought my used 2016 Spark EV for 11k in 2019 put 25k miles on it. Short range but I only use it locally and for work and the savings in gas it has more than paid for itself. I also only charge at home so that is where the savings come in for me. For my job I was spending $300+ a month in gas now I use probably $50 in electric and a $200 car payment. It works for me and my specific use. This is also my secondary car and I have an ICE for long trips.
I have been driving a 2001 Corolla for... idk... 11-ish years now. Every time it needed repairs (even more major repairs) it was WAY cheaper than buying a new car. And with the prices of housing, electricity and gas, internet, insurances saving up something like 15K to get a "somewhat decent" more recent car just doesn't make any sense. Sadly. It's weird times we live in.
The main problem I see is the hurdle of getting an electrician to add a charge port to my home. It doesn't seem viable to live in an apartment or home without access to a charging station
Louis one thing to consider is a battery's Cuolombic efficiency. In simple term's it's how much of the total charge you lose for every cycle. You want as close to 1.0 as possible, with 1.0 being perfect (non realistic). Let's say that it's really good, like 0.999444, after only 400 cycles your car battery can only hold 80% of it's original charge. Your 200 mile range is now 160 mile range. Fast charging batteries drops the coloumbic efficiency drastically, so you can either wait hours to charge, or after 400 "tanks" your car could potentially hold only 50% or even less depending on the rate of charging. Now your car only has a 100 mile range after only going through 400 "tanks". This process is currently irreversible so the only solution is complete battery replacement. It's a fundamental trade off of a battery car that ICE do not face. Filling your ICE tank faster or slower does not effect your range on that tank nor does it make future refills less effective. Edit: Finished video, Louis brought the point up, this is builds upon his point.
got to pull issue with this, I have a customer with a CHAdeMO equipped leaf. she taxis it, and from new she only rapid charges it, sometimes 4-5 times a day. its about 5 years old now and is showing better range than customers with similar cars who almost exclusively overnight charge at home. she was warned by nissan about her charging behavour but it seems to be working in her favour imho.
@@denisohbrien Not that I don't believe you. It's very anecdotal and not necessarily consistent with what everyone else will experience. Also did she change the battery? Because if its a new battery then yes it will perform better than slow chargers because they are on battery #1.
The current Tesla batteries are supposed to be good for about 1500 cycles or more (300k miles). Your "really good" figure might have been really good a few years ago, but this is why you don't want to buy an EV that was made before about 2019. Sure, battery lifetime is definitely something to consider in any EV purchase. Gas-powered cars also have parts that require replacement over those sorts of timescales, like transmissions.
@@RichFreeman My guy, my really good is in fact really good. 0.999444 is insanely good. The newest cell phones are only 0.998. To put this in comparison a modern cell phone after 200 cycles only holds 67% of original charge, the 0.999444 will hold 89% original charge. 400 Cycles the modern cell phone will hold 44.89%, the 0.999444 will hold 80%. The .999444 will be able to undergo 720 cycles and have the same remaining capacity as a brand new cell phone at only 200 cycles. A modern vehicle needs at least 0.9995 to even have any sort of foreseeable longevity to it and keep in mind you need thousands upon thousands of these batteries. Each of which can fail individual. Each of which is currently susceptible to lithium dendrite short circuiting. Each of which is using organic solvents because water electrically splits into H2 and O2 at 1.23V and Tesla's are nominal 3.8V. A Tesla has 960 of these, each of which can fail individually and lead to runaway failure because all of the organic solvents used are more flammable than gasoline itself. You can argue a transmission will fail or whatever sure, the same can happen to an EV. EV's have thousands of parts and EVs are exponentially more complex which makes them exponentially more likely to have issues. Are motor driven wheels more simple than an ICE, crankshaft, camshaft, and the connecting differentials? Absolutely, but an EV isn't just an electric motor.
@@chrisstubbs6391 If a 400 cycle battery is "insanely good" then I'll leave it up to you to come up with an adjective to describe Tesla's current production 1500 cycle battery. They are working on better though. Obviously you wouldn't want to build an EV using the technology used in cell phones, for the reasons you've already stated. Nobody disputes that EV batteries were and still are a difficult engineering problem. That doesn't mean that modern Tesla batteries don't have good longevity. Obviously the real test will be how they perform 5 years from now, and all we have to go on is speculation and manufacturer claims in the meantime. Nobody has driven a 1500 cycle battery for 1500 cycles yet, as far as I'm aware.
For me, affordable means about $25,000 new, before any green credits, and cheap/easy battery replacement. I do however love the idea of driving a car worth a couple of thousand dollars and getting 3-4 years out of it instead of having car payments. Cars loose so much money, especially new ones. Anyone who refers to a new car as an 'investment' really needs financial advice
To English speakers, affordability is the inverse of cost. Sticker price is practically irrelevant, because cheap auto financing means you pay for the sticker price of a car in monthly payments, not in a lump sum. Sticker price is just part of cost. EVs are drastically more affordable than their ICEV counterparts. New ICEVs tend to be >$25,000 sticker price, but that doesn't affect their affordability much. EVs are the most economical cars by far. Our brand new Bolt is/was cheaper than a free Toyota Corolla, because EVs cost so much less in fuel and maintenance.
That’s why you start with an old Toyota and keep it until it breaks down while saving for a newer car, then you just keep it cuz it never breaks down and now you have extra money you can use to invest into an account you forget about. Profit.
@@carloscervantes836 Old Toyotas break down. I have driven several Camries and Corrollae. When I compared a brand new Chevy Bolt EV to a free Corolla from family, the Bolt was projected to be essentially the same cost. Then, it turned out we don't pay for charging except on road trips, so the Bolt is way cheaper than the Corolla would have been, plus it out-accelerates the Corolla and has luxuries like heated seats and Android Auto / Carplay and brand-new everything. It is true that you should avoid putting a large sticker price into a car so that you can invest instead. However, all brand new cars and nearly all used EVs also allow this advantage, so it's not an advantage of ICEVs over EVs, just wise financing over stupid financing. The Bolt was $0 down, and something like 0 or 1% interest, so effectively gained more money buying a brand new bolt than spending anything on a used ICEV.
“There are many problems in the world that are solvable, but they’re only solvable if we admit that they’re problems and we don’t just pretend they’re not because it doesn’t affect us.” Those words are spot on Louis. Great video as always. I personally don’t think electric cars are the sole solution to environmental problems. Even if they get their power from entirely zero-emissions sources and there aren’t any negative impacts from mining the batteries used to produce EVs and said batteries can be recycled once they reach the end of their service life, car dependency promotes a very unsustainable way of living. Combatting climate change and reducing our use of resources/impact on the environment can be better achieved by things like: -investments in public transit to make it more extensive, reliable, and clean (and eliminate the stigma that unfortunately exists in the US that it’s only for poor people) -better intercity rail and high speed rail (with good transit connections to stations, otherwise it’s pretty useless for intercity travel) -making neighborhoods more walkable -promoting mixed use or transit-oriented development -reforming or eliminating things like restrictive zoning laws and parking minimums that presently help promote both car dependency and suburban sprawl Don’t get me wrong, EV’s are a good step towards reducing emissions/pollution and we’re going to need to find a replacement for oil dependent fuels eventually, but it bothers me that many people seem to think buying an electric car alone is going to fix the ugly mess that is our environment and use of resources. EV’s combined with some of the things I have mentioned is the way to go, some cities and towns in the US seem to be understanding this and making small steps in the right direction but I hope more people in power can get a better grip on the bigger picture.
Your point on walkable neighborhoods has massive impact if embraced. Most US cottons and suburbs specifically encourage car use by design. Change this and you make big impacts to liveability and reduced car usage.
@@michaelgehrmann5331 I can't walk two blocks without being forced onto the road because the sidewalk just straight disappears. This is not a pedestrian-unfriendly neighborhood! In fact it's much better than the last place I lived which had more properties without than with, but it's still kind of bad.
Show a willingness to control your pet violent fauna voters on public transportation and more people would be open to the idea. However, you haven't shown that as ANY American urban center public transit system is a hive of criminals, drug addicts, and the homeless. No thanks I'm not "redesigning my community" to require the use of those awful public works. I also don't believe you have any concept about the existence of the vast, vast stretches of the country where no public transit system would ever be viable.
@@Channel-gz9hm Spoken truly like someone who has never lived in a major city or used public transportation before, and who has no idea how much railroads and interurbans played a role in the growth of American cities until the 1950’s. But please tell us more about how you hate poor people. Straight out of the Randal O’Toole and Robert Moses playbooks. I would take the time to point out the complete inaccuracies of your reply, but you’ve made it clear you’d rather make assumptions and stereotype the kind of people who use transit and parrot whatever the Cato Institute tells you than do proper research into what you’re talking about. And nowhere in my comment did I say anybody would be required to use transit or live in a neighborhood that has it. You can keep driving your gas guzzler to your HOA gated McMansion subdivision all you want. Nobody’s taking away your car buddy. We heavily subsidize automobile travel and car dependency in the United States, I find it funny how it’s fine for tax dollars to be used endlessly on highways but god forbid we use it to improve or expand transit! Always amuses me how the mere thought of better public transportation is interpreted by car junkies as a personal attack on them…
I couldn't even make my commute in a Nissan leaf. My diesel vw gets over 600 miles on a tank. Mercedes has a radio commercial airing now in the St. Louis market for the sprinter that says the gasoline engines are more economical and affordable then electric. It kind of blew my mind that a company would say that at all.
I have one too. 47mpg and I've got close to 700 on a tank (and I've heard of people managing that). Just coming up on 300,000 miles. Sadly, it's showing its age. I was actually thinking of a Prius at the time but they were hard to get then I came across the TDIs in my research.
maybe, but the charging systems still need way too much growth to be viable for someone like me. i travel for a living, and stay in pretty cheap hotels. the hours added to charge on the way would be brutal, and finding places to charge in remote areas is near impossible or just plain unreasonable after a 12hr day. not to mention the ability to fix or repair them is unreasonably difficult because the parts is impossible or unreasonably priced compared to gas or diesel. way i see it, we need a bit more infrastructure and a HUGE upgrade to battery tech for them to be viable. on top of seeing how well their reliability holds up in reality. for instance, a tesla before 2015 has a serious habbit of tearing itself apart around every 40k miles and needs a new motor. before 2017 i think (i dont remember the year specifically) they need a 2000$ repair to change out a memory chip that actually wears out from all the data going through it.
Too many excuses and too many myths. There's only 1 moving part in a motor, and that's the rotor. You don't need to fix or repair them because they don't go wrong anywhere near as often. (unlike IC engines with 2000+ moving parts that need oil and expensive maintenance). In reality you only need to maintain tyres, wipers and windshield washer fluid. Battery tech is already viable, and after years of following the industry I've never heard of Teslas "tearing itself apart every 40k miles". Provide evidence of where you picked this up.
I like electric tech, but I'd never pay big bucks for an EV, or rely on one for a cross country trip. I hate cities and populated spots. I have fueled up in some crazy places... I won't do that again. Last thing I want to do is pull into a charger (in a car everyone assumes I'm rich for owning, even if I bought it wrecked) and be stuck in a sh1t area. On that thought, can you even drive away in an emergency with the charger plugged in? Or do you have to get out and unplug it? (Someone with a weapon shows up to rob you? You're willing to damage your charge port to get away) Or do you have to unplug it?
@@ahaveland the electric motors also need oil, and there's everything in the suspense, all the high voltage electric hardware that has issues, the low voltage sensors that have problems and are expensive to replace. dont act like they're perfect just because electric is better in a few ways. things go bad in every car
@@ahaveland Look for the issue with the Model S (And possible other Tesla motors) where the whole drive unit had to be replaced due to arcing from the rotor through the bearings causing pitting in the bearing surfaces, damaging the geartrain and motor. Amazing that they could take a design as simple ubiquitous as an electric motor and design failure into it, but not surprising based on all the empty promises (Also known as lies) on self driving, battery trucks being cheaper than rail and available to buy 3 years ago, solar roofs etc. At least new models have a coating on the problem bearing to insulate it, but the reason this wasn't a huge PR disaster for Tesla was because they replaced the failed parts under warranty (Eventually). Once their cars are out of warranty, as a small percentage of them now are, we'll get a much better idea how good they are. The recent Model 3 recalls for, among other things, the frunk opening at random, blocking the driver's view while the car is moving, suggest the engineering on the basics has considerable room for improvement.
This is hands down the most honest, truthful opinion on electric vehicles. They’re cool, I like them, I’m not plunking down $60K for a Tesla. I can’t afford it. Hell, I need a truck and I can’t afford an $80K Rivian either. They have a ways to go to convince most people. Also, 90 mile range on a bicycle is awesome. Now we’re talking. 👍🏻
From somebody that really likes EVs also, I have to agree 100%. Economies of scale production has its limitations and the costs eventually bottom out. EVs will probably get cheaper, but they have a long way to go to reach parity. Given the initial cost of purchase, potential battery replacement costs after ~10yrs, the inconveniences of charging, the significant loss of range when towing, and the minimal reduction in emissions, they're just not viable imo.
@@MHTriBernard Part that always gets forgotten for me is local grid infra, the last mile. Increased demand means increased need for investment, meaning increased costs and demand for pricy not so commonly produced parts. Hi-voltage hi-load transformers need to be installed and that will also take time.
I think you are absolutely spot on Louis, I would love an electric car but until any car maker can put one out there for £20k or under it’s just not realistic for me to go for one. Fuel is very expensive here in the UK and I actually don’t do huge mileage but I still spend upwards of £200 a month on fuel. If I were buying Tesla’s cheapest car It’d be 8 years before I saw any profit from owning one. I’m sure one day electrics will get there but until they do they’ll never become the dominant form of transport.
I feel that pain. Not sure how many miles/Km you are driving to create that fuel bill, but my wife and I just got a lightly used honda clarity, it will go ~45 miles on a charge, and then goes into hybrid mode. Most of the driving we do, is in EV mode only. So out Gasoline bill has plummeted. Cost of the car was less than £20k in $USD, sadly I don't know if Honda ever sold them in the UK, and they recently stopped making the things, .. I fear because of the push for all electric, when I think the plugin hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV ) is a far better solution, as it avoids the entire problem of waiting to charge on longer trips, but since those are only a fraction of the driving, the overall gas consumption is drastically reduced.
Bang on, man. That is exactly my thoughts on the matter. With the price difference as it is here in the States, and with my driving habits, it would take me nearly 25 years to recoup the added cost of an EV over an equivalent class of gas-powered car. This was before the current price spike insanity. I would prefer the EV because my driving habits otherwise are perfect for it, and not having to worry about all of the maintenance components involved in a combustion vehicle would be great. Until someone can come up with a $20k EV that isn't a commuter pod, and can outhandle and "out-fun" my miata though, it won't happen.
@@wildonion99 Seriously, check out the Honda clarity. you can get one with low miles for near $20K, 45 mile EV range and ICE for the rest. All that EV time means far less wear and tear on the engine. I expect to get ours way past 300K miles and if/when needs a new battery the cost will have fallen even more than it would be today (~$4K ) ... or inflation will have made that a less painful cost.
We have some cars like that over here in india, $20K/₹1.5M for 30kWh and about 155mi real range Not the most advanced of cars though, lacks cruise control and adas of any kind, but I guess companies have to cut corners to get the price there.
@@RussellPolo Oh, I know the clarity well. Had a few in the shop for body work. The problem is they're around $35k in my area (everything costs a ton here), and I cant have more than one vehicle. No space, and no ability to charge at home. Plus being a one vehicle household, it doesnt mean the fun requirement like the miata. :(
I ran the numbers earlier today. I couldn't get a model 3 to break even with the Honda accord my coworker is looking at, at any mileage. And he is one of those guys who bought his last car new, drove it for 180,000, and scraped it when the engine gave out. Thank you Louis, I have been using a $35,000 for tesla for a while. I didn't realize the jacked up the price that much over the last 5 years. EDIT: he had a 2012 kia soul and is looking at a civic. Not sure how I messed up accord and civic.
Please show you math. I spend about 5k per year on gas in California. It cost's me $50 to get 220 miles of range. I looked up the going rate for 220 miles of range from a super charger and it was just about $16 here in the Bay Area. That's a savings of $34 every 220 miles. 100,000 miles / 220 miles = 454.5 fill ups every 100,000 miles. 454.5 x $34 = $15,454.5 in gas savings over that 100k miles. However, with the Tesla, you need far less maintenance, so factoring that in, you right about even at 100,000 miles between the gas and electric, assuming when you 60k mile warranty expires on the gas car (if you even get that good of a warranty), nothing major fails, like how my transmission (6k to repair) and engine (5k to repair) went up at 62k miles and 68k miles on my last car. You SHOULD easily get 200k miles on the Tesla with no major failures, including the battery. So with an addition 15k in gas savings the next 100k miles, at 200k, the gas car is at 19k + $22,725 (first 100k miles of gas) + $22,725 (second 100k miles of gas) + maintenance (hard to determine, but defiantly much higher than the tesla), so at least $64,450 in costs, and you'll probably be well over 70k in reality as you'll likely need serious engine and transmission work (cars are not built the same today as they were in the 90's and early 2000's). Now with the Tesla model 3, lets say you start at 40k + $7272 (first 100k miles of electricity) + $7272 (second 100k miles of electricity) = $54,544 for 200k miles of driving. Worst case, let's assume the Teslas battery fails and the gas car needs a new transmission and engine. They would then be about neck and neck, except gas cars require oil changes (now with synthetic at around $60 every 6000 miles, brake pads every 30k miles at $400, and rotors every 60k miles at over $1000 for all 4... Not to mention all of the other maintenance needed on gas cars like timing chains or belts. There's no doubt the math shows clearly electric cars today is cheaper than gas cars today. This doesn't factor in that you could have solar at home, use that to fuel your car, farther lowering fueling costs. BTW, I'm not a Tesla fanboy or EV fanboy, I'm buying another gas guzzling Turbo car very soon. But the math seems clear based on my situation in the bay area.
Dude thank you for saying what I’ve been trying to argue for years. Last August I bought a Honda CRV for $15k with 40k miles. I’ve had 0 issues out of it. I can totally afford to spend 40k on an electric car, but I’m never going to spend that much. I make great money but I’m not interested in spending it on a depreciating asset like a car. I’ll buy an electric car when I can charge pretty much anywhere in 20 mins or less, can drive for 400-500 miles on a charge, have AWD, and can get it at low mileage, ALL for under 20k. My Honda has all those things and is more reliable and cheaper to work on than a Tesla. I have to have AWD and that adds so much cost to an electric vehicle. Also, onlooker, don’t say you don’t need AWD when you have snow tires. I live in the most mountainous area of the country and I laugh at the front wheel drive vehicles with brand new snow tires stuck on a hill. It’s those dipshits that gridlock the town in a blizzard.
You're a fool. Sticker price is only part of cost. Affordability is the inverse of cost, not sticker price. EVs are more affordable than their ICEV counterparts.
@@weksauce how in the world are EVs more affordable than ICEV vehicles? Sticker price is a part of cost, then you have maintenance, insurance, fuel, depreciation, and longevity. I’m sure you’ve done the math of all that and determined that a $50k AWD Tesla Model 3 is somehow cheaper in the long run than my $15k CRV. If you’re gonna come in and call someone a fool, back it up. Let me see what math you’re doing to determine that an EV is somehow cheaper than my setup. (Impossible because it isn’t)
The Chevy Volt is a very affordable PHEV. I could get 60+ miles of in-town driving per charge, while the car gets 40+ mpg using the gas engine to go another 300+ miles. It's a great transition to electric vehicle in my opinion.
@@joshhhab no ev range on those so you still use gas, you'd also need to be cautious of the maintenance done on those as I'm not sure if those came with a battery air filter and if they do people often don't clean/replace them leading to premature battery failure or severe degradation. The volt on the other hand has a proper liquid battery cooling system like most BEVs
Old Nissan Leaf batteries lacked thermal regulation - they are well known for experiencing the worst battery degradation for EV's. But then again, they were also some of the first EV's on the market, so don't hate on them. You can get a replacement if you can afford it, and Nissan haven't done anything to stop you (especially since it's this old). I think the cost for a replacement is roughly $10k. Other EV's, especially Tesla's have experienced... noticeable degradation, only around 10% if you get a good one.
So you have 20k in a vehicle thats 10 years old... 10k in the car, and 10k in the battery... 10k in a gas car, and 10k in gas gets me right at 100,000 miles...
@@memeier9894 Hey, I'm not arguing for the case, just saying what I know... though, Leaf's are a tad bit cheaper in the UK and if you have solar (there was a large free scheme a while ago here) you actually can charge it up using just that and have left over for the house.
@@Leon_George never said you were im just pointing out if the vehicles cost is the same, I can buy a whole lotta gas when you just got batteries. Even though its cheaper to charge than a gas car, the amount you will spend in charging, I can spend on tires, oil changes etc, and still come out cheaper, because electric still needs tires and brakes as well.. I just don't see the appeal, unless you live in the city, and drive maybe 50 miles a day at most.
No. When a battery replacement on an 8 year old Tesla costs more then $20,000 your better off just paying for a gas power car and the inflated gas prices.
On any similar vehicle (60k$+ ICE) you would've easily paid at least half that in maintenance and the other half in fuel (if you actually drive anywhere)
I agree, we have a LONG way to go. My colleagues at work (I don't know where they get the money) are touting electrical cars as the "must have" thing today, and can't fathom my choice of a cheep and cheery little Suzuki Ignis (which I bought for 14K USD brand new, with winter and summer tires with TPMS sensors in all of them), has all the luxuries of a good electrical car, 4-speaker stereo, computer & entertainment center, 6 air-bags, 5 doors, small...fits in anywhere, can turn on a dime, backing camera, air-condition that works a treat - and a car that basically never needs repairs - all of this for 14K, not to forget I hardly pay any taxes or insurance on it because it weighs a meager 850 KG, that's less than a ton. So my car costs are about 80 bucks a month, everything included (I paid for the thing outright, silly, right?) But it's mine. I've had it for over 3.5 years now, runs like clockwork and passes the tests every year. Good luck with those 45K $ cars lol.
I have a 21 Leaf SL+ (62kwh), purchased June '21. in WA, the best range I have been able to get was 250ish mile using e-pedal (one pedal driving). I did spend 46k on it and received a 10.2k incentive. I just experienced it with 20 degree weather and have seen about a 60 mile reduction until the battery warms up. (No active temp management, it's air cooled.) I also recognize that EVs have more maturing to do and that it is still early adoption.
@@neku2741 5 decent used cars would be 5 decent used cars with zero warranty and surprisingly high insurance fees, and if you're paying the same on a loan it's kinda a moot difference imo - especially when you save cartoonishly large amounts of money driving electric over gasoline.
Pretty sure everyone but Tesla has already settled on one. It's like phones - almost everyone uses USB C, but then Apple/Tesla has to be special little boys with a special little connecter. There's still a lot of crap out there to support older cars, though. But it's all the same wires, just in different shapes, so adapters are an option.
CCS basically is the US standard now. The old standard, chademo, which the Leaf used, is going away in any place that is not Japan. The only non-standard one left in the US is Tesla. This is only because Tesla can get away with it. Elsewhere they have been forced to implement CCS on their vehicles to comply with a single charging standard. It needs to happen here, too. Though the real issue is EV's costing far above what real people can afford, and still have it make fiscal sense. Almost nothing now does.
That would be the biggest help. Gas stations are usually owned by a regular business owner or a gas company, not an auto maker. If there's an industry standard, it can lower barrier to entry and increase the potential market, increasing convenience of buying an EV.
There already is a single charging standard it's called CCS based on J1772. Problem is the PAYMENT and vehicle hand shake system which is stupidly unnecessarily complicated. Once you get over the hurdle of paying for the Public Charger. There should be no issue electrically connecting the vehicle.
@@wildonion99 CCS is actually a horrible physical plug design and the Tesla version is just better. Tesla SC v2 is just CSS protocol wise in a better hardware format. The two are compatible with Adapters and Tesla has been trialing CCS to Tesla adapters.
Cheaper Teslas wouldn't change anything since they're all out of stock anyway. Demand is crazy high for these cars. I would love Tesla to build the equivalent to an Aptera, these way they would need less cell per vehicles and could thus build/sell more of them.
@@mf-- Point of building "the equivalent of an Aptera" is that you get more range out of a given battery, so you could use a smaller battery and still make it between superchargers. (Aptera is supposed to get 10 miles per kWh, so could use half the cells of a Model 3 for the same range, though we'll see once it comes out.)
I just wanted to say that pretty much everyone outside of a big city has a commute, usually a large commute. Even going from a suburb to a city can be over an hour of driving each way. It's ultra inconvenient to have to constantly be charging your vehicle; you want to be able to get going as soon as possible. If you forget to charge your car, you're screwed- you will have to wait for hours at home in many cases to be able to go anywhere without getting stranded. Regular cars can handle these problems without issue. It's usually not that much of a walk or drive to get to the nearest gas station if you forget to fill up and need to get somewhere an hour away. It doesn't take hours to fill up at a pump, it takes a few minutes. Not everyone lives within walking distance of their workplace. Fewer can afford to wait for hours to charge their car if they forgot to do so the night before. Road trips are not the limiting factor for the usefulness of a vehicle for most people- it's their daily commute and the consequences of having to refuel last minute. Until electric vehicles get better with charge times, capacities, and don't have nearly as much battery degradation, I won't agree with anyone who says that electric vehicles are a good replacement for regular gas cars. I'm not saying that electric vehicles can never be a viable replacement, but in their current state, they are not.
@@S-A-M. It is compared to a 3.5 or 7kW charger. However if you leave your house with a full battery and with an average speed of 60mph, you should easily be able to do a two hour drive without stopping.
I just bought a certified preowned car last year. I researched the brands I liked in my price range...which was $15-18K. Not one EV on the market could match the price AND range of comparable ICE vehicles. I still pride myself on that I'm getting like 45mpg, which is a HUGE saving from my old clunker. But yeah, I don't forsee myself getting an EV unless the price comes down or I make or 6 figures.
One has to wonder what the price of a 5 year old used EV would be, after the dealership swaps out the batteries with new ones. You know that won't be a cheap fix for them.
My new EV I just bought was the same price. Enough said. Okay I'll say a bit more. For one the used car market is at record highs right now, not exactly the most fair time to make a comparison like this. And yet still, there are affordable EVs available if you know where to look. Me, I've been lurking and searching for over a year before I found the exact perfect match for me and it was only 18k. Just takes time. Also I don't forsee myself needing over 100mi of range. It's absurd that I'd need more than that. I live in the suburbs, so things are too far for using an e-bike, but it's not exactly the countryside. When I check on a map, I can make it roundtrip everywhere I'd ever go or realistically find a job in the area. Even another hotspot a state over is workable under 100mi. Sure not everyone is me but don't act like no one is. We're the pretty average suburban low income household, so if it works for us it can work for many. The roadtrip comparison Louis did is also laughable. Clearly Louis has never been in a large, low income household or he'd know that you just DON'T do roadtrips in your ONE AND ONLY family car that the whole family needs to have 100% uptime on. You'd put those miles on a rental or heck, even a family friend's car. Why put those miles on your only car? That's like shooting yourself in the foot and expecting it not to hurt.
@Jon VB This is such an unrealistic idea though. How many people drive their car 500k miles? You do realise that aside from the engine the rest of an EV is just the same as a regular car, suspension, rust, fluids, electrics etc can and will go wrong during that time. You didnt factor in car maintaince either, which is hugely inflated thanks to Teslas being entirely dealer only repairs. The average tesla battery life and the average ICE life are also heavily flawed statements. Many car owners miss service intervals and wear out engines prematurely, there are many cars and trucks in service industry with millions of miles on the clock due to decent servicing. And the kicker is that a replacement engine cost is minute compared to a tesla battery, a garage will install a 2nd hand engine with low miles in an average commuter for less than $2k. And the kicker? The cost in fuel is spread out over the 500k miles, not dropped in one go (a very important metric)
Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs) like the RAV4 Prime are still the way to go in lieu of Tesla's line of BEV. It covers mileage that most people use for short range daily commutes (within your own city/town) at under 45 miles and switches to hybrid engine for long range trips at great MPG 👍. Its half the price of an equivalent Model S and more spacious and more reliable than a car manufacturer with less than 15 years of experience. Also, the full electric, elegantly designed Toyota *bz4x* is due this spring 2022! It's going to give Tesla and Nissan Leaf run for its money. 🚗💨
Wife just bought one. I've been very happy with my Volt. Exactly as you say: phev is currently the way to go if your like having the option of long trips quick, but have your daily driving be all electric. If you're a 2 car household though, having a phev and a full ev makes sense if you can afford it.
I'm literally in the process of deciding between a Model 3 and a RAV4. Friend recently got a Tesla and loves it. Co-worker got a RAV4 and loves it. I am not sure what I want to do. I really like the idea of a Tesla, but I do about 6 long drives a year.
I have a used Toyota Camry Hybrid, an excellent medium sized car with a small ice engine to charge the presumably, NiMH batteriey(s). Does great service with minimal running cost, is spacious enough, and bought n2nd hand! Cheap all round! All the taxicabs in Sydney run them so they must be OK !
This last summer I drove roughly 5000 miles in 12 days from Chicago to Yellowstone, followed by Grand Teton, then back, making a rough circle between i90 and i80. In general once we left Chicago there was a bunch of nothing. There were times later on where it was like a wasteland with absolutely nothing for hours before some teeny side of the road town popped up with 1 ancient gas station. Couple that with me driving a ton of miles everyday, and I just see evs currently as making road trips more problematic than they have to be.
Kinda like healthcare research and development. Like "Nice, but when's the price drop or when's my insurance covering it? Never, k, ignored permanently."
Great video, and definitely agree. IMO charging stations are all wrong right now. Here's how I think they should work for future EV's: Swappable batteries. You drive to a "charging station" and park over top of a special pad. The pad opens up and automatically removes the battery from underneath the car. A new battery is swapped in its place. You're in-and-out in less than 2 minutes. THAT is how "charging stations" should work. Having to wait longer than putting gas in a vehicle is *insanely stupid* and absolutely turns people away right there.
Good analysis. I went through a similar exercise back in 2020 to see if electric made sense for me. Compared Nissan Versa to Nissan Leaf long range. The electric is literally 2x the Versa. Gas savings aren't going to make up for $16000. I ended up buying a used versa for $8600. Not poor, just not trying to impress anyone.
@@reinbeers5322 I bought a 2017 Nissan versa with 29,000 miles. It's not fancy but runs great and I take care of it. Did oil changes every 5k miles, then switched to full synthetic and decided to go every 7500 miles. My wife teases me about it but I like my manual crank windows and manual transmission. It takes me back to a simple time when my dad was teaching me to drive his little Mazda pick up truck.
So in 2019 and 2020 I was working at a factory that treated me badly. Working crazy overtime every week. I started writing down what was left on my mortgage every week on the dry erase board in the maintenance office and telling co-workers that when that number hit zero I was out of there. Eventually they pushed me too far and I left with a few K left on my mortgage. I left for a temp job making 10k more per year. That didn't pan out but I landed another job a few months later making even more. Someone has to program the robots to do what is needed. I enjoy doing it when I am treated with respect. As long as my current employer doesn't force the death jab I plan on staying there for a while.
I am a little disappointed that Louis made his employees get the Jab but understand that people think differently in different parts of the country. I am a licensed electrician and could probably scrape by on that if I was terminated.
@@tylercruit6261 You did good by going with a manual, Nissans usually fail through the CVTs. Less tech, less stuff to break. 2017 is quite recent, not a bad choice for $8600 and 29k miles. That amount gets you a lot of stuff even nowadays, an early 2000s sports car is well within that budget, for example (sure they're not exactly the ideal commuter car). Enjoy your new paycheck!
I live in Grand Forks, ND. I work in Pembina, ND. That's a trip of over 75 miles that I drive *every day* A 2013 Nissan Leaf literally couldn't get me from home to work on a full charge. There is (as of two weeks ago now) one singular slow-charge port on the way there. In order to make it to work on time driving a Nissan Leaf, I'd have to leave 14 hours before I needed to get to work. Then I'd have to spend another 14 hours on the way home. That'd leave me negative 4 hours in the day to actually work.
Electric cars are not viable for the average person, not yet. Aside from range/cost/charging station availability, the batteries are just not reliable enough to warrant the cost yet and a large part of that cost IS the batteries. Every "affordable" EV I have seen has been plagued by cost cutting in every way they can get away with to maintain that "affordable" price tag while sacrificing as little range as possible, even Tesla. Lithium Ion batteries will not be what brings the EV to the big leagues. They aren't reliable enough, cost too much to produce and degrade too quickly. With only 2 charging stations in my city I would also have to charge from home, where my electric bill is the largest monthly expense already. I love the concept but I won't be investing until they can at the very least outlast a budget combustion engine car (they can't even come close right now).
Almost everything you've said is just flat wrong and contributing to the FUD. Degradation with modern batteries is minimal, with over 5000 charge cycles. They will still be going long after you've had your hips replaced. There is nothing better to invest in right now. In a few years, all ICE cars will be lemons with tiny resale value, so buying a new one now is madness. A monthly $100 electricity bill is better than a $300 gasoline bill, and if you have solar, you can charge it yourself and always have a free full "tank".
By “affordable” do you mean living way outside of your means and causing yourself to have a $1k car payment just so you can fake wealth on social media? If so, then yes. Very affordable. I paid $16k for a 2015 golf sportwagen diesel two years ago with 57k miles and average 38-44 miles per gallon. Electric can’t touch those numbers yet. In the future? Sure. But not anytime soon.
Hell yeah. The most I've ever paid for a car is $6k and I don't see a reason to ever go above that. My current car was $4500 and gets 45/55 mpg city/hwy (diesel golf).
I paid $8500 for my 2009 corvette with 50k miles. It got 35 mpg highway at 90 mph and I sold it for $19,000 a couple weeks ago with 100k miles. Don’t forget resale value. It’s actually cheaper to daily drive a Lamborghini than it is your golf which is only worth about $9,000 two years after you bought it.
Agreed, I paid 1300€ for my first car, a 15 year old french econobox. It has 178k km on it and I get around 7l/100km, total range is between 700-800km on a full tank. Last time I checked there are no EV’s that will do that at the same price and will not for a long time
@@MrPland1992 I have considered selling it. I could probably come close to breaking even, but there is no way I could replace it for a similar price. Also, I really do love my GSW TDI. Its a manual with leather, fender premium audio, panoramic sunroof ( no issues yet! Lol) and the lighting package. Ive had one check engine light and it was a loose NOx sensor harness. I love this car and will drive it until it’s physically not able to be used as a vehicle again.
Electric cars aren't affordable but gas cars are also not affordable currently at new prices. Only used gas cars are worth it or ideally if you live in a well planned city, you don't need a car anyways.
sadly not true. at current prices only new gas cars are worth it, because of how brutal the used market is right now. electric cars depend on your needs
You can buy a Chevy Spark for under $15k. The problem is that it's probably only worth about $10k the second you drive it off the lot. It just doesn't make a whole lot of sense for someone looking for a vehicle on a budget to take the appreciation hit of a new car when you can buy a slightly used one for significantly less. Then the problem becomes what people are actually willing to drive. Most people want to drive a vehicle that is more than they can actually afford. They don't want to drive a Spark, they want to drive a BMW or something similar. They often fail to factor in maintenance costs as well.
Ive driven for 32 years. In that time along with a spouse added in later. Ive owned - 11 vehicles and spent less than 35 k and sold all but 3 of them that we currently have for a large fraction of what i paid for back or given them to kids who are still driving them. The only one over 10k spent (all were below 5) was wife's she had before were marred and was at the time still paying on (since paid off and sold) she now likes the little or non payment from buying used and taking care of it. A life of car payments upwards of a mortgage payment is no way to life a life. And electric till it can handle off road and rural middle America isn't going to happen. Let alone the winters here.
I had an affordable electric car (bought new), but the non rechargeable “D” size batteries didn’t last too long. Car came to an end when the remote control failed (that’s my story) and the car smashed into a nearby brick wall.
As a 2015 Nissan Leaf Owner, I only recommend it as a secondary commuter car. I work from home, but my girlfriend's cost to commute went from $80 a month to $3, and we didn't even need to install a charger. It just charges from an outlet; and we can still take my mustang for long road trips. I do agree this arrangement does not work for everyone though.
While this is true, please note that actually acquiring a second car for commute only is not free. With the calculations you have shared you are saving around 900-1000 USD per year, so it will take multiple years to cover cost of the Leaf itself, until you will start saving money.
@@danbosch- wrong. The car cost less than 8 grand. Also, on what planet do you expect any car, let alone an electric one to pay for itself? You're trolling.
Looks like you're lying, a Honda Fit can travel 1000 miles for $ 80, to travel 1000 miles on the Nissan Leaf you will need almost 300 kilowatts. Does 300 kilowatt cost you $ 3?
Electric vehicles are actually very old. They had a huge market share in the early 1900s. Yes much older tech but so were gas powered vehicles from the same time.
It was during a different time. The original electric vehicles used lead acid batteries and didn't go very far... they were very much limited to cruising around the city they lived in. At the time, ICE cars were harder to drive, not particularly reliable and finicky to run on changing gasoline developments. Additionally, the road network outside of cities were largely dirt or gravel paths... so ICE cars didn't have a obvious benefit over electric or steam. Of course, as development of the ICE engine and the road network made the ICE cars dominant after WWI.
Yeah it's like comparing a FreeValve Camless Engine to a Ford Flathead. Microcontroller BMS to monitor and secure Hundreds of volatile energy dense sells did not even exist 30 years ago. What made Long Range BEVs possible now is that we can gang up hundreds of cells and prevent them from EXPLODING. Soo the vintage electric car comment is actually misleading.
Man I thought you’d be like a lot of TH-cam finance bros but I thought wrong. You seem to be a very compassionate level headed guy. I like that you’re looking out for poor folks.
Spot on! E-vehicles are not yet economically competitive with internal combustion vehicles. Hybrids might be. The real gaslighting is the unavailability of reliable public transportation buses and rail) because we are taught to not want that.
If you are out of touch with people who are broke, it is affordable. I know people to whom an $850k house is affordable, who wouldn't claim that is affordable to _everyone._
There is a reason I have three early 1980's VW diesel Rabbits in my driveway at this time, and are my daily drivers. The most expensive set me back $1100. However, at a minimum of 45 mpg (one is getting 56 mpg in the summer and 52 mpg in the winter) and a 10.9 gallon tank I get at least a 450 mile range. Now when it come to "Right to Repair" there are parts available for just about everything, and service manuals that go into detail on the tools and procedures required to do any repair down to engine rebuilds. Plus, with the old style diesel injector pump (think old tractor) converting to run on plain vegetable oil is possible. But bio diesel is also an option without modification. Now as far as efficiency, electric vehicles are much much better. But, as Louis pointed out in his earlier video the infrastructure is not there, and won't be there for quite some time. To fill a typical gasoline car, you go the the gas station and spend maybe five minutes filling (if you pay cash first, then go back for change). A typical station may have 10 pumps and sometimes a small waiting line, but usually has open pumps. Now, increase that filling time to 30 minutes for the same number of vehicles. The typical station now needs 60 chargers to fill the same needs. When you look at the electrical power required to propel a small lightweight car at 50 miles per hour (I did this as part of a physics assignment) it takes about 15 kW of power. This is just the rolling and air resistance on a flat windless road. Now if a "fill-up" takes 30 minutes and gets you 500 miles, at that small car efficiency, that is 10 hours (150 kW hours). That means each charging "pump" is putting out 300 kW. Multiply that by a busy station with 60 chargers, that means each station of that size needs to have 18 MW of capacity on demand. Now, how many gas stations are in your area, and how many pumps are at each?
omg, I grew up with my parents both had Rabbits one faded light green the other faded light blue. The memories of I have of the 4 of us driving from Central Florida to North Ohio straight through 3 gas station stops and 1 extra rest stop in Virginia. Is making me want to cry not sure if it's from the nostalgia or remembering the body cramps.
I own a Leaf (around town), Pathfinder (long distance), and a 1979 240D (classic and indestructible). I won't even consider a Tesla because they are quality $hitbuckets. I don't ever see me replacing my Pathfinder for long distance travel with anything electric for years because waiting 45 minutes at a Supercharger is not appealing when I can fill up my Pathfinder in 5 minutes. Props for the VW diesels...my 240D is not much faster but it will easily cruise at 75 mph on the highway.
I like diesel rabbits, they sound almost exactly like my kubota lawnmower and are also mechanically injected. Not sure if they're IDI or not but it wouldn't be surprising.
Not many EVs have 150 kWh batteries, if any. Any kind of power feed in the megawatt range would require its own substation, as well as the distribution to support that kind of load. Considering that the US power grid is straining just under people's average AC usage in the summer, I'd say we need to address that problem first. We don't have the generation or distribution capacity in this country to support a rapid switch to EVs.
Growing up, the rule for cars in our family was, it has to be under $1500 and it has to be a popular 10+ year old car, so that we can pull parts from the scrap yards to fix any issues that come up. Even now looking at a car at 3k is a tough choice.
I don’t see EVs getting more affordable in the next 10 years. We have a lot of shortages which will drive up costs exponentially, specifically cells and chips. Everything is going up in price including BEVs. It isn’t sustainable to have everybody driving around in a giant electric F150.
@@thegoodsmaster the entire stock market is a huge bubble right now, inflation will be the straw the breaks the camel’s back. There’s way to much hype surrounding tech and clean energy.
"isn’t sustainable to have everybody driving around in a giant electric F150." That's stupidly impossible. Ford just made some absurd promises to build 150K units by 2023. I doubt they were even get to 100K. Giant Capacity EV are too resources intensive and we have limited supply. There is no sustainability problem, it's a self limiting problem. That problem does not exist.
What, every car brand has it's own specific charging port? What happened to standardizing electrical ports? You know, like every electronic appliance has the same shape of plugs so you don't have to buy a different socket for the damn thing? This is ridiculous.
@@Kepe do we? last time I drove a leaf (after repairing the CHAdeMO port) it has both CHAdeMO and type 2, and thers more than just that .. I guess the type.2 is a standard but its slow as treakle. suitable for an overnight domestic charge yes, suitable for a taxi wanting to get back to the rank and make a fare!? god no.
Right now, the afford EVs are used and aren’t for road trips. Used leaf’s aren’t bad for driving around town and for work/school/errands. Eventually we will have affordable new EVs and I think they will eventually replace ICE cars but that is decades off. Like you said, battery prices and charging availability are the main issues. That’s why they cost so much. I’d also add that EVs would become more affordable with an increase in mass production. I think most automakers aren’t comfortable going all in on EVs yet, which makes sense.
Take the battery capacity divide by charging efficiency (about 85%, so .85) = total kWh to fully charge. Multiply that by your electric rate to get the cost to fully charge. Divide by range to get the cost per mile. Compare that to the cost per mile for your gas car.
Person says that a $45k car is affordable. Dude, I struggle to pay more than $8k for a car, and I have a decent job. While I'd love to have a cool new car at $45k, I've got things like a mortgage, insurances, utilities, taxes, food, and other things to pay for first, leaving not nearly enough for an expensive car. And yeah, to me $45k is VERY expensive! I fix my own stuff because I can't afford to pay someone else to do it, and I can fix ICE cars, so I drive ICE cars.
One of the most pedantic arguments I have had on Reddit recently was with regard to this question. Somebody said that I was misusing the word affordable when I claimed it did not apply it to $45,000 cars by responding with a link to some survey showing that $45k was the average new car sale.
To be so out of touch with the reality of most people's finances, that you don't understand why a large swath of Americans do not consider a $45,000 car affordable is insane to me. There are 10 and 15-year-old cars that will function that you can buy for $5,000 to $13,000. Or, if you are willing to drive a 20-year-old Corolla, you can buy that for $2,000. I can't imagine that.
To be clear, I do not have a universal disdain for people who are wealthy, or rich, or successful. I am happy for you if you are well off enough to consider a Mercedes S550 being sold new at the dealer to be affordable. Good on you. I ,too, am beyond the point in my life where I would be forced to purchase a $2,000 vehicle because of my financial circumstances. I could buy a $45k car. Honestly, I could buy a $150k car if I wanted. I wouldn't do it. It'd be a really dumb financial decision that'd keep me from hitting my goals in life. But I could get a Mercedes S560 in my parking spot if I wanted to.
But, to rub that in the faces of so many people who are struggling or broke, by calling $45,000 affordable seems unnecessary and almost like you are gaslighting people to create conflict for no good reason. I am very much so in touch with what it was like to be poor and I remember when I was broke. $45,000 for a vehicle was not what I would consider affordable!
I thought this was common sense.
@@rossmanngroup I gotta admit I'm pretty disappointed with the model 3. I remember while it was in development there was a lot of talk of it starting as low as ~$30k (cant remember if that was before or after that $7.5k tax credit) then lo and behold it's here and it starts at $45k??? I thought I was going to buy one and just scrape by for a bit, but forget that. I think a $30k EV with ~300 mi range would be great for many people.
I think the government should step up and subsidize the charging network and make em use solar or other renewable electricity. They gotta start pumping money into this and come up with real solutions because we're up against the clock. The ice in Antarctica and Greenland ain't gonna go back after it melts/falls into the ocean.
@@rossmanngroup I think the big thing that can help a lot of us poorer, or the lower income people would be kits to refit existing ICE cars into electric ones. Yes, I know this is a lot of work, but if a company could sell full kits for certain ranges of vehicles, then people could have the electric for clean driving that they want, without having to buy a brand new car. I've got a beater of a terrible old Land Rover, which I was an idiot to even pay a grand for, which I'd love to electrify - if I could get 450 miles of range out of it. The tech isn't there yet, but I have hope that within the next five years, battery technology will be better, and cheaper, and there will be more universal controllers out there which will allow someone like me, who was an auto mechanic at one point, to do my own conversion and keep what is a functional vehicle still on the road, for hopefully under six grand. Am I dreaming? Maybe, but it's a dream I'm willing to work towards. Electrified old Land Rover Discovery with that range? Boom, that's a forever car, and I can use my hard-earned money on other things, like my own small business, instead of a new car.
Preach man!! $45k being affordable is bonkers. These people are so out of touch.
@@TheRealSykx he ice in Antarctica and Greenland ain't gonna melt if the temperature rises from -40 to -30.
Until electric vehicles can penetrate the used market without the battery replacement price stigma they probably won't be considered affordable.
Electric vehicles are cellphones with wheels. After a few years their value is all lost and the battery is no good. Replacement is not cheap and will never be.
or renewable for that matter my 96 intrepid is more environmentally friendly.
They lose value faster than Clark steps into a booth and changes into Superman lmao.
@@eclark9965 Why would it be never? Maybe some day they will create a "magical" battery that can be recharged so many times that it lasts 100 years.
We will need to see how long they will last, first of all. Tesla’s batteries are rated for 1mil miles
To me, the fact that you are a fan of something and can still point out flaws suggests credibility. Keep it up.
People criticize things because they care and want what they're criticizing to be better.
@@TheTundraTerror Nah, lots of people just complain to complain.
Also that rant about late 90's internet
@@talon5453 Both can exist. Not sure why a "nah" was needed.
@@leonfrancis3418 because he said "people" as in all people, which ain't the case. Hence, "nah"
something i'm surprised you didn't bring up that is a huge factor is how the owners would charge their cars. One of the huge draws to people for electric vehicles is the ability to charge at home and start your day with a full tank. Poorer people who live in apartments probably dont have access to a charging station they can plug in at home. They would have to rely on external charging networks to charge up their car. In addition to the fact that they are more expensive, electric cars for the lower class are also drastically less convenient.
I was about to say the same. A very large segment of the population can't afford to own a house and live in condos or apartments where they cannot charge at home. This point is so often overlooked it baffles me.
I just imagined some mindless influencer or EV activist saying in Cartmans voice "Well, they should stop being poor then"... I f*cking shuddered.
There are other options for a long range trip but i would argue most ppl who can afford those types of card arent really using a car that way anyhow.
Never mind the fact that someone working a shift work job, or working 10-12 hour+ days that might not even have the time to charge it. I drove 70 miles daily to get to my $14/hr job and back during the summer last year, where I had to leave to go to work at 6am and would get home at 8pm. Luckily I have a garage, but I don't have 240v in my garage. That job wouldn't have been possible on with the cheap or mid tier options without significant overhaul of infrastructure.
@@kcpwnsgman You don't have to have 240 to charge the vehicle. It takes longer on 110 which is actually good for the battery. If I had access to a 110 plug in my garage I'd just charge it overnight.
Louis, I completely get your point and I appreciate what you have to say, but I just want you to know it is very triggering when you ask me how it is going and you don't leave any time for me to answer. Please think of the actual people behind the screen next time.
Lol
This needs to get pinned pronto xD
Yes! i find it very insensitive too, thank you for sharing your feelings sweetie.Theyre Valid!😘
I hope you learned something.
LMAO
Louis: "Technology only gets cheaper as time goes on"
The gpu market: hold my beer
And the funny thing is I just picked up a 5800h 3070 300W laptop for $1350 with discounts on veterans day. The price gouge isn't affecting laptops.
@@Drebin2293 They have access to lower level market. Directly buying the chips and making their own solutions. Shortage is higher up on the production ladder
But the prices in the GPU market have nothing to do with the technology, but simply scarcity of supply.
Anything that uses chips really... so I fear cars will the the same. Until they come up with a different tech that does not require silicon and very complex manufacturing processes that can only be done in a few parts of the world, I think we're in for a rough ride. What I'd love is a no frills EV with basically no electronics other than the BMS and motor controller. That stuff can be done with somewhat discrete components and bigger nm process chips that may still have decent inventory in big warehouses.
Not funny
Its weird how the people calling electric cars affordable use "unfair" as an argument when its proven that they aren't affordable.
cognitive dissonance has gotten out of control and people on the internet have become completely detached from the average person
it's almost like there's an unfair advantage of being wealthy that there isn't for people who don't make over 100k a year
The people have no credibility when they cannot identify that an EV is not even a true ICE car replacement until manufacturers build charging networks so you can use an EV exactly the same as an ICE. Tesla is the only company in north america with proper chargers to enable full ICE replacement. The bolt was sub 30k, but was only usable by people who only need local driving and will never leave town. 60kw charging would require 2 hour charge stops vs a tesla's 20-30min. Build chargers first. That enables sales off EV in higher volumes and that reduces the cost. You must focus on the fundamental reason no one but tesla is having any success selling EVs. Tesla is not going to lower prices while they still sell 100% of their EV at the current higher prices. Tesla has to wait and see if they sell out their new factories when they hit full production at the current prices before they lower prices. Even cheap high quality chinese EVs cannot help if there are no chargers to support them. They will just displace bolt and leaf sales, not enable more EV buying overall.
Or making arguments like "its cheaper then my Rav 4 I put 2500 miles on a month, just in gas"
Well. I would argue maintenance costs help equalize that metric.
New cars are not affordable period. The depreciation is brutal. Insurance is lost money. Gasoline is more expensive than ever.
It's so true about the early adopter tax. I purchased a digital camera in 1997 for $1,300 at Camera Mart. It was a Kodak 1.2MP with 5x optical zoom! I was just into the hobby (not that I was wealthy) and put it on layaway. I got derided by my own family for paying so much for a camera 'fad'! Now everyone has high end digital cameras in their cellphones! You're welcome.
What gets me anxious is the vehicle manufacturers - in cahoots with government - are pushing full adoption timelines that are just unrealistic for the vast majority of people. I have 3 ICE vehicles (all fully paid for by the way), who's going to ridiculously subsidize replacing that for me? I'm on disability! To me, transportation is freedom. Being able to freely assemble requires being able to travel to where the assemblage is after all! So it is unpatriotic to foist limited traveling options upon a free republic!
Another aspect of this is used gas cars for many decades would eventually come down in price so low that someone with just a few hundred bucks could get a car that was probably going to get them back and forth to work and was cheap to repair. I don't ever picture the day an electric car with a fairly good battery will sell for the equivalent of $600-$1200 and need minimum repair. In my teens, through my late 20s, I picked up most of my cars for around that and some much cheaper. They would eventually need an alternator, or breaks or an exhaust that I could all do myself for fairly cheap. I don't picture repairing anything on cheap used electric vehicles for $50-$100 cost equivalent.
I mean you can buy a 2009 Corolla for like 5000 USD, and that cars has good mileage, good security, and even if it has 250000 Miles is going to drive another 250000
@@Ms666slayer which isn't bad but its still not $1200 and it's still a gas car. I don't know if Electric cars will ever be that cheap adjusted for inflation, or even $5000.
yes so pretty soon the poor and anyone below upper middle class will no longer be able to afford to drive or buy any car new or used
oh and don't forget that on EVs, the "owner" is not permitted to open the hood.
@@GreenBlueWalkthrough Doubtful at least not with current LI-ON technology.
No, you're not wrong. People keep going on about "the average cost of a new car in the US is $45,000". But that gets inflated by rich people with their big trucks and SUV's. MOST people are not buying $45,000+ cars. Most people that are buying new cars are in the $20,000-$25,000 range. Actually, it's more accurate to say that most people can't even afford that and are paying $5,000 or less for used cars. While the Model 3 is definitely the most affordable electric vehicle given its features and capabilities, it is definitely well out of the range of a large segment of people. This is why we won't see penetration of EV's into the "mass market" where basically everyone buys one, until there is one available for around $20,000 new. And I'm not talking about those little cheap Chinese 2 seater things that have a 40 mile range and are only designed for cheap transportation in dense urban areas. They aren't necessariyl bad vehicles for what they are designed for (quality control notwithstanding), but they would not work for most people in the US.
Most new vehicles in the US that are of good quality are $25,000 minimum and those are usually stripped of a lot of features. Realistically the median new vehicle price is probably closer to $30-32,000. Also, it is very unlikely any new quality EV will fall below $25,000 in the next decade, especially with inflation.
@@Bonanzaking Most people aren't even financing $45k cars.
@@randomman057 And that is one reason why sales of new cars are plummeting (except for EV's) and why the ICE manufacturers are in so much trouble.
Most people are definitely financing cars over 30k. Look on the roads
@@vanderumd11 Just need to look at the top selling vehicles in the US from 2021. More than half of the top 10 are SUVs that easily MSRP for $30-40k. The rest of the vehicles are sedans that MSRP for $26-28k.
As someone who lives in a city with a housing crisis (see: all major Canadian cities), I recently bought a new gas car because I can't afford to live at a place that has a garage / plug-in for a purely electric vehicle.
that's another huge talking point that doesn't get discussed enough.
we are pro's at making ICEs more efficient with that mass to energy conversion function (coasting in neutral downhills)
To be fair, you don’t need a garage, I charge my car outside. You do need to be able to get closest enough to your house to do so, which depends on if you have a drive way or not. I’d say a drive is necessary. You may be able to get away with street parking only if you can park directly in front of your house.
@@PerfectorZY lol I know right. Like look people just get a 300ft extension cable and hope the bums don't steal it for the copper. People are so ignorant.
@@PerfectorZY alot of parking stalls have plugins for 120V/240V europe.
Because snow.
I can do more than 500 miles in my awd Passat easily. Spent about 1k dollars for it and had no major problems. I absolutely love this car and i am pretty sure it will ve functional even after todays EVs made will be dead. Its made in 2001 and i think it has everything everyone needs in their car.
The good old 1.9TDI will last another 100 years easily.
You spent a lot more than "about 1k dollars". This is why you, Louis, and 80% of the comments section are wrong. Affordability is the inverse of cost. Cost is not (just) sticker price.
Nope. I did not, just a basic diy maintenance and upgrades that were not needed. I get 28 to 36 mpg of diesel in awd car. Not bad even for todays standard in a car that is remapped to ~140-150hp. I love diying on this car and trust it more than any other modern piece of brown sauce. But yea, you are right, i gotta change my timing belt set. I paid 150 bucks for INA with water pump, vibration damper and belt tensioner. I mean, why would i want anything other? As the previous comment said, if you take care of it, it can run forever ... There are TDis which have over a million of miles. If i had EV, i would pay similar cost for electricity to what i pay for diesel right now. I mean there is a simple question. Why would i want anything other?
@@vratislavrusz9284 You wouldn't pay a similar cost for electricity as you pay for diesel, and if you did (which you could in a few parts of the world), you would be free riding while polluting and externalizing the true costs of your diesel to the rest of us.
@@weksauce in fact, now it is, there certainly are fuel efficient diesels which have even over 55mpg ... Even if you consider unfair advantages of EVs, there still are cars more "Fuel" efficient, than Tesla 3 for example.
I took a roadtrip from eastern North Dakota to central Montana in my "335-mile range" rated Model S. Based on my experience driving various Tesla models in extreme cold, you can lose up to 65% (Model X) of your rated range when driving into a 20mph wind at -20 Farenheit. So, 300 miles becomes 105 miles. The Model S and 3 don't lose quite as much as the Model X, but the range under such conditions is cut roughly in half for those 2.
Good God, a EV owner that actually tells the real facts. The thing to really grasp here, is you are talking about the top of the line EV's with the most efficient systems in the world. I live in the Midwest, and know what cold does to batteries. I have no trouble believing your numbers. The problem is nobody wants to talk about problems like that.
Nice to see someone bring up this point.
@@golfmaniac I was about to say, no one wants to talk about the elephant in the room. I live in the mid-west and even here winter can be brutal. There are going to be all kinds of issues with EVs in the cold.
Meanwhile petrol cars get more range and efficiency in cold weather, it's as if there are factors that determine what tool is the the best pick for each person !
I have a question for all you US people : since range is so important for your cross-country travels, why isn't diesel most popular ?
Diesel cars consistently outclass petrol cars in range and efficiency.
You're getting royaly screwed there...
I've had this argument for so many times, thank you for bringing some common sense into the equation...
As you have shown, cross-country is like a big NO if I want to visit my grandma who lives about 60 miles away, need a bit of range there to drive around and then come back to my home because I don't wanna make her bankrupt charging at her house (electricity is not cheap in Germany).
So I am looking at a vehicle with about 150-200mi range minimum. The Leaf with 75 mi is just... a toy. Thanks for pointing that out.
So, cross-country is... NO ;)
What about using it in the city?
People often say, hey, you can charge electric cars whenever they are stationary, at your home, at the shop, when you go to the doctor, at work...
Again: no. I don't have a charging point at home because I park at the side of the road and that can be different every time I park a car and we don't really have public chargers nearby. Only one and that is is occupied several times a week by a market. Like now, for instance.
So charging at home? No.
What about charging at a shop? We don't have charging points at any shop I am frequently visiting in a range of about 1,5mi. Doctors the same. So charging then? No.
Charging at work? Kinda yes, when you are at work. With Covid I wasn't working in my company since March 2020, but just imagine I would be doing that.
There is ONE charger with 2 plugs for hundreds of workers. And the charger may only be occupied for 3 hours max, after that you get a parking ticket for exceeding the allowed time.
So, charging at work? Difficult but maybe possible.
With all the circumstances, an electric car is more or less unchargeable in my everyday life and they are frickin' expensive.
In 2016 I paid 3900€ for my Mk4 Golf with about 430mi range and it takes me literally minutes to fill it up with the same range again. Yes, of course it is an ICE and fuel is getting expensive, but when you look at electric cars that cost about 30, 35 or 40k€ and upwards... I paid a tenth of that, so I will be able to afford a LOT of petrol and repairs for the price difference...
So E-cars are currently a big big no in any way possible.
And yes, technology will evolve, they will be cheaper and charging points will appear more regularly, but TODAY they are not. I cannot charge a car with a future charging station that is not there yet...
DC fast charging infrastructure isn't quite there yet, so given your circumstances, you shouldn't buy an EV, but most people in the US, live in urban areas, where they can frequently charge their vehicle, even if they can't charge at home. Also, home charging is cheap everywhere in the US.
I thought Germany has great mass transit, so you could take the train to your grandma's place and also use public transit to get to and from work. I may be wrong, but it's a lot easier to live without having to drive everywhere in Germany. I predict the infrastructure for EV charging will become better and better in the future (Norway has lots of public chargers). New apartment complexes are installing more and more EV chargers in their parking garages. Used EVs will come down in price. Also, around the world, more and more people are moving to cities, and investments in mass transit are increasing, so you may not need to drive every day. Yes EVs may not be ready now for mass adoption, but they will be very soon!
@@empirestate8791 They may be "very soon", but that doesn't help me now.
And yes, public transport is quite OK here, but when you want to visit rural areas, simply forget it.
And: a car is a lot faster than public transport. To visit my Grandma by train and bus I need about 2 hours door to door.
With my car about 1 hour, 1:15.
And I haven't brought Covid into the equation yet, no one will get me to use public transport at the moment, I don't want to catch that stuff.
That's fair. As with every major financial decision, everyone needs to look at their own life and use cases. For EVs, availability of charging options and maximum daily range are big factors.
I can easily charge at home and at my work (my work makes charging free) and I'm only like 15 miles from my office. I don't need my EV for road trips because I live a 2 hour drive from major cities, so I do everything locally. But not everyone has the same situation. Luis himself said he bikes almost everywhere, so he only owns a car for longer distance travel, but that doesn't mean everyone is in that same situation.
@@ferrari2k I think that's currently the biggest issue with EVs, that long range models are just too expensive. Most people live in urban areas in the US and don't need a long range on a daily basis, but they may go on occasional long trips, and because public transit here is terrible, it's very difficult to leave the city if you don't own a car (with maybe Chicagoland and NYC Metro Areas being the only exceptions). I don't own a car and have a zipcar subscription which I can use for long trips, but then again, only the gas powered cars are cheap, and I'm pretty sure that a Tesla zipcar would cost 2 to 3 times as much. But we'll see - as more investments are made into public transportation and EVs increase in range (and Teslas and other older EVs depreciate), we'll see them surpass gas power cars, like what's already happening in Norway. Subsidies will help speed things up.
I grew up in Africa, the cars we drove we're mostly older and cheap to repair - it was vital for them to fit this bill. Getting a decade old car was a luxury - we even bought second hand cars with a mental note that it'll have to last many years to be worth it financially. Not being able to fix it or get a part often meant walking for miles daily as our family like many others only had a single car. The electricity grid isn't the best and is often off for hours, the infrastructure in general is lacking - never mind a super charger network. Sadly unlike ice vehicles these cars when they are worn out in US/Europe and many end up dumped in Africa will be of little to no use at all - they simply won't be affordable/practical to use and maintain. Guessing many will simply end up in a less than ideal recycling system and parts used for other things.
People i know will decrease the cars dumped in africa by a lot
The "used" battery packs will fetch a higher price here than in africa and most of the motors are readibly reusable, making them interesting to reusers
If cars are not widely available, how come the cities/towns arent built with things more closer together? I'm just curious, because I hear other cities built before the invention of the car had shops and homes much closer together in distance.
@@Ruffles2012 because they are built for and by people who have cars looking to western (especially American) cities as the standard.
@@Ruffles2012 can you rephrase that?
I spend about 5k per year on gas in California. It cost's me $50 to get 220 miles of range. I looked up the going rate for 220 miles of range from a super charger and it was just about $16 here in the Bay Area. That's a savings of $34 every 220 miles. 100,000 miles / 220 miles = 454.5 fill ups every 100,000 miles. 454.5 x $34 = $15,454.5 in gas savings over that 100k miles. However, with the Tesla, you need far less maintenance, so factoring that in, you right about even at 100,000 miles between the gas and electric, assuming when you 60k mile warranty expires on the gas car (if you even get that good of a warranty), nothing major fails, like how my transmission (6k to repair) and engine (5k to repair) went up at 62k miles and 68k miles on my last car. You SHOULD easily get 200k miles on the Tesla with no major failures, including the battery. So with an addition 15k in gas savings the next 100k miles, at 200k, the gas car is at 19k + $22,725 (first 100k miles of gas) + $22,725 (second 100k miles of gas) + maintenance (hard to determine, but defiantly much higher than the tesla), so at least $64,450 in costs, and you'll probably be well over 70k in reality as you'll likely need serious engine and transmission work (cars are not built the same today as they were in the 90's and early 2000's). Now with the Tesla model 3, lets say you start at 40k + $7272 (first 100k miles of electricity) + $7272 (second 100k miles of electricity) = $54,544 for 200k miles of driving. Worst case, let's assume the Teslas battery fails and the gas car needs a new transmission and engine. They would then be about neck and neck, except gas cars require oil changes (now with synthetic at around $60 every 6000 miles, brake pads every 30k miles at $400, and rotors every 60k miles at over $1000 for all 4... Not to mention all of the other maintenance needed on gas cars like timing chains or belts. There's no doubt the math shows clearly electric cars today is cheaper than gas cars today. This doesn't factor in that you could have solar at home, use that to fuel your car, farther lowering fueling costs. BTW, I'm not a Tesla fanboy or EV fanboy, I'm buying another gas guzzling Turbo car very soon. But the math seems clear based on my situation in the bay area.
I know that this is a whole different conversation, but... The idea of "oh you/I can't afford it? Just finance it!" has been growing pretty strong over the past 20 years. (the amount of time I have been aware of this behavior.) Car manufacturers/dealerships are aware of this, and it's scary.
This is true, I have a friend who's in car sales and he basically told me that dealership make all their money off financing and not the sale of the car. You will actually have a much harder time buying the car out right than financing it. He also mentioned that they also prefer people with less money because the rates are gonna be much worse for them and they are gonna be paying much longer. So when they say it's expensive to be poor this is what they mean.
In my country, 90% of people just finance them because it's impossible for almost everyone to buy a new car with cash, I bought used car, really old used car, I can pay for that extra gas from its high consumption, and it is still much cheaper than financing a new car.
The best way to make someone work for you is to make them debters to you
@@hamsterwolf instead of making rich people pay more they squeeze as much from the poor as they can. Disgusting
@@Gigachad-mc5qz yup it's super messed up.
Toyota Prius and Prius Prime have 530+ mile range on fossils. The Prime has 25+ miles EV range on top of that. These are on stone age, port injected, naturally aspirated 4 cylinder engines. They are now literally the oldest production engines in Toyota's USA lineup and still get 50+MPG and exceed CARB emissions requirements.
Very rational choice for a road trip.
For big countries with lots of long empty roads like the USA, Canada, and Australia, a hybrid is definitely a better option. I'm in Australia and EV sales are tiny. The range limitations, the high cost, and the lack of charging stations the moment you leave the major Hwys mean that not many get sold. I want an EV but I need more range for the driving I do
@@steampunkskunk3638 Another factor is being a renter. A renter in most of this country does not have the ability to charge a car where they live.
I'm glad you discussed the range issues.
So many who insist the country go full electric tend to not realize that us in flyover country have a LOT of distance between populated areas, and that to even run out if gas is already a concern when going on a trip.
I frequently drive from DC to upstate NY to visit family. Considering it is 500 miles of highway (where EV range is much worse than advertised) I'd be stopping 3-4 times and that's going to be a BIG problem if one of the chargers is out of service along the way.
The apologists say that it doesn't matter. If there's only one fast charging point along a 200mile route not only will everyone else in an 200-250m range EV need to use it, you'd better hope it's working. When an affordable and tiny Ford Fiesta can do 300-400 miles on single tank these EV ranges don't look so good.
One should take an electric car for what it is today. For those who regularly need a car for longer trips, an EV is not a suitable only vehicle.
I drive max 40 miles a day for errands, so a cheap 2nd hand EV with ~100 mile range (eg. 201x Leaf) would cover 90% of my needs. The other 10% involve longer trips or require a tow hook, meaning a second car or rental.
@@randomvideosn0where You can tell the EV drivers on the highway too (you probably take I95); they're in the slow lane going 62 mph. They talk about 300 mile range, but if you have the air or heater on you lose 10% of that range. And if you go 70-80 mph, you lose another 20%.
So when those EV guys talk about how fast their car is, ask them what the range is at 80 mph, and suddenly they get all moral and complain that "80 is illegal!". So why brag about how fast they can go?
@@upsidefoobarbaz you would run into a major problem when you need to drive somewhere further than your car could reach.
Optimistically that 100 mile drive range will get you 50-60 considering weather and real road conditions. Beyond 50 or 60, you would need to rent a normal vehicle and the price and availability of rental vehicles is so bad right now that you'll basically ruin the savings on gas money for a year or worse.
As a not rich person who needs to regularly travel in the ~400 mile range I can say that you are completely correct. There are zero affordable electric vehicles that make any sense to me at all. I'm currently using my ancient Honda Accord that gets nearly 40 mpg. If I were to spend $20,000 on a car, can I get something that I can at least charge while on the road and not overnight (I can't afford the time or money for a hotel and 8 hours of downtime for a car to refuel, and that's just one way)? Not that I know of. That's enough to make the idea of an electric car dead to me. I don't care about 0-60 mph times. I care about usability, reliability and range.
What ancient honda accord gets 40mpg?
@@rsxfreak03 My 1994 Honda Accord does on the highway if I don't speed (and I don't). An early to mid 1990s Honda Civic can easily get in the 50+ mpg range, that's especially true for the Civic VX.
@@TheQuickSilver101 That car got no more than 30mpg. Not sure how you're calculating your mpg but it isn't correct.
@@rsxfreak03 Total miles between fill ups divided by total gallons it takes to fill the tank. I know how to calculate gas mileage, it's not that hard. I regularly get in the high 30s. It's not that difficult of you have a manual transmission and are willing to drive conservatively.
@Chad OT You're simply incorrect. It cost on average 0.25 per kwh at a Tesla SC station. With my 82 kwh battery it would cost $20.50 to charge to 100%. That 100% gets me about 320-330 miles of range. That breaks down to $6.40/ per 100 miles. So, $25.60 to travel 400 miles.
I also own a 2017 Honda CRV that gets 32mpg highway. That'll use about 12.5 gallons of fuel to travel 400 miles. Locally, gasoline is $3.05/gallon. So that'll cost $38.13 to travel 400 miles. A difference of $12.52, or $3.13 per 100 miles. With the average American driving 14,300/year that works out to $447/year of fuel savings.
Again, this is EXCLUSIVELY charging at SuperCharger stations. Most EV owners charge at home AND gasoline prices are extremely vilotile. could be $4.00/gallon in 3 months, making the difference even more extreme.
I visited your channel. You're a Tesla owner. You understand these price differences. Even if we use YOUR NUMBERS, $10 difference to fill up, and use my ICE as a comparison the difference over a year is still well over $400. That's $2400 over a 6 year ownership. That's a significant difference.
Dude, my $4,000 car got hit by a deer and rear-ended by an eighteen-wheeler and insurance wouldn't cover it. It's been over a year and I still don't have a car.
How is a $45,000 car supposed to be "affordable"? It'd be one thing if owning a car was optional for getting around, but in many, many parts of the country, it very much isn't.
It is affordable to people who make 60,000+ per year and have put down either a large down-payment, high credit score, or very long term loan.
Sticker price is only one part of cost, and affordability is the inverse of cost. Can you really not imagine how something could cost less but have a higher sticker price?
Sorry to be that guy but I hope you dropped that insurance company. Even though I've had major communication issues with State Farm, I got 4000 dollars because a tree branch took out the back window of the Volvo I paid 1200 for (it was declared a total loss, and since I would have only gotten about 400 dollars for signing it over to them, I just took a salvage title).
@@weksauce sure we can. The problem is that the difference is so drastic. If you're wise about it, you can own a car for a decade for well under 8 grand (including the original purchase price of the car). You would have to do a lot of driving or have very bad gas mileage for the cost of ownership and operation to come anywhere close to a Telsa. That's why people using the argument you brought forth either are doing so in bad faith, or haven't thought their position through.
@@awesomeferret I'm arguing in good faith, and I've done the calculations. EVs are more affordable than their ICEV counterparts. What people on your side are often missing is that the comp/counterpart to a Tesla is an ICEV with ridiculous performance. Teslas are expensive. Cars in general are expensive. Neither of these facts has anything to do with the main point: EVs are more affordable than their ICEV counterparts. A Civic/Camry/CRV doesn't compare to any Tesla, except maybe if you're looking across a decade plus of model years (2011 Tesla S vs 2022 Civic?). The only comp to the current 0-60 and 1/4 mile champion is the Ferrari in 2nd place, which is slower and costs $755k instead of $135k.
You can't own (and legally and safely drive) a normal ICEV for "well under" $8k in the US normal distances over a decade. You can own an EV for less than the corresponding ICEV. I calculated a $0 sticker price Corolla to cost $268/mo, and the brand new Chevy Bolt I bought to cost $275. The Bolt ended up costing less, because charging was essentially 100% free, instead of my original estimate. Maybe you have a very specific definition of "car" that allows you to classify the tiny cars as "car", and maybe they cost substantially less than a free (sticker price) Toyota Corolla. But I doubt that very much. And, even if there is such a car, the same car but electric will dominate it in affordability.
Forget 10 grand, for $500 you could pick up an old shitbox that would run and drive. it won't be comfortable or fancy or fast but it will get you from point A to point B. That will never happen with electric car.
I think you are showing your age here. Any car that runs and drives is worth at least $1000 now. The used car market was climbing for several years in the US even before covid.
Last time I went hunting for cars, 500 would get you a "mechanics special", which is a broken car you give to self-taught enthusiast mechanic who wants to rebuild a vehicle.
@@emptyshirt I just bought a 2008 Chevy Impala for $500. I think you're the one showing that you're out of touch with the real world.
@@ryguy9876 All it needed was brakes and tires and an oil change. Hardly something you need a professional for. Oh, one brake pin was seized up.
@@MickeyD2012 I think it's highly dependent on your location. I haven't seen a $500 runner for a long time in my area.
Falling in line with this: There are no affordable cars anymore. Regardless of whether they're ICE or EV. The lowest rung cars you can get right now are the Mitsubishi Mirage at $15,000 and the Nissan Versa sedan at $16,000 (good luck finding either at anything near MSRP). Then it jumps up to $25,000 and increases by about $2,000 for each level above that.
For most Americans, they make $36,000 a year. This isn't the mean, this isn't the median, or the average. These are the real numbers not inflated by crap like CEO incomes or high wage cities like New York or Los Angeles. These are people stuck working part time thirty five hour or less weeks for $12 an hour. That $25,000 for a new car is more than half their entire income for a year. And with loans and interest rates on average of 2.25% over 72 months, that $25,000 becomes $29,700. A $4,700 increase over the original sales price.
In short, new cars are unaffordable.
He talks about this and how essential the used marker is for most Americans. The problem is that EVs won't have a used market after around 10 years olds. If the cars cannot be used for 75-100 miles 10 years old they are worthless to most people.
Used cars are genuinely appreciating in value.
It’s not just new cars!
Manufacturers aren’t making base model cars, so those advertisements under $20k aren’t real, the ones available will have extra features, generally adding around 20% to the base price.
It’s gunna be funny to watch as “car culture” helps to kill our car culture.
@@seemlesslies Not to mention the battery completly dies not much longer than that, and it alone is like 1/3 of the cost of the vehicle to replace.
If you don't mind me asking, where did you find that $36,000 statistic?
@@isaiahsmith6016 When you exclude the upper ten percent of incomes, those being $530,000 a year and above, and when you exclude cities with massive populations such as Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Portland, St. Louis, Austin, and Houston, it pushes the actual incomes down by a *lot.* A dramatic amount. Most of America live in satellite suburbs or live in smaller towns and commute to smaller cities. These are mostly the people working retail, working customer service, working the food industry, and working in repairs services.
Most of those places serve an average of $12/hr. as the base level income, working 35 hour weeks on an average of 48 weeks a year. So that's a little over $20,000. That sets our bottom prices. Even if we push it up to 40 hours (which is full time, and most of these places avoid appointing full time like it's the plague), that's still only a little under $23,000 a year. Most specialized career trades like electrician outside of the major metropolitan areas make $28/hr. as an average. Working 40 hour weeks for 48 weeks, that's $54,000 rounded up. That's our upper range.
When you average out the low end of $20,000 and the high end of $54,000 you get $48,000 because it's 54+20/2. But that can't be right, as the number of specialized trades is about 1:4 per basic non-specialized labour. For every four retail/fast food/customer service jobs there's a specialized trader like electrician. So it's $48,000 - 25%. Which leaves us with $36,000.
There are very few affordable new cars overall, ignoring the whole EV thing. Many reasons why this is the case, but essentially carmakers no longer make them and the ones that do won't be for long.
The but with ice cars y9u have a large second hand market.
Which you will never have with evs as the battery replacements cost 20k ish.
@@deth3021 I wish people would stop talking like Tesla are the only carmaker out there, they're not, and they might be the worst. The traditional carmakers figured out this out a long time ago and realized that cars need replaceable battery trays - they might not have been first to market, but they have stronger engineering with more considered positions. Most cars it isn't anywhere even close to that and modern batteries with active cooling and heating (never buy an EV that doesn't have those) the batteries are going to last for eternity anyway.
@@streaky81 you mean like the Nissan leaf and it's 14k replacement battery?
@@deth3021 ew, even worse.
@Night and Day
That would never happen here in Europe, and we don't even have the second amendment 😜😇👍🏼
I did some work about 300 miles away using an electric car. In my standard ICE car, it's a slog of a drive at 5 hours. But it's doable and we scheduled to stay over in Newcastle in any case. The journey was a nightmare. The advertised 250 mile range was total nonsense especially when loaded with equipment and extra bodies. Instead of two stops, it was four. And waiting an hour each time to get some charge on it once we did find a bay that wasn't in use, we kept clock watching to make sure we weren't over the 2 hour time limit at the services. We did the work in Newcastle and found there were no charging bays near the hotel we were staying at. The first task in the morning was to find somewhere to wait another hour for the thing to charge up. I think the best range we got was 128 miles (or so the dash said) from the full charge. For me, an electric car even if it they did become cheap to buy is just not viable. If I need to do mileage while hauling gear, I can't double the time a journey takes and risk not getting to where people need to be because we're busy hunting trying to find a vacant charging bay. Oh and at one of the services we stopped at, there were two cars queueing for the two out of four charging bays that were actually working. But an hour to get a quick charge of somewhat reasonable distance just isn't reasonable. There is only so much coffee you can ingest in a day waiting for a car to finish charging. In fact, my girlfriend's parents have two EVs and their son has a diesel VW Golf For anything further than the end of their street, they borrow the son's Golf. £60k worth of car and they are consistently more reliant on a £7k Golf to get to where they need to go. Given the legislation put in place in the UK, I think transferring to EVs is inevitable. But I don't see how it isn't going to have a major impact on peoples' movement, quality of life and therefore acceptance of EVs. Ford are daringly stating that they're only producing EVs from 2030. The big joke is if you check out the Ford Mondeo Estate all-electric. Most of the boot space is taken up with the battery... totally killing the point of it being an estate. It makes no sense to me right now.
EVs are not for road trips (yet). Road trips are very rare. For 99% of personal use cases, EVs trump ICEVs, and even for many of those people who went anything other than Tesla, the optimum is to rent/exchange for an ICEV for the rare road trip.
@@weksauce I see. And for someone like me that road trips regularly that needs certain items fitted to my vehicle to perform my duties, should I just stop doing those things? Or pay a fortune to rent a suitable car almost daily when I'm working? And what does it matter how often you drive further than 100 miles in a day. An ev is still unsuitable, overpriced and not actually up to the task. Not to sound like a raving lunatic, being from the uk, the US system of gun control and alien abductions is not something I come across in normal everyday sane life, but they can take my car from my cold dead hands.
@@jonsick445 No. It's your work vehicle, so your employer can and should pay for a fleet of ICEVs. If you're your own employer, then this statement still applies. And you would still come out ahead owning an EV for your personal use, which doesn't require the "performance" of any "duties".
@@weksauce this is still weak. I work a day job and freelance in entertainment. So I am my own employer. But from your thought process and seemingly the British Government agree with you, is that I can no longer own a vehicle that is fit for purpose. The best I can do is now pay for a personal use EV which will cost me £30,000 and an ICE based commercial vehicle which in order to purchase will require commercial insurance despite the fact that my usage never qualifies as business class. Lets be real. The only reason governments and manufacturers are pushing EVs with the deadlines that they are doing is pure and simple. It is to gouge the consumer for something that they do not need. And if they did need them, they would arrive at those conclusions themselves. Thrusting them onto the driving public come hell or high water through penalty of sheer cost or having to essentially be forced to quit doing anything other than your day job like a good little office drone is pure and simple malevolence. I'm not here trying to argue about something daft. A huge swathe of the populous is reliant on personal transport. And regardless of whether its for a day job or not, the reliance is equally as valid. The old guy across the Road from me with a 15 year old Vauxhall Astra doesn't have £30k to buy an EV. As his only method of getting to town or family is by car, how exactly is he meant to do that without a car when there is no public transport available where we are? This is a make believe world where its demanded that a use case that fits so few is legislated to fit the many regardless of the consequences.
@@jonsick445 No, you don't have to forfeit your existing car. It's important that (essentially) every new car be electric, but it's better if people keep driving what they've got until it gets more costly to keep than to discard.
Only a tiny swath of the populace is reliant on cars for transportation, and the percentage is shrinking every day. It's very inefficient (and ineffective) to live sparsely, which is why economics have been and continue to be driving people into higher densities. Even if a car is a smart transportation choice (which is very rare), it doesn't have to be individually owned. It would be better from every perspective (health and wealth) if we biked around dense cities day-to-day, and only used EVs to travel between cities on longer trips. Those obviously would be cheaper if they were collectively owned (or rented as needed, it's the same thing).
Look around the UK. Nearly every car is sitting idle, nearly all the time. This is economically and ecologically retarded.
Man, I am glad SOMEONE is saying this. I'd love to own an electric vehicle, just simply because I don't find going to the gas station an enjoyable experience. 50k isn't a reasonable price for most people. MAYBE if I was making 6 figures, but right now? Not even remotely. It's kind of baffled me the amount of news stories that come out with "affordable" electric cars that are 50+k.
Their benchmark is the folks who live in San Francisco or Seattle
@@M167A1 even then most of the people who live there are poor as shit. Most of the media is for well-to-do upper middle class people.
You can't buy a decent gas car that anyone with standards would want for any cheaper than you can get a good EV. Plus an EV is always a better standard because you're helping the environment.
And before you say you can't afford to have standards, dude I'm barely old enough to drink and making minimum wage. I still bought an EV.
It's just a used one. And one with modern features like self driving. Find me an 18k ICE car with features like that lmfao.
@@datachu where did u get the car and how do u charge it?
Average new car sale price for 2021 was over 40k so
THANK YOU FOR THIS! No one in my family has a car worth over $20k, always buy used, and use them until they are falling apart. I commute 100miles a day (50 going 50coming), so I got a used fuel efficient car that’s only a few years old, 16k after tax tittle and license. It gets 365miles on an 11gallon tank.
same drove my 2016 sedan 6hrs on the highway maxing 40mpg before i had to stop for gas let along stretch breaks.
In 2019, a used Chevy Bolt, 240 miles range (and yes, it really got that) was $14k.
Yeah here in Mexico we bough an used 2016 Forester the best model that was available at the tome for 12500K the cars is inpecable and runs perfectly.
1999 great year to buy a used chevy or gmc bought mine for $600 been driving it for 2 years sure it has 275000 miles and some rust but its paid for itself 10x over and lights the tires up on command lol
Always be sure to include floor mats and an extra set of keys...I hear keys can be upward to $500 and beyond now.
"$45k is affordable!"
My first car was a '98 Bluebird/Altima, it cost $300, and it ran after a (irony alert) battery change that I did in 5 minutes using basic tools with a battery bought at any independent store. It has a fuel line block somewhere so it won't idle properly (cuts out at traffic lights), but you just keep the revs up at 1k and it holds. If I can ever be bothered I'll fix it up.
Back in the 80's i bought a 79 Toyota Corona for $2900 and drive that untill the mid 90's . Then in the 90's I bought a 71 Landcruser fj40 for $1500 and drove it 5 years. then I bought a 86 volvo 240 wagon for $400 and drove it for 3 years. then i bought a 85 Datsun truck for $250 and drove it two years. Then bought a 86 Subaru wagon for $300 , put a 2" lift kit on it and big tires and drove it for 2 years. Then i bought a 94 Jeep Cherokee for $2500 (best vehicle i ever owned) and drove it for 10 years. in the meantime i also bought a 79 Toyota Corolla wagon for $250 and drove it for a year then i bought 81 Honda Civic cope for $150 , adjusted the clutch and drove it for a year then sold it for $300. Ownership of these cars often overlapped and i often found myself with having more than one vehicle at a time sometimes even 3 cars at one time. My point is... The worlds commerce would have you think that you must have the newest, but if one can be content with older vehicles, as long as they are safe, then that person can enjoy life without heavy debt.
Currently im driving a 2004 Dodge Dakota crew cab and its in good looking and running shape and averages about 18 miles to the gallon. Which is oddly just about the worst fuel economy of any older vehicle i have owned. Even the old 71 landcruiser averaged 17 mpg and I could pull nearly 29 mpg out of the 81 Honda civic.
@@HappyHands. Wow, what kind of condition were the cars in to be able to get them so cheap?
@@JV-uq9cf If you fix stuff yourself you can find amazing deals. Shops charge a lot therefore a lot of people dump broken cars cheap without even knowing exactly what's wrong with them because they know it could cost a lot to fix. And older cars have minor things breaking all the time so it only makes sense to own them if you fix them yourself.
If it drives it is most likely not a blockage, check your off first.
Honestly it's damn foolish to use the 45k number when there's several options in the 30k range and a few under 30k, brand new, before incentives.
I agree, Louis. I make 40K a year and I'm still waiting for that affordable EV. My 20K Sentra will have to do for now.
Dacia Spring is kind of affordable.
Bolt. The cheapest car out of the several I analyzed, by far. Guarantee you will spend less owning/driving a brand-new Bolt EV than a brand-new Sentra. It'll be about $100/mo in capital costs vs $66, but you will pay almost nothing in fuel and maintenance, easily recouping the $33/mo difference.
@@weksauce You should do a video of your analysis of affordable EVs --maybe you'll change my mind.
@@weksauce It may be the cheapest option, but not the most safe with the recent major recall on the bolt a few months back. Affordable does not always mean quality or reliable. The op is in a better position with the sentra long term.
@@porschepusher924S It's plenty safe. The recall was out of an abundance of caution. Only 1 in millions caught fire, and people shouldn't park 60kWh of lion batteries indoors unattended even in not-yet-recalled items. I had a newer bolt and wasn't parking it indoors when the old bolts got recalled, and continued not parking it indoors until the newer bolts got recalled. There's not meaningful greater rate of newer bolts or post-recall bolts catching fire vs any other 60kWh+ lion-containing things. If you park your Tesla or PowerWall or LEAF indoors, you're taking a risk.
As a working adult, I'm very interested in electric cars. But, they're currently way outside of my price range. And I'm definitely not poor.
Same here. i'm making 50k a year in the midwest which is just about average. Hearing that "20k difference" in price made my jaw drop. That was enough money to put a down payment on my house.
@@tj4507 Even with my own position with the feds making only 43-45k a year (strong job security is the point), there is no way in the name of jebus I'd put down 40k for a new EV, bc unless the loss is completely covered by insurance in some way (which itself cannot be too expensive if you're a good driver), then I'm out a years salary for a product not as reliable in our highly varied part of the nation. ICE vehicles can work with a small amount of electric charge in their batteries bc the charger is built into the engine, and used fuel that both holds its energy potential in the cold that pure batteries cant and can be used to recharge the battery while driving.
Evs just do not make sense in terms of energy demanded, missing infrastructure to supply that demand outside your home/business, and high costs of repair/replacement. If an EV can work for average joe in the midwest and/or plains regions, maybe it's a viable model/company. Otherwise, better get one that works specifically within the south (humidity/rainfall), or the far colder northern reaches of the US to prove viability. Not interested for at least my next vehicle, maybe next two if the used market permits.
Me too, except I'm interested in electric scooter, I travel from home to work 12.4 miles everyday
@@nickstone1167
Completely agree.
EVs should, for now, focus on urban areas.
Commuters would be the best market share to 'cut' into, at first. Since they know their required range, and have plenty of time to recharge.
Perhaps it would be even better in western Europe, since a road trip here is usually on a smaller scale than in the US (and so one counter argument might weigh less heavily for potential buyers here).
Also, European countries tend to tax gas instead of subsidize it, so there's actually an incentive working in favor instead of against EVs here!
Gas prices in NED have gone _insane_ now: the national average is apparently above ~€2 per liter, and since there's 3.785 L per US gallon and currently 1.13 dollars per euro, that's ~$8.5 per gallon! Imagine the riots you'd have in the USA...
(we'd have them too, if we had bigger distances like you guys, or didn't have public transport)
@@MrNicoJac Europe is easier to transport across, simple as.
I'm also in an interesting situation. In Belgium, we have very high taxes (over 50% of any raise I get goes directly to tax), and company cars are a way to avoid taxes. The company gives you a car as a benefit, there's a calculation for how much you benifit, and this gets added to your virtual wage and also taxed. But that virtual calculation is always a bit on the low side, making it interesting to get a company car.
At my current pay grade, I can buy an electric car, but I only have the option for a Volkswagen ID.3. According to the reviews, a car with severe technological issues, and overall a lot lighter than what I need (I'd need at least a tow-bar to get out my garden waste, which isn't possible with the ID.3). So I choose a regular gasoline car.
My manager however, who's in a higher pay scale, could opt for a decent electric car.
In the end, the virtual wage calculation takes the fuel into account, and has a tax exemption for electric cars. And the government is making gasoline cars even more expensive. So I get to pay a hefty amount, while someone who makes more from the start has to pay less.
Like always, wealth creates wealth, and being poor is expensive.
You should look into getting an LPG conversion on a used car - you can get better performance for the same money, and in Belgium i've seen it as cheap as 0.3€ /L, it's one of the lowest in Europe
Yeah, we've head an EV stimulus "competition" in Slovakia two years ago. If you registered, you could get 8000 euros for an EV, but only a certain number of spots were available. Of course some people with the right friends knew what to put in the form in advance, so they were able to register in seconds, while I needed 3.5 minutes and ended up not getting anything. And the best thing is, some of those who made it were allowed to ask for a subsidy for 4 cars, i.e. they got 32K and I got jack.... I'm so glad it's funded from the taxes I pay, while they can deduct their expenses for their cars from their taxes.
Look into the MG5, a nice EV in the form of a break (station wagon / shooting break) and starts at €30 000 euros. If you qualify for the ID3, you should qualify for the MG5, maybe also the Model 3 Standard Range is possible. Hyundi Kona is another option to look into.
There is a rule that you should know; When the people have to pay over 50% in tax, they rebel and change the system. Time for change.
Even when you don't have tax return / benefit style subsidies but the equal ones, only the wealthier still can buy the finer electric cars. This means wealthy men buy electric cars. However unequal that seems I think the subsidies still have all the intended effect. If those wealthy men were not nudged into buying an electric car, they'd just get a bigger and more powerful suv than their neighbor bought last year.
What I don't get is why they are still so expensive when they're used. I mean the battery has a defined limited lifespan. If the battery is bad you essentially bought a car shaped frame and electric motors.
The batteries will last a long time.... 250k unless they get damaged. Lots of fake news about batteries. Water will kill these batteries
and need to spend ~15-30k depending on the car to fix it, for ICE cars that repair bills unless it was some exotic car simply mean, car is totaled, it goes in the scrapyard for parts
Because the used market for EVs is not mature. The oldest Tesla Model S is newer than the average used car. If EVs are really impractical to keep on the road for as long as ICE cars the used market will eventually recognize that. For now, buyer beware.
Probably because the new ones are so expensive and there are very few old Tesla's on the market. So presumably you could buy a used one, swap in a used battery from a crashed Tesla that had little mileage, and have a complete car for maybe 30k? I wouldn't do it but its probably cheaper.
@@b4804514 yes they will last, but the capacity of the battery is reduced over time. So yes, the battery will work, but the range will be unusable later in the life of the battery
Got a 2013 Nissan Leaf a few months ago and the range estimates on it are complete and utter bull. A 60 mile range estimate while going 60 mph on the highway will likely only get 40ish miles or so. I'm still pretty happy with the car because there are often city programs that make charging nearly free and I got it out the door for 8k. Just driving everyday throughout Austin has cost me maybe 6 dollars in the last 3 months and driving to San Antonio and back costed me around 7 dollars but needed careful planning.
You used "everyday" wrong. EVs are more efficient at lower speeds, just like ICEVs, because air resistance rises with the square of velocity. Maybe you just never look at range estimates in ICEVs, because, if you did, you'd have the same complaint. This is not a unique disadvantage of EVs. It's the physics of pushing things through fluids. I think it'd be easy to dramatically improve the range estimates by including estimated speed and elevation changes of routes, but usually people navigate with their phones so the car only can only predict where it's going a few miles ahead of where it is right now.
Until the battery takes a shit and you cannot get a new one since they are such old tech they dont make it anymore and a new replacemnt costs more than the car
@@williamnicholson8133 If that were to ever happen, then you drove your car until too-big-to-fail automakers went bankrupt, so you got plenty of value out of it! By then, the new car will likely be more affordable.
*It seems you mean the battery pack costs more than the (rest of) the car. That's fine. You say that as if it's insane or incomprehensible, but it's totally ok. It's unlikely, given the current ratio of battery pack / car price is small (~10%-33%) and falling, but it's ok that like a 2011 LEAF costs less than a 2022 Model S Plaid's battery pack.
Dang, it was that bad even in 2013? I thought they had made it actually usable by then. So so many people have 30+ mile commutes to work.
Honestly still cool though that it fits your needs and works as a nice city commuter
I suspect Tesla to only open up for other carmakers here in the Netherlands because there is valid competition from a company called Fastned. And I guess 80.000 public charging places helps as well in a country 1/3 the size of new york state.
Your country likely has more rigid rules about how they can operate VS america.
They also have to use the standardized IEC 62196 Type 2 connector mandated by the European Commission as charging plug within the European Union. It makes it a lot harder for them to say "Oh no, you cannot use our charger because it is unsafe! Think of the battery" when the charging is already standardized
EV cars make sense in small countries. In America, it is not uncommon for people to commute 50 to 100 miles a day.
I'm failing to see how Fastned would create an incentive for Tesla to open up to other manufacturer's vehicles. The more plausible reason is that doing so will be a money earner for Tesla, both in terms of additional revenue streams from an increased pool of consumers as well as potential government grants and subsidies aimed at things like green energy or transport electrification.
I'm hopeful that this may also be a sign that Tesla may finally be moving to standard charging connectors in the future. I'm sure some people are laughing at that statement, but I can dream.
I'm still waiting for Aptera's car to come out. Shame it sounds like only 5k cars are going to built this year though...
I love you Louis! It’s really wild… it’s been great watching this grow from a tiny (kinda weird) channel into a full on movement. Don’t stop !
We are such different people, with entirely different interests and lived experiences.
I’m a poor dropout with a GED from the south, I can barely use tech anymore, screen replacement is as far as I can go. I’m an outdoorsman, biologist, botanist, horticulturist, love to forage mushrooms or just be outdoors.
It just blows me away that we are in sync at all…
Don't forget charging at home for people in apartments or even a house without a garage. I don't know if I'd trust a $40 car to an extension cord passed through a window. I guess with good range, you could hit up a super charger once a week, but I'd have to guess that would reduce some of the savings you were expecting by going electric and not having to pay to fuel up.
Did you mean $40k? Also thats a good point
Also having to wait around for 30 mins to an hour at the supercharger. This is my big problem with EVs, they're great if you're a homeowner with a garage, but not so great for everyone else.
They are just for the rich and people with a lot of free time. If you already work for +8 hours and take some more commuting because you can't live where you work to save high rent costs I doubt anyone would waste even more time waiting in line and charging vs a handful minutes filling up gas being told "it's to save the planet". Our lives are miserable enough for many to make them worse. Either improve it so there is barely any difference or look for a different solution, not impossing the switch to electric when it's not for everyone.
I fit all that criteria but my employer has a EV charger which is free to staff.
Speaking with a utility lineman I was showed that our electrical infrastructure all the way up to our homes is not equipped to handle even 1/4 of the homes owning just one electric car because it would overload the local transformers every day.
_This pleases Megatron._
Obviously it's far out in future when 1/4 of homes will have EVs, so there is time to sort out the transformers and shit
@@lkrnpk and open more coal mining factories because energy isn’t green or sustainable
And electrical engineer I know told me the same thing. It's a pipe dream to have everyone in electric cars. I'll never buy one.
@@lkrnpk Please tell me you work for utility. That would be funny AF.
I personally got a plugin hybrid. I'm all electric on my daily commute and in town driving but don't have to worry about the charging networks when we go on road trips. I figure by the time this toyota dies the infrastructure and battery tech will be where i want it.
Practically speaking, this is the sweet spot. The only real downside to hybrids is the added complexity, but if it's a Toyota hybrid I imagine it'll be a long time until any major issues emerge.
@@dil6969 pretty often if you use taxis all the time you start to notice.
I suspect by that time, the world will be moving to hydrogen since the MASSIVE electricity distribution network, congestion at charging stations and the need for charging cables everywhere, including where they cannot be used (street parking) cannot support mass adoption of electric vehicles.
@@darinpearson2554 Yeah, the congestion will be nuts. Gas stations have trouble often and filling a car to full only takes a couple minutes
I am an auto tech in NZ, I love the idea of EVs and would probably own one if I could afford it.
Although this is contrary to how I make a living, I love the technology and how good this will eventually be for the planet.
No one seems to have mentioned though, where the power is coming from to charge EVs.
If you live in a country that burns coal, gas or oil to run power plants, all you are doing is shifting the point of emissions.
Your zero emission vehicle is a fantasy as the emissions are being produced at the power plant.
Nuclear or renewables are a different story, although those are not as clean and green as we hope either, due to the amount of concrete many of them consume during construction.
Here in NZ we are lucky to produce more than 90% of our power through hydro, wind, solar and geothermal, but switching to EVs too quickly would probably mean running our coal and natural gas plants more.
And there is a bit of a conundrum, we stopped coal mining so we now have to import any that we have to burn.
Incidentally what we used to mine was much higher quality and therefore cleaner burning than the garbage that we import.
And off course it has to come from thousands of miles away on a huge ship.
Progress huh, :-)
this argument is missing the point that making gasoline consumes power. to make the gas for a 100 miles consumes about as much power as is needed to drive an ev that same 100 miles.
It would still drop overall emissions to be charging EVs from a coal plant (at least one in a developed country that has to use carbon capture and filtering, not China) than it would be to have everyone having their own combustion engine.
Also i would like to add that i live in an area surrounded by a big bowl of mountains with large lakes, we sometimes get a big inversion effect especially in the Winter which causes us to get really bad air quality at times, 55% of our air pollution comes from combustion engines, the power plants are regulated to have stacks at a certain heights and so most of what does get out and isn't scrubbed gets pushed further up into the atmosphere and doesn't add to the air quality at ground level.
Do like Belgium and germany. Shut down nuclear plants to open up NEW gas burning power plants .... and depend on Putin to keep the gas valve open, and when that fails; move a whole village to get to the browncoal under it to burn that (Germany). Only 2 words come up in my head. "Ridiculous" and "guillotine" .
@@p0gr I'd like to see a link to support this because at the moment I think your statement is BS.
I've owned my 2012 Chevy Volt for about 6 years now, and I bought it used for about $20k with 30K miles on it. Over that 6 years only maintenance I've had to do is oil changes and tires, both of which I can do myself or at a local third party. There have been a few issues where I've had to take it to the dealer, but overall it's been pretty trivial stuff, benign recalls, etc. I've used the car as a mixed use daily and some road trips, which is a benefit of the plug in hybrid like the Volt, it can be my only car and do everything. But as it's getting to it's 10th birthday ease of maintenance and my ability to repair the car is something on my mind. Starting to look into it, battery repair is the biggest thing on my mind. The average cost I've seen is around $3500 and I've seen as much as $10,000 for a battery replacement, Chevy lists the MSRP as $6900 for a refurbished unit. Luckily the Chevy battery pack is more modular to where you can replace individual cells, or larger sub-units, or the entire battery. However, it is not something most people would think of doing themselves, and does have it's own challenges. With current used prices, I could sell the car before the battery has an issue and get about $12k-15K, or I could put in 50-80% of the vehicles value back in as a battery or repair. It does make me not want to buy a newer electric car because of the long term cost of the car. Unless new electric cars become easier to repair with respect to their batteries, I'm not sure I want to own another electric vehicle. I don't drive a lot, infact I drive less than the typical American
Out of curiosity, about how much range are you getting out of it these days vs when you got it? I've heard that Chevy Volts have been over-all good with their battery longevity (at least compared to other plug in hybrids).
@@JV-uq9cf I think the EPA range was like 35 miles for the car originally. But with any electric car it's always very dependent on the temperature. When I first got the car, during the winter I would get about 20-25 miles before the gas engine would engage, then 35-42 miles in the summer before the gas engine would engage. Now I get about the same in winter, but in summer I am getting around 33-35 miles before the gas engine engages. As a frugal person I'm always gutted when the gas engine turns on, especially when I'm maybe a mile or two away from home. Then one quirk / caveat of not using gas often is that if the average age of the gas starts to go over a year, the engine will run and force you to get more gas just so stuff doesn't get varnished and gunked up with old gas. Which is understandable, and just part of it trying to maintain the fuel system. The newer model Volts 2016-2020 have more base range of like 53 miles.
I own a 2017 Volt and love it. I can get 62 miles out of the battery in rush hour traffic and I only filled it with gas 3 times last year. I usually get about 52-55 miles out of the battery but that is enough for my daily commute.
Sucks that Chevy stopped making them. Why Chevy Why!
@@D3voidofsoul it was just too expensive for what it was in my opinion. The car had an MSRP of like $49K for what was admittedly not a premium car. Don't get me wrong, it's a comfortable interior and it's nice, but I think a little out of its price range. And GM heavily leased the vehicles so the used market was flooded with them, which I took advantage of. A 4 year old car for 50% off was a good deal. But it's always received high praise from journalists and owners, because it's a great car! But being a great car doesn't always mean great sales, to our dismay.
Ya, I had a 2013 for about 4 years. Two oil changes and two tires replaced. Never any other issues. A ton of people didn’t understand what the car was or how it worked. Drive a model s now but would go back to a volt in a heartbeat beat over a Corolla or Camry.
Thank you. This is the most honest and maybe the best ICE vs electric pricing comparison video that I've seen. Every point you make is spot on and factual. When you compare ice to electric, and make an apples-to-apples comparison, ice wins in almost every category that matters to the average consumer. I too think electric cars are interesting, but a replacement for ICE…. not now anyways. I'll stick with my Supra for now.
This isn't completely related to this video, it's just my thoughts after watching your last 2 videos about evs. I just can't support any electric vehicle until it hits these 3 things:
1) When I without issue can repair it. When I can go to a local O'Reilly's down the road or at the very least a local dealership and buy almost any part from them to fix the ev;
2) when I don't have to worry about my car's speed being limited simply because I didn't pay for the "premium" software package, or even being able to use heated seats or some other "luxury" feature without paying them. (After purchasing the vehicle);
3) when I can find a $7,000 ev on craigslist with a bad battery, buy a battery for a few thousand and pay a specialist of my chosing to install the new battery, and have a drivable ev for under $15k.
Oh and as a bonus point, when it naturally becomes viable and isn't forced down my throat by the government with their stupid idiocracy and plans of banning every ice vehicle.
Well I can tell you for sure that #2 doesn't apply to the Leaf, at least. The only thing you may have to pay for is a subscription to get the charging map updates. As for #1 or 3 yeah that's going to be a minute. I don't think the government in the US will just outright ban ICE cars, they will tax the gas til it's so expensive then people will shift to EV unfortunately.
Thanks Louis couldn't agree more. I'm 25 and live in Australia and just went shopping for my first new car. I bought a petrol MG ZS for $22,000 which has 650km+ range. I really wanted the electric version of the identical model but it was $44,000 and only has 243km of range. Despite really wanting an electric car it was too expensive.
I dont like mg cars for multiple reasons and don't think they should be brought into discussion with other cars.
1. It's a SAIC subsidiary, so essentially a CCP brand, i definitely don't wanna fund a government that is as of this moment causing a genocide.
2. Every single car on their lineup is completely derivative of western cars,if these things get more popular they will destroy the industry by causing even more complacence
So basically with an electric car your freedom is severly limited, wether it's the autonomy (you need to be very careful in planning your country road trip to know if there are recharging stations) and in the lockdown department, where you will depend absolutely (from opening your trunk to turning on your vehicle) and exclusively (only at your authorized electric brand shops), you have no other option than to pay what the manufacturer wants and/or otherwise f'k yourself up (like the guy who dinamited his own Tesla for that batteries issue)
Add to this that batteries are still made with resources mined by slaves and once the battery dies the recycling of it is a joke, most of it is just dumped in poorer countries. But hey you can feel good that you didn't polluted your 1st world country while polluting the rest of the world :)
Lolol how often do you drive cross country? Would virtually never be accurate???
The battery recycling and affordable replacement is going to be a big part of the near future with these cars.
I spend about 5k per year on gas in California. It cost's me $50 to get 220 miles of range. I looked up the going rate for 220 miles of range from a super charger and it was just about $16 here in the Bay Area. That's a savings of $34 every 220 miles. 100,000 miles / 220 miles = 454.5 fill ups every 100,000 miles. 454.5 x $34 = $15,454.5 in gas savings over that 100k miles. However, with the Tesla, you need far less maintenance, so factoring that in, you right about even at 100,000 miles between the gas and electric, assuming when you 60k mile warranty expires on the gas car (if you even get that good of a warranty), nothing major fails, like how my transmission (6k to repair) and engine (5k to repair) went up at 62k miles and 68k miles on my last car. You SHOULD easily get 200k miles on the Tesla with no major failures, including the battery. So with an addition 15k in gas savings the next 100k miles, at 200k, the gas car is at 19k + $22,725 (first 100k miles of gas) + $22,725 (second 100k miles of gas) + maintenance (hard to determine, but defiantly much higher than the tesla), so at least $64,450 in costs, and you'll probably be well over 70k in reality as you'll likely need serious engine and transmission work (cars are not built the same today as they were in the 90's and early 2000's). Now with the Tesla model 3, lets say you start at 40k + $7272 (first 100k miles of electricity) + $7272 (second 100k miles of electricity) = $54,544 for 200k miles of driving. Worst case, let's assume the Teslas battery fails and the gas car needs a new transmission and engine. They would then be about neck and neck, except gas cars require oil changes (now with synthetic at around $60 every 6000 miles, brake pads every 30k miles at $400, and rotors every 60k miles at over $1000 for all 4... Not to mention all of the other maintenance needed on gas cars like timing chains or belts. There's no doubt the math shows clearly electric cars today is cheaper than gas cars today. This doesn't factor in that you could have solar at home, use that to fuel your car, farther lowering fueling costs. BTW, I'm not a Tesla fanboy or EV fanboy, I'm buying another gas guzzling Turbo car very soon. But the math seems clear based on my situation in the bay area.
@@heyaisdabomb Totally agree with what you're saying, however I would just like to point out one thing that is a bit flawed with your logic.
When you say, "There's no doubt that the math today shows clearly that electric cars today is cheaper than gas cars today", that in it of itself is inherently a misstatement.
As you demonstrated EVs are in fact cheaper (i.e. more affordable) than gas guzzlers - what with supposedly less maintenance, and especially with how cheap it is to fuel with electricity compared to gas when applied over a long period of time (and no doubt especially with your case living in the Bay area).
But the key point to that statement here is that ypu applied it OVER A LONG PERIOD OF TIME. Therefore, your statement of EVs being cheaper "today" is false as today means right now. And as Louis showed in the video, that is not true. So in actuality you only proved correctly that EVs are cheaper IN THE LONG TERM.
(Sorry to nitpick just wanted to point that out)
Nevertheless I will pose this to you and it would be interesting to here your thoughts on it. Now bear in mind that all this speculation/educated guesses of cost all assumes that EV charging (in terms of Kw/$) stays the same. But where it gets hairy if you think about it is that at the moment EV drivers are effectively road-tax exempt and being subsidized by gas drivers (given you live in CA I'm sure you're very familiar with taxes on gas 😗).
But what happens when so many people switch over to EV and the government isn't generating enough revenue to fund the roads among other things? They'll tax the alternative fuel of course.
My point being that in the long run its not really clear as to how MUCH cheaper EVs are gonna be compared to gas because right now EVs are being subsidized by gas drivers.
It'll be interesting to see how the increased consumption of electricity + future alternative fuel taxes ultimately raises the cost of EVs and general electricity...
It’s not ever about affordability always it’s about practicality. The fuel up or charge up time is extremely import
Indeed. Most analysts in the space say that reducing recharging times by just a few minutes will be the biggest influence on adoption.
I would consider a electric vehicle if I can get 300 miles from 1hour or less charge
@@kelevra213 Yup. You're part of the vast majority of non-EV users.
1 hour charge is too much. I would not consider an electric vehicle until time to full charge is around 10-15 minutes, which will be never.
@@isodoubIet It's already like 30 seconds, but how much are you willing to pay for that? For most people, and present processes, the answer is "not enough". But someday that could change, so never say never.
I've noticed a lot of used Nissan leaf's advertised as "good" starting to go for around $5,000. I've actually been thinking of getting one. I figured it's only 10 miles to work (one way) and all the little bit of extra driving I do each week is only about 25 miles and not even all at the same time. Someone like me would be perfect for the Nissan Leaf even though the older models had a very limited range.
I still can't quite justify it yet. $5,000 is allot of money and I'm the type of guy who will buy a $1,500 car and drive it till it dies then spend another $1,500.
My current car was $2,500. . . . . #oooooooobigspender
a LEAF would be perfect for those kind of commutes I had a leased one for 3 years loved it great little in city commuter car will charge over night off of a normal 110 outlet but I hear you even with gas savings at that small of a range you would take a while to make up $2500 in gas savings and in some states like GA they charge you $200 when you get a tag to cover the gas tax you are not paying for your share of road up keep another things you need to research for your state.
@@christopherr.2137 Very long sentence, but good point.
As someone who bought one, wouldn't recommend it as a primary car, but I would recommend it as a second one. They are useless on the highway and lose tons of range the faster they have to go, but if you can get to and from work with it? You will save a ton of money. Though, you do need to save some of that for a battery replacement down the road. Which by the time you need to do it (around 100-150k miles), it will be a significant upgrade in range. I also recommend getting an OBD-2 Reader and only buying battery packs with less than 85% degradation. Mileage really affects these things. Good luck!
You have to be very careful with the older Leafs. Nissan did not have a cooled battery pack in the first 2 gens, so they tend to cook themselves very early. Cost for a replacment pack can exceed the actual resale value for an under 70,000 mile model
That's a great use case for a Leaf. For that you don't even need to put in 240V charger. Just trickle charge with a standard 120V outlet. We've been doing this for six years with no issues. We have a second (gas-powered) car so we are covered for road trips.
I tried to buy my last car in its hybrid version in 2018. The manufacturer had discontinued it for manufacturing that model year, so I bought the top line gas model. At the bottom of the pandemic, I bought the same car (specced exactly the same at no cost to me, to meet smack dab in the middle at 2k under stock MSRP) but with the hybrid I originally wanted. All I ever cared about was MPG. I don't care about "the environment" or whatever, I just like driving 600 miles on a single tank (that's under 15 gallons). I don't want to think about gas, I want to full up when I see it's cheap. Which is the same reason I spent years learning to cook, and buy the cheapest meat and vegetables I can find to cook. I want the lowest cost in reality, not hypothetical
"I don't care about 'the environment'"
Is this bait?
@@thursdaythought7201 I'm pretty sure he means he doesn't care for the environment in the context of why he bought a hybrid.
@@thursdaythought7201 Is your stupid reply bait?
There's someone who knows the meaning of thrift !
that's exactly right attitude. You buy something because it works best for you. Electric cars right now have a long tail of pollution in terms of mining rare earth minerals and battery disposal that one suspects are far worse than gasoline and diesel engines.
As a salesperson of several brands of new cars you are absolutely correct. It just makes the wealthy people upset when you say that. It especially makes Elon fans upset for some reason.
They’ve got to cover the Elon loves the peasants angle, otherwise he doesn’t look so much like the benevolent god they think he is…
I mean.. I am an Elon's fan, but at the same time I despite the whole idea of electric vehicles with today's technologies. EVs are dumb, period.
@@BloPsy_Actual theres a serious issue in battery tech across the board. electric car isnt bad because theyre undeniably more efficient, but battery tech just isnt there yet
I like Elon. I dislike the forced shift towards electric vehicles, but he's not to blame for that. He only makes the things. I genuinely believe that he wishes to advance humanity, he seems to possess the boundless autism of an innovator...And as such, he probably doesn't exactly think through the consequences this new technology might bring with itself, or how others might use it for their own ends, like pricing the poor out of independence of mobility as gas cars are increasingly taxed and eventually phased out. "For our climate", of course.
@@bradhaines3142 That's exactly what I am talking about.
I had an 2015 i3. Bought it for around $20k as a three-year-old CPO. Electric range was just 70 miles - it was intended as a city car - but I did have some success with the range extender. It would let me fill with dinosaurs 2 gal at a time for as many times as I wanted until I could refill the battery at a sparsely-speed EVgo or other DC charger station. Required planning, but made the Boston > DC and DC > New Orleans trips without issue even in AL where there were no DCFC.
I recently replaced it with a Model Y (selling to Carvana for almost what I paid) and the Tesla charging network (and the 300 mile range) really does make a difference. No planning required to make the trip work. But, the cost of the was considerable.
Just consider not everyone can charge their car at home. this requires a trip once a week minimum in a city to charge it. Everyone will do this on the weekend at the same time.
That's exactly the argument I had with a couple EV fans a few days ago. One claimed to have saved $2.500 on fuel last year and had practically zero maintenance costs. My answer was that the maintenance costs of a properly serviced ICE vehicle are somewhat equal to the overpriced insurance cost of his EV vehicle, thus don't matter. When a similar ICE Vehicle costs $25.000 less than his model 3 (as you presented as well), it would take 10 years to break even. In 10 years though you'll have an EV with, best case scenario, 10% less range. EVs are great and fun but the math still favors gas, sorry folks.
Model 3 starts at $45k.. which brand new $20k vehicle are you comparing to again??? Lolol
Add in that at the ten year mark, is when battery pack replacement starts becoming necessary, and that can mean $$$$ - look at the recent controversy of a Tesla owner who got quoted $20k+ to replace the pack in his older Tesla, so he blew the car up in protest.
@@davidfaustino4476 Not sure if you paid attention or you meant to say something different, but at the start of the vid a brand new base model Jetta goes for $18k ish. So….unless it was some kind of sarcasm, I didn’t get it.
But you are still dead.
@@machinist7230 older battery tech and cold climate means the battery will degrade faster. For the average Joe the battery on a 2019 tesla or newer will last 15+ years before it NEEDS to be replaced.
"350 miles in one go" in an affordable car, and then refueling in under 5 minutes. That's what we're used to. EVs have a long road to hoe, before they get anywhere near that level of utility and bang for the buck. They'll be crammed down our throats sooner than they're fully ready to replace the old tech--of that I have no doubt. So if you want a practical ICE vehicle to see you through the tough transition to electric, make sure to have a durable one now, or buy one soon.
I don't think EVs will get much cheaper than now, the opposite will happen, i.e. ICE cars will get prohibitively expensive when gas price begins to skyrocket. But we may still be decades away from that, and it's a good sign at least part of the industry is already starting to shift towards EVs.
I dont ever stop to charge my ev... takes 2 full seconds to plug in when I get home and I have 300+ miles of range every morning.
Saves me $800+ in gas while only using $60 in electricity.
@@SubLimation7 last month electricity prices in europe went up 400-600% and will go up by another 200% this month. so much for EV
@@---ii8hl yeah that's why I bought solar and all my big purchases last year inflation is about to slammmm (already is)
Good thing all my things are locked in prices :)
Wait till the governments stop keeping inflation on loans artificially low, inflation gonna really really hit. As illidan once said "you are not prepared".
EV is happening whether y'all like it or not.
Every automaker has promised to kill off ICE production in the coming years.
BTW I was making 55k annually, but thanks to good credit and foresight was able to get 0-2% interest loans and bought house, ATVs, Tesla, 100k+ solar system all in one year.
I think inflation is going to be around 50% by 2025 compared to prices in 2020. So the loan interest is super negligible and if needed I can sell everything at a profit if for some reason I can't pay loans.
But started my own company recently and it's rollllin so should be good.
Sorry y'all don't try harder.
@@SubLimation7 for all the "success" you having, you spendin good chunk of your time on youtube. enjoy your "55k".
Looking at the cost based on range alone and comparing to gas is interesting. We just bought a new Ram last year. We paid an extra $100 to have them change the gas tanks out so that our range would go from +/-500miles to +/-750 miles a tank. Minor cost to upgrade when watching this video!
But what is your, presumably insane, fuel consumption like. Yeah, yeah I get it ; you are in N America where you have the cheapest fuel on the planet (maybe not including Saudi) and wide roads/open spaces so you can drive a monster truck/canyonaero ! The rest of the world is more frugal and circumspect with regard to macho image and drive economical diesel trucks for delivery and haulage !
Since most people drive less than 40 miles per day, a 750-mile tank will likely make them have to deal with stale gas. Use cases are important to consider.
@@linmal2242 Not sure if you are just being a troll but I will take your comment at face value. The united states is big. Very big. If you need to do long distance drives everyday for work you would want a larger tank so you don't have to fill all the time. I used to work with someone who's commute was 150miles round trip. Also desel is horrible for passenger cars.
@@MezzoForteAural true diesel for a passenger car isn't a bright idea since their used in the city alot. diesel burns way more fuel in the city then the highway.
@@linmal2242 It's 2022. Most newer trucks and cars have ECO mode that thorttles down your power and gives you more milage. Not every truck in America is burning diesel and rolling coal on the open roads. Trucks have went from like 15 Miles per Gallon to like 24 MPG or even higher in some cases. Again, you have ECO mode on a lot of trucks and if he's rolling with a V6 he is def lasting long on that tank he has.
I've owned a hybrid, two plug in hybrids, and one fully electric car. We are still at a point where many people who want to drive electric and take regular road trips still need a Tesla, a plug in hybrid, or a second car and this is what keeps them unaffordable. "Affordable" *low range* electric cars exist, my 100 mile range completely electric car was $11K used, it was an amazing value for what I got BUT it was only acceptable for my needs when it was a second car. I sold my other car after a break up and eventually needed to trade the BEV in for another PHEV, I would have loved to keep driving a BEV but the only car in my budget with the range I need would've been the Bolt and I am not a fan of the idea of burning down my house with it. There are some very passionate EV drivers who seem to forget that other people have financial and lifestyle limits that prevent fully electric cars from working for them.
A couple of things for people to consider:
I may have missed this but I did not hear you mention that some EVs qualify for a federal tax credit in the US, along with some state and local incentives. This has the potential to bring down the purchase price for buyers who have enough tax liability to take advantage of it. Tesla and GM vehicles do not qualify for this anymore and it still does not help lower income individuals because it is a non refundable credit, one needs to have high enough tax liability to take advantage of it.
Another thing for potential EV purchasers to consider would be plug in hybrids. They are a compromised solution but they offer the ability to use electricity for daily driving while having the option to use gasoline for long trips. Some models are cheaper than comparable BEVs because of the smaller battery pack. After the tax credit that I will be able to claim I will have paid $24K for my current PHEV which covers about 70-80% of my driving on electricity alone. $24K still is unaffordable for many people, but it is on par with a less equipped and smaller Corolla while having significantly lower fuel costs.
I agree, I paid 5000 for a car and I thought I was buying a luxury item. I doubt electric cars will become "affordable" for at least another 10-15 years.
I wouldn't be surprised if it takes longer than that unfortunately. I would be surprised if you can get a good value electric car for under $10,000 in the next 15 years.
@@YouDidWatToWho yeah thus the "at least"
Thing is, they NEVER will be affordable because the greedy companies are greedy, and they will not drop their prices.
Both combustion AND electric car prices (new) have been going up and up and up for decades, and thats not going to stop anytime soon
@@nemtudom5074 Affordable is a relative term. Typically as prices go up so do salaries. Obviously things are pretty broken right now, so you can't take current reality as an example, but with most other markets in saner times you can in fact see a downward trend. Big markets mean big competition. Competition means lower prices, and better products.
@@kaydinlear Yea, except that if all the corporations increase prices then they all win and we all lose.
Also, its not just the US thats in this capitalist hell, the rest of the developed world is too, its just that the US is hit the worst because of their government loving to favour big corporations
Another thing to consider is that if every lithium battery that can currently be produced went to just vehicle battery packs, it would not come anywhere near the number of vehicles sold. So taking price out of the equation it is just not possible to produce electric vehicles to meet demand. Now consider that lithium batteries are being demanded in a growing number of places like grid and home storage and the ability to produce them and the availability of the raw materials needs to be expanded exponentially. Take a look at the mining operations that the raw materials come from and then you have to ask how much better for the environment is it all.
People that works in the battery sector are predicting that Lithium prices will actually go up soon, if we continue making lithium batteries at the current scale. I watched recently interview with professor Passerini Stefano (he have Phd in electrochemistry and works as director and professor at the Helmholtz Institute Ulm in Germany), he talked about sodium ion batteries their pros/cons and said that lithium ion batteries won't continue dropping down in price.
Finally, critical thinking skills present here..
Firstly: look at the drilling of oil and think how good is it for the environment and look at the concision of the often authoritarian regimes? Oil can't be reused or recyceld. Batteries can. Old car batteries, that means under 80% of the capacity, can still be used somewhere where fast discharge and volume isn't as important. Something like a home storage and grid storage makes sense for this usecase. Only after it is to bad for this are they going to get recycled.
There are also a lot more batteries already out and coming in the next few years that use either way less of those materials or none at all. Solid State is now far enough that they are starting to work on the mass production and from CATL the sodium ion battery is perfect for a cheaper alternative, but not as good on capacity per volume as lithium one, which is fine for most cases
@@Adrian-jn9ov I agree that that drilling for and burning fossil fuels is not environmentally friendly, but scale and capacity do not and will not exist for battery capacity lithium or otherwise. It will take a decade or more to even play catch up based on current worldwide energy demands. Regarding recycling yes in theory they can be recycled but not only is it costly and will require a much higher material cost to justify but if not done properly there are health concerns with the handling of materials like cobalt. I think there are answers and technical advances that can address the concerns but it is my opinion that energy storage costs will go up before they go down based on current and growing demand.
@@Adrian-jn9ov Oil cant be recycled? Want to try that one again. I would say drilling for oil has less of an environmental impact than mining does. Mount Polley disaster in British Columbia comes to mind. *spelling
I bought my used 2016 Spark EV for 11k in 2019 put 25k miles on it. Short range but I only use it locally and for work and the savings in gas it has more than paid for itself. I also only charge at home so that is where the savings come in for me. For my job I was spending $300+ a month in gas now I use probably $50 in electric and a $200 car payment. It works for me and my specific use. This is also my secondary car and I have an ICE for long trips.
Well played !
@@linmal2242 Agreed!
I have been driving a 2001 Corolla for... idk... 11-ish years now. Every time it needed repairs (even more major repairs) it was WAY cheaper than buying a new car. And with the prices of housing, electricity and gas, internet, insurances saving up something like 15K to get a "somewhat decent" more recent car just doesn't make any sense. Sadly. It's weird times we live in.
The main problem I see is the hurdle of getting an electrician to add a charge port to my home. It doesn't seem viable to live in an apartment or home without access to a charging station
Nissan can plug in to a normal outlet.
@@IrelandVonVicious that's pretty awesome
@@IrelandVonVicious normal outlet? ok lemme just plug my car in on the 3rd floor ya CLOWN
Louis one thing to consider is a battery's Cuolombic efficiency. In simple term's it's how much of the total charge you lose for every cycle. You want as close to 1.0 as possible, with 1.0 being perfect (non realistic). Let's say that it's really good, like 0.999444, after only 400 cycles your car battery can only hold 80% of it's original charge. Your 200 mile range is now 160 mile range. Fast charging batteries drops the coloumbic efficiency drastically, so you can either wait hours to charge, or after 400 "tanks" your car could potentially hold only 50% or even less depending on the rate of charging. Now your car only has a 100 mile range after only going through 400 "tanks". This process is currently irreversible so the only solution is complete battery replacement. It's a fundamental trade off of a battery car that ICE do not face. Filling your ICE tank faster or slower does not effect your range on that tank nor does it make future refills less effective.
Edit: Finished video, Louis brought the point up, this is builds upon his point.
got to pull issue with this, I have a customer with a CHAdeMO equipped leaf. she taxis it, and from new she only rapid charges it, sometimes 4-5 times a day. its about 5 years old now and is showing better range than customers with similar cars who almost exclusively overnight charge at home. she was warned by nissan about her charging behavour but it seems to be working in her favour imho.
@@denisohbrien Not that I don't believe you. It's very anecdotal and not necessarily consistent with what everyone else will experience. Also did she change the battery? Because if its a new battery then yes it will perform better than slow chargers because they are on battery #1.
The current Tesla batteries are supposed to be good for about 1500 cycles or more (300k miles). Your "really good" figure might have been really good a few years ago, but this is why you don't want to buy an EV that was made before about 2019.
Sure, battery lifetime is definitely something to consider in any EV purchase. Gas-powered cars also have parts that require replacement over those sorts of timescales, like transmissions.
@@RichFreeman My guy, my really good is in fact really good. 0.999444 is insanely good. The newest cell phones are only 0.998. To put this in comparison a modern cell phone after 200 cycles only holds 67% of original charge, the 0.999444 will hold 89% original charge. 400 Cycles the modern cell phone will hold 44.89%, the 0.999444 will hold 80%. The .999444 will be able to undergo 720 cycles and have the same remaining capacity as a brand new cell phone at only 200 cycles.
A modern vehicle needs at least 0.9995 to even have any sort of foreseeable longevity to it and keep in mind you need thousands upon thousands of these batteries. Each of which can fail individual. Each of which is currently susceptible to lithium dendrite short circuiting. Each of which is using organic solvents because water electrically splits into H2 and O2 at 1.23V and Tesla's are nominal 3.8V. A Tesla has 960 of these, each of which can fail individually and lead to runaway failure because all of the organic solvents used are more flammable than gasoline itself.
You can argue a transmission will fail or whatever sure, the same can happen to an EV. EV's have thousands of parts and EVs are exponentially more complex which makes them exponentially more likely to have issues. Are motor driven wheels more simple than an ICE, crankshaft, camshaft, and the connecting differentials? Absolutely, but an EV isn't just an electric motor.
@@chrisstubbs6391 If a 400 cycle battery is "insanely good" then I'll leave it up to you to come up with an adjective to describe Tesla's current production 1500 cycle battery. They are working on better though.
Obviously you wouldn't want to build an EV using the technology used in cell phones, for the reasons you've already stated.
Nobody disputes that EV batteries were and still are a difficult engineering problem. That doesn't mean that modern Tesla batteries don't have good longevity.
Obviously the real test will be how they perform 5 years from now, and all we have to go on is speculation and manufacturer claims in the meantime. Nobody has driven a 1500 cycle battery for 1500 cycles yet, as far as I'm aware.
For me, affordable means about $25,000 new, before any green credits, and cheap/easy battery replacement.
I do however love the idea of driving a car worth a couple of thousand dollars and getting 3-4 years out of it instead of having car payments. Cars loose so much money, especially new ones. Anyone who refers to a new car as an 'investment' really needs financial advice
To English speakers, affordability is the inverse of cost. Sticker price is practically irrelevant, because cheap auto financing means you pay for the sticker price of a car in monthly payments, not in a lump sum. Sticker price is just part of cost. EVs are drastically more affordable than their ICEV counterparts. New ICEVs tend to be >$25,000 sticker price, but that doesn't affect their affordability much. EVs are the most economical cars by far. Our brand new Bolt is/was cheaper than a free Toyota Corolla, because EVs cost so much less in fuel and maintenance.
That’s why you start with an old Toyota and keep it until it breaks down while saving for a newer car, then you just keep it cuz it never breaks down and now you have extra money you can use to invest into an account you forget about. Profit.
@@carloscervantes836 Old Toyotas break down. I have driven several Camries and Corrollae. When I compared a brand new Chevy Bolt EV to a free Corolla from family, the Bolt was projected to be essentially the same cost. Then, it turned out we don't pay for charging except on road trips, so the Bolt is way cheaper than the Corolla would have been, plus it out-accelerates the Corolla and has luxuries like heated seats and Android Auto / Carplay and brand-new everything.
It is true that you should avoid putting a large sticker price into a car so that you can invest instead. However, all brand new cars and nearly all used EVs also allow this advantage, so it's not an advantage of ICEVs over EVs, just wise financing over stupid financing. The Bolt was $0 down, and something like 0 or 1% interest, so effectively gained more money buying a brand new bolt than spending anything on a used ICEV.
Wait 3-4 years, it may come
“There are many problems in the world that are solvable, but they’re only solvable if we admit that they’re problems and we don’t just pretend they’re not because it doesn’t affect us.”
Those words are spot on Louis. Great video as always. I personally don’t think electric cars are the sole solution to environmental problems. Even if they get their power from entirely zero-emissions sources and there aren’t any negative impacts from mining the batteries used to produce EVs and said batteries can be recycled once they reach the end of their service life, car dependency promotes a very unsustainable way of living. Combatting climate change and reducing our use of resources/impact on the environment can be better achieved by things like:
-investments in public transit to make it more extensive, reliable, and clean (and eliminate the stigma that unfortunately exists in the US that it’s only for poor people)
-better intercity rail and high speed rail (with good transit connections to stations, otherwise it’s pretty useless for intercity travel)
-making neighborhoods more walkable
-promoting mixed use or transit-oriented development
-reforming or eliminating things like restrictive zoning laws and parking minimums that presently help promote both car dependency and suburban sprawl
Don’t get me wrong, EV’s are a good step towards reducing emissions/pollution and we’re going to need to find a replacement for oil dependent fuels eventually, but it bothers me that many people seem to think buying an electric car alone is going to fix the ugly mess that is our environment and use of resources. EV’s combined with some of the things I have mentioned is the way to go, some cities and towns in the US seem to be understanding this and making small steps in the right direction but I hope more people in power can get a better grip on the bigger picture.
Your point on walkable neighborhoods has massive impact if embraced. Most US cottons and suburbs specifically encourage car use by design. Change this and you make big impacts to liveability and reduced car usage.
@@michaelgehrmann5331 I can't walk two blocks without being forced onto the road because the sidewalk just straight disappears. This is not a pedestrian-unfriendly neighborhood! In fact it's much better than the last place I lived which had more properties without than with, but it's still kind of bad.
Show a willingness to control your pet violent fauna voters on public transportation and more people would be open to the idea. However, you haven't shown that as ANY American urban center public transit system is a hive of criminals, drug addicts, and the homeless. No thanks I'm not "redesigning my community" to require the use of those awful public works. I also don't believe you have any concept about the existence of the vast, vast stretches of the country where no public transit system would ever be viable.
@@Channel-gz9hm Spoken truly like someone who has never lived in a major city or used public transportation before, and who has no idea how much railroads and interurbans played a role in the growth of American cities until the 1950’s. But please tell us more about how you hate poor people. Straight out of the Randal O’Toole and Robert Moses playbooks.
I would take the time to point out the complete inaccuracies of your reply, but you’ve made it clear you’d rather make assumptions and stereotype the kind of people who use transit and parrot whatever the Cato Institute tells you than do proper research into what you’re talking about. And nowhere in my comment did I say anybody would be required to use transit or live in a neighborhood that has it. You can keep driving your gas guzzler to your HOA gated McMansion subdivision all you want. Nobody’s taking away your car buddy. We heavily subsidize automobile travel and car dependency in the United States, I find it funny how it’s fine for tax dollars to be used endlessly on highways but god forbid we use it to improve or expand transit! Always amuses me how the mere thought of better public transportation is interpreted by car junkies as a personal attack on them…
@@Channel-gz9hm According to you I must be a homeless criminal drug addict. Thanks for pointing that out!
I couldn't even make my commute in a Nissan leaf. My diesel vw gets over 600 miles on a tank.
Mercedes has a radio commercial airing now in the St. Louis market for the sprinter that says the gasoline engines are more economical and affordable then electric. It kind of blew my mind that a company would say that at all.
and their diesel engines are even better again.
I have one too. 47mpg and I've got close to 700 on a tank (and I've heard of people managing that). Just coming up on 300,000 miles. Sadly, it's showing its age. I was actually thinking of a Prius at the time but they were hard to get then I came across the TDIs in my research.
@@denisohbrien until the electronics fail and you get a dead weight with expensive repair bill. i stay away from merc/bmw
maybe, but the charging systems still need way too much growth to be viable for someone like me. i travel for a living, and stay in pretty cheap hotels. the hours added to charge on the way would be brutal, and finding places to charge in remote areas is near impossible or just plain unreasonable after a 12hr day. not to mention the ability to fix or repair them is unreasonably difficult because the parts is impossible or unreasonably priced compared to gas or diesel.
way i see it, we need a bit more infrastructure and a HUGE upgrade to battery tech for them to be viable. on top of seeing how well their reliability holds up in reality.
for instance, a tesla before 2015 has a serious habbit of tearing itself apart around every 40k miles and needs a new motor. before 2017 i think (i dont remember the year specifically) they need a 2000$ repair to change out a memory chip that actually wears out from all the data going through it.
Too many excuses and too many myths.
There's only 1 moving part in a motor, and that's the rotor. You don't need to fix or repair them because they don't go wrong anywhere near as often.
(unlike IC engines with 2000+ moving parts that need oil and expensive maintenance). In reality you only need to maintain tyres, wipers and windshield washer fluid.
Battery tech is already viable, and after years of following the industry I've never heard of Teslas "tearing itself apart every 40k miles". Provide evidence of where you picked this up.
I like electric tech, but I'd never pay big bucks for an EV, or rely on one for a cross country trip. I hate cities and populated spots.
I have fueled up in some crazy places... I won't do that again. Last thing I want to do is pull into a charger (in a car everyone assumes I'm rich for owning, even if I bought it wrecked) and be stuck in a sh1t area. On that thought, can you even drive away in an emergency with the charger plugged in? Or do you have to get out and unplug it? (Someone with a weapon shows up to rob you? You're willing to damage your charge port to get away) Or do you have to unplug it?
I mean- Louis was basically agreeing with you?
@@ahaveland the electric motors also need oil, and there's everything in the suspense, all the high voltage electric hardware that has issues, the low voltage sensors that have problems and are expensive to replace. dont act like they're perfect just because electric is better in a few ways. things go bad in every car
@@ahaveland Look for the issue with the Model S (And possible other Tesla motors) where the whole drive unit had to be replaced due to arcing from the rotor through the bearings causing pitting in the bearing surfaces, damaging the geartrain and motor. Amazing that they could take a design as simple ubiquitous as an electric motor and design failure into it, but not surprising based on all the empty promises (Also known as lies) on self driving, battery trucks being cheaper than rail and available to buy 3 years ago, solar roofs etc. At least new models have a coating on the problem bearing to insulate it, but the reason this wasn't a huge PR disaster for Tesla was because they replaced the failed parts under warranty (Eventually). Once their cars are out of warranty, as a small percentage of them now are, we'll get a much better idea how good they are. The recent Model 3 recalls for, among other things, the frunk opening at random, blocking the driver's view while the car is moving, suggest the engineering on the basics has considerable room for improvement.
This is hands down the most honest, truthful opinion on electric vehicles. They’re cool, I like them, I’m not plunking down $60K for a Tesla. I can’t afford it. Hell, I need a truck and I can’t afford an $80K Rivian either. They have a ways to go to convince most people. Also, 90 mile range on a bicycle is awesome. Now we’re talking. 👍🏻
From somebody that really likes EVs also, I have to agree 100%. Economies of scale production has its limitations and the costs eventually bottom out. EVs will probably get cheaper, but they have a long way to go to reach parity. Given the initial cost of purchase, potential battery replacement costs after ~10yrs, the inconveniences of charging, the significant loss of range when towing, and the minimal reduction in emissions, they're just not viable imo.
@@MHTriBernard Part that always gets forgotten for me is local grid infra, the last mile. Increased demand means increased need for investment, meaning increased costs and demand for pricy not so commonly produced parts. Hi-voltage hi-load transformers need to be installed and that will also take time.
I think you are absolutely spot on Louis, I would love an electric car but until any car maker can put one out there for £20k or under it’s just not realistic for me to go for one. Fuel is very expensive here in the UK and I actually don’t do huge mileage but I still spend upwards of £200 a month on fuel. If I were buying Tesla’s cheapest car It’d be 8 years before I saw any profit from owning one. I’m sure one day electrics will get there but until they do they’ll never become the dominant form of transport.
I feel that pain. Not sure how many miles/Km you are driving to create that fuel bill, but my wife and I just got a lightly used honda clarity, it will go ~45 miles on a charge, and then goes into hybrid mode. Most of the driving we do, is in EV mode only. So out Gasoline bill has plummeted. Cost of the car was less than £20k in $USD, sadly I don't know if Honda ever sold them in the UK, and they recently stopped making the things, .. I fear because of the push for all electric, when I think the plugin hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV ) is a far better solution, as it avoids the entire problem of waiting to charge on longer trips, but since those are only a fraction of the driving, the overall gas consumption is drastically reduced.
Bang on, man. That is exactly my thoughts on the matter. With the price difference as it is here in the States, and with my driving habits, it would take me nearly 25 years to recoup the added cost of an EV over an equivalent class of gas-powered car. This was before the current price spike insanity. I would prefer the EV because my driving habits otherwise are perfect for it, and not having to worry about all of the maintenance components involved in a combustion vehicle would be great. Until someone can come up with a $20k EV that isn't a commuter pod, and can outhandle and "out-fun" my miata though, it won't happen.
@@wildonion99 Seriously, check out the Honda clarity. you can get one with low miles for near $20K, 45 mile EV range and ICE for the rest. All that EV time means far less wear and tear on the engine. I expect to get ours way past 300K miles and if/when needs a new battery the cost will have fallen even more than it would be today (~$4K ) ... or inflation will have made that a less painful cost.
We have some cars like that over here in india, $20K/₹1.5M for 30kWh and about 155mi real range
Not the most advanced of cars though, lacks cruise control and adas of any kind, but I guess companies have to cut corners to get the price there.
@@RussellPolo Oh, I know the clarity well. Had a few in the shop for body work. The problem is they're around $35k in my area (everything costs a ton here), and I cant have more than one vehicle. No space, and no ability to charge at home. Plus being a one vehicle household, it doesnt mean the fun requirement like the miata. :(
I ran the numbers earlier today. I couldn't get a model 3 to break even with the Honda accord my coworker is looking at, at any mileage. And he is one of those guys who bought his last car new, drove it for 180,000, and scraped it when the engine gave out.
Thank you Louis, I have been using a $35,000 for tesla for a while. I didn't realize the jacked up the price that much over the last 5 years.
EDIT: he had a 2012 kia soul and is looking at a civic. Not sure how I messed up accord and civic.
How did an Accord's engine crap out at 180k miles? Does he just never change the oil?
Please show you math. I spend about 5k per year on gas in California. It cost's me $50 to get 220 miles of range. I looked up the going rate for 220 miles of range from a super charger and it was just about $16 here in the Bay Area. That's a savings of $34 every 220 miles. 100,000 miles / 220 miles = 454.5 fill ups every 100,000 miles. 454.5 x $34 = $15,454.5 in gas savings over that 100k miles. However, with the Tesla, you need far less maintenance, so factoring that in, you right about even at 100,000 miles between the gas and electric, assuming when you 60k mile warranty expires on the gas car (if you even get that good of a warranty), nothing major fails, like how my transmission (6k to repair) and engine (5k to repair) went up at 62k miles and 68k miles on my last car. You SHOULD easily get 200k miles on the Tesla with no major failures, including the battery. So with an addition 15k in gas savings the next 100k miles, at 200k, the gas car is at 19k + $22,725 (first 100k miles of gas) + $22,725 (second 100k miles of gas) + maintenance (hard to determine, but defiantly much higher than the tesla), so at least $64,450 in costs, and you'll probably be well over 70k in reality as you'll likely need serious engine and transmission work (cars are not built the same today as they were in the 90's and early 2000's). Now with the Tesla model 3, lets say you start at 40k + $7272 (first 100k miles of electricity) + $7272 (second 100k miles of electricity) = $54,544 for 200k miles of driving. Worst case, let's assume the Teslas battery fails and the gas car needs a new transmission and engine. They would then be about neck and neck, except gas cars require oil changes (now with synthetic at around $60 every 6000 miles, brake pads every 30k miles at $400, and rotors every 60k miles at over $1000 for all 4... Not to mention all of the other maintenance needed on gas cars like timing chains or belts. There's no doubt the math shows clearly electric cars today is cheaper than gas cars today. This doesn't factor in that you could have solar at home, use that to fuel your car, farther lowering fueling costs. BTW, I'm not a Tesla fanboy or EV fanboy, I'm buying another gas guzzling Turbo car very soon. But the math seems clear based on my situation in the bay area.
I worked in a shop for awhile, and I would always choose a new or rebuilt engine in a older vehicle versus finding another vehicle completely
@@reinbeers5322 probably didn't change the timing belt
@@heyaisdabomb well gas there costs twice as much as everywhere else. A decently fuel efficient car would get me 600 miles on 50 dollars.
Dude thank you for saying what I’ve been trying to argue for years. Last August I bought a Honda CRV for $15k with 40k miles. I’ve had 0 issues out of it.
I can totally afford to spend 40k on an electric car, but I’m never going to spend that much. I make great money but I’m not interested in spending it on a depreciating asset like a car.
I’ll buy an electric car when I can charge pretty much anywhere in 20 mins or less, can drive for 400-500 miles on a charge, have AWD, and can get it at low mileage, ALL for under 20k. My Honda has all those things and is more reliable and cheaper to work on than a Tesla. I have to have AWD and that adds so much cost to an electric vehicle.
Also, onlooker, don’t say you don’t need AWD when you have snow tires. I live in the most mountainous area of the country and I laugh at the front wheel drive vehicles with brand new snow tires stuck on a hill. It’s those dipshits that gridlock the town in a blizzard.
Which Honda Civic has AWD?
@@billplaschka9279 I meant CRV. Idk why I typed Civic. Brain fart lol
Its better to wait until fuel cells cars becomes more technologically mature
You're a fool. Sticker price is only part of cost. Affordability is the inverse of cost, not sticker price. EVs are more affordable than their ICEV counterparts.
@@weksauce how in the world are EVs more affordable than ICEV vehicles? Sticker price is a part of cost, then you have maintenance, insurance, fuel, depreciation, and longevity.
I’m sure you’ve done the math of all that and determined that a $50k AWD Tesla Model 3 is somehow cheaper in the long run than my $15k CRV.
If you’re gonna come in and call someone a fool, back it up. Let me see what math you’re doing to determine that an EV is somehow cheaper than my setup. (Impossible because it isn’t)
The Chevy Volt is a very affordable PHEV. I could get 60+ miles of in-town driving per charge, while the car gets 40+ mpg using the gas engine to go another 300+ miles. It's a great transition to electric vehicle in my opinion.
The volt is an amazing car! I get 72 miles of ev range and about 52 mpg on my 2018 volt. It sucks that Chevy killed it
Only thing is a bearing in the powertrain with a nylon ball cage that always eats it at around 70,000 to 75,000 miles.
Gen 2 Volt is an amazing car. Sad it got abandoned. It's a proper PHEV where vast majority of the time you don't need to burn fuel.
1-2k$ 2nd gen Prius has 50+mpg 🤣🤣🤣
@@joshhhab no ev range on those so you still use gas, you'd also need to be cautious of the maintenance done on those as I'm not sure if those came with a battery air filter and if they do people often don't clean/replace them leading to premature battery failure or severe degradation. The volt on the other hand has a proper liquid battery cooling system like most BEVs
Old Nissan Leaf batteries lacked thermal regulation - they are well known for experiencing the worst battery degradation for EV's. But then again, they were also some of the first EV's on the market, so don't hate on them. You can get a replacement if you can afford it, and Nissan haven't done anything to stop you (especially since it's this old). I think the cost for a replacement is roughly $10k. Other EV's, especially Tesla's have experienced... noticeable degradation, only around 10% if you get a good one.
So you have 20k in a vehicle thats 10 years old... 10k in the car, and 10k in the battery... 10k in a gas car, and 10k in gas gets me right at 100,000 miles...
Nissan has had *YEARS* to address the thermal issue. How many years has the Leaf been on the market?
@@realpainediaz7473 I don't know what you mean - Nissan addressed the problem a long time ago, it was just their earliest models that lacked it?
@@memeier9894 Hey, I'm not arguing for the case, just saying what I know... though, Leaf's are a tad bit cheaper in the UK and if you have solar (there was a large free scheme a while ago here) you actually can charge it up using just that and have left over for the house.
@@Leon_George never said you were im just pointing out if the vehicles cost is the same, I can buy a whole lotta gas when you just got batteries. Even though its cheaper to charge than a gas car, the amount you will spend in charging, I can spend on tires, oil changes etc, and still come out cheaper, because electric still needs tires and brakes as well.. I just don't see the appeal, unless you live in the city, and drive maybe 50 miles a day at most.
No. When a battery replacement on an 8 year old Tesla costs more then $20,000 your better off just paying for a gas power car and the inflated gas prices.
On a 8 year old it's covered by warranty.
Just lease electric cars.
@@jamiebaker6516 some people like to own things instead of rent them indefinitely .
On any similar vehicle (60k$+ ICE) you would've easily paid at least half that in maintenance and the other half in fuel (if you actually drive anywhere)
this
I agree, we have a LONG way to go. My colleagues at work (I don't know where they get the money) are touting electrical cars as the "must have" thing today, and can't fathom my choice of a cheep and cheery little Suzuki Ignis (which I bought for 14K USD brand new, with winter and summer tires with TPMS sensors in all of them), has all the luxuries of a good electrical car, 4-speaker stereo, computer & entertainment center, 6 air-bags, 5 doors, small...fits in anywhere, can turn on a dime, backing camera, air-condition that works a treat - and a car that basically never needs repairs - all of this for 14K, not to forget I hardly pay any taxes or insurance on it because it weighs a meager 850 KG, that's less than a ton. So my car costs are about 80 bucks a month, everything included (I paid for the thing outright, silly, right?) But it's mine. I've had it for over 3.5 years now, runs like clockwork and passes the tests every year. Good luck with those 45K $ cars lol.
Investing those 14k at a 6% return, it would've payed itself lol
I have a 21 Leaf SL+ (62kwh), purchased June '21. in WA, the best range I have been able to get was 250ish mile using e-pedal (one pedal driving). I did spend 46k on it and received a 10.2k incentive. I just experienced it with 20 degree weather and have seen about a 60 mile reduction until the battery warms up. (No active temp management, it's air cooled.)
I also recognize that EVs have more maturing to do and that it is still early adoption.
Sadly Nissan kept ignoring the problem of battery thermal management, better sell and upgrade.
You could buy 5 decent used car with that money.
@@neku2741 5 decent used cars would be 5 decent used cars with zero warranty and surprisingly high insurance fees, and if you're paying the same on a loan it's kinda a moot difference imo - especially when you save cartoonishly large amounts of money driving electric over gasoline.
It would be great if we had a single EV charging standard in the US so that looking for a charge point wasn't so complicated
Pretty sure everyone but Tesla has already settled on one. It's like phones - almost everyone uses USB C, but then Apple/Tesla has to be special little boys with a special little connecter.
There's still a lot of crap out there to support older cars, though. But it's all the same wires, just in different shapes, so adapters are an option.
CCS basically is the US standard now. The old standard, chademo, which the Leaf used, is going away in any place that is not Japan. The only non-standard one left in the US is Tesla. This is only because Tesla can get away with it. Elsewhere they have been forced to implement CCS on their vehicles to comply with a single charging standard. It needs to happen here, too. Though the real issue is EV's costing far above what real people can afford, and still have it make fiscal sense. Almost nothing now does.
That would be the biggest help. Gas stations are usually owned by a regular business owner or a gas company, not an auto maker. If there's an industry standard, it can lower barrier to entry and increase the potential market, increasing convenience of buying an EV.
There already is a single charging standard it's called CCS based on J1772. Problem is the PAYMENT and vehicle hand shake system which is stupidly unnecessarily complicated. Once you get over the hurdle of paying for the Public Charger. There should be no issue electrically connecting the vehicle.
@@wildonion99 CCS is actually a horrible physical plug design and the Tesla version is just better. Tesla SC v2 is just CSS protocol wise in a better hardware format. The two are compatible with Adapters and Tesla has been trialing CCS to Tesla adapters.
Cheaper Teslas wouldn't change anything since they're all out of stock anyway. Demand is crazy high for these cars. I would love Tesla to build the equivalent to an Aptera, these way they would need less cell per vehicles and could thus build/sell more of them.
If less cells are provided, people would use the existing EVs that cannot reach the next Tesla station. Range is required to compete.
yup. Rip 35k model 3
They will. The problem is production. They need the support for everything that goes wrong. If they made a moped or anything else it will sell out
@@mf-- Point of building "the equivalent of an Aptera" is that you get more range out of a given battery, so you could use a smaller battery and still make it between superchargers. (Aptera is supposed to get 10 miles per kWh, so could use half the cells of a Model 3 for the same range, though we'll see once it comes out.)
Aptera is the Esperanto of the automotive world.
I just wanted to say that pretty much everyone outside of a big city has a commute, usually a large commute. Even going from a suburb to a city can be over an hour of driving each way. It's ultra inconvenient to have to constantly be charging your vehicle; you want to be able to get going as soon as possible. If you forget to charge your car, you're screwed- you will have to wait for hours at home in many cases to be able to go anywhere without getting stranded. Regular cars can handle these problems without issue. It's usually not that much of a walk or drive to get to the nearest gas station if you forget to fill up and need to get somewhere an hour away. It doesn't take hours to fill up at a pump, it takes a few minutes.
Not everyone lives within walking distance of their workplace. Fewer can afford to wait for hours to charge their car if they forgot to do so the night before. Road trips are not the limiting factor for the usefulness of a vehicle for most people- it's their daily commute and the consequences of having to refuel last minute.
Until electric vehicles get better with charge times, capacities, and don't have nearly as much battery degradation, I won't agree with anyone who says that electric vehicles are a good replacement for regular gas cars. I'm not saying that electric vehicles can never be a viable replacement, but in their current state, they are not.
@@S-A-M. That’s what rapid chargers are for.
@@S-A-M. It is compared to a 3.5 or 7kW charger. However if you leave your house with a full battery and with an average speed of 60mph, you should easily be able to do a two hour drive without stopping.
I just bought a certified preowned car last year. I researched the brands I liked in my price range...which was $15-18K. Not one EV on the market could match the price AND range of comparable ICE vehicles. I still pride myself on that I'm getting like 45mpg, which is a HUGE saving from my old clunker. But yeah, I don't forsee myself getting an EV unless the price comes down or I make or 6 figures.
One has to wonder what the price of a 5 year old used EV would be, after the dealership swaps out the batteries with new ones. You know that won't be a cheap fix for them.
My new EV I just bought was the same price. Enough said.
Okay I'll say a bit more. For one the used car market is at record highs right now, not exactly the most fair time to make a comparison like this. And yet still, there are affordable EVs available if you know where to look. Me, I've been lurking and searching for over a year before I found the exact perfect match for me and it was only 18k. Just takes time.
Also I don't forsee myself needing over 100mi of range. It's absurd that I'd need more than that. I live in the suburbs, so things are too far for using an e-bike, but it's not exactly the countryside. When I check on a map, I can make it roundtrip everywhere I'd ever go or realistically find a job in the area. Even another hotspot a state over is workable under 100mi.
Sure not everyone is me but don't act like no one is. We're the pretty average suburban low income household, so if it works for us it can work for many.
The roadtrip comparison Louis did is also laughable. Clearly Louis has never been in a large, low income household or he'd know that you just DON'T do roadtrips in your ONE AND ONLY family car that the whole family needs to have 100% uptime on. You'd put those miles on a rental or heck, even a family friend's car. Why put those miles on your only car? That's like shooting yourself in the foot and expecting it not to hurt.
What did you end up getting?!
@Jon VB This is such an unrealistic idea though. How many people drive their car 500k miles? You do realise that aside from the engine the rest of an EV is just the same as a regular car, suspension, rust, fluids, electrics etc can and will go wrong during that time. You didnt factor in car maintaince either, which is hugely inflated thanks to Teslas being entirely dealer only repairs. The average tesla battery life and the average ICE life are also heavily flawed statements. Many car owners miss service intervals and wear out engines prematurely, there are many cars and trucks in service industry with millions of miles on the clock due to decent servicing. And the kicker is that a replacement engine cost is minute compared to a tesla battery, a garage will install a 2nd hand engine with low miles in an average commuter for less than $2k. And the kicker? The cost in fuel is spread out over the 500k miles, not dropped in one go (a very important metric)
Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs) like the RAV4 Prime are still the way to go in lieu of Tesla's line of BEV. It covers mileage that most people use for short range daily commutes (within your own city/town) at under 45 miles and switches to hybrid engine for long range trips at great MPG 👍. Its half the price of an equivalent Model S and more spacious and more reliable than a car manufacturer with less than 15 years of experience. Also, the full electric, elegantly designed Toyota *bz4x* is due this spring 2022! It's going to give Tesla and Nissan Leaf run for its money. 🚗💨
Wife just bought one. I've been very happy with my Volt. Exactly as you say: phev is currently the way to go if your like having the option of long trips quick, but have your daily driving be all electric. If you're a 2 car household though, having a phev and a full ev makes sense if you can afford it.
I'm literally in the process of deciding between a Model 3 and a RAV4. Friend recently got a Tesla and loves it. Co-worker got a RAV4 and loves it. I am not sure what I want to do. I really like the idea of a Tesla, but I do about 6 long drives a year.
I have a used Toyota Camry Hybrid, an excellent medium sized car with a small ice engine to charge the presumably, NiMH batteriey(s). Does great service with minimal running cost, is spacious enough, and bought n2nd hand! Cheap all round! All the taxicabs in Sydney run them so they must be OK !
@@James-ln6li Don't get tesla until solid state batteries are a thing. 5 years.
It's a massive hype train.
RAV4 prime in same class as a Tesla model S? Yes the both have 4 wheels.
This last summer I drove roughly 5000 miles in 12 days from Chicago to Yellowstone, followed by Grand Teton, then back, making a rough circle between i90 and i80. In general once we left Chicago there was a bunch of nothing. There were times later on where it was like a wasteland with absolutely nothing for hours before some teeny side of the road town popped up with 1 ancient gas station. Couple that with me driving a ton of miles everyday, and I just see evs currently as making road trips more problematic than they have to be.
I always say: "it's great that this nice new tech exists, but when can I buy it for a price that I want to pay for that product?"
Kinda like healthcare research and development. Like "Nice, but when's the price drop or when's my insurance covering it? Never, k, ignored permanently."
Great video, and definitely agree. IMO charging stations are all wrong right now. Here's how I think they should work for future EV's: Swappable batteries.
You drive to a "charging station" and park over top of a special pad. The pad opens up and automatically removes the battery from underneath the car. A new battery is swapped in its place. You're in-and-out in less than 2 minutes. THAT is how "charging stations" should work. Having to wait longer than putting gas in a vehicle is *insanely stupid* and absolutely turns people away right there.
NIO cars in China do that
Tesla tried that, didn't work.
Most people can plug in at home and will never even need to visit a charging station though
flow batteries might be the solution
@@La0bouchere Until that one week when you lose power because of the storm.
Good analysis. I went through a similar exercise back in 2020 to see if electric made sense for me. Compared Nissan Versa to Nissan Leaf long range. The electric is literally 2x the Versa. Gas savings aren't going to make up for $16000.
I ended up buying a used versa for $8600. Not poor, just not trying to impress anyone.
Honestly, $8600 can buy you a lot. Especially if you're willing to go a little older.
@@reinbeers5322 I bought a 2017 Nissan versa with 29,000 miles. It's not fancy but runs great and I take care of it. Did oil changes every 5k miles, then switched to full synthetic and decided to go every 7500 miles. My wife teases me about it but I like my manual crank windows and manual transmission. It takes me back to a simple time when my dad was teaching me to drive his little Mazda pick up truck.
So in 2019 and 2020 I was working at a factory that treated me badly. Working crazy overtime every week. I started writing down what was left on my mortgage every week on the dry erase board in the maintenance office and telling co-workers that when that number hit zero I was out of there. Eventually they pushed me too far and I left with a few K left on my mortgage. I left for a temp job making 10k more per year. That didn't pan out but I landed another job a few months later making even more. Someone has to program the robots to do what is needed. I enjoy doing it when I am treated with respect. As long as my current employer doesn't force the death jab I plan on staying there for a while.
I am a little disappointed that Louis made his employees get the Jab but understand that people think differently in different parts of the country. I am a licensed electrician and could probably scrape by on that if I was terminated.
@@tylercruit6261 You did good by going with a manual, Nissans usually fail through the CVTs. Less tech, less stuff to break.
2017 is quite recent, not a bad choice for $8600 and 29k miles. That amount gets you a lot of stuff even nowadays, an early 2000s sports car is well within that budget, for example (sure they're not exactly the ideal commuter car).
Enjoy your new paycheck!
I live in Grand Forks, ND.
I work in Pembina, ND.
That's a trip of over 75 miles that I drive *every day*
A 2013 Nissan Leaf literally couldn't get me from home to work on a full charge.
There is (as of two weeks ago now) one singular slow-charge port on the way there.
In order to make it to work on time driving a Nissan Leaf, I'd have to leave 14 hours before I needed to get to work.
Then I'd have to spend another 14 hours on the way home.
That'd leave me negative 4 hours in the day to actually work.
Electric cars are not viable for the average person, not yet. Aside from range/cost/charging station availability, the batteries are just not reliable enough to warrant the cost yet and a large part of that cost IS the batteries. Every "affordable" EV I have seen has been plagued by cost cutting in every way they can get away with to maintain that "affordable" price tag while sacrificing as little range as possible, even Tesla. Lithium Ion batteries will not be what brings the EV to the big leagues. They aren't reliable enough, cost too much to produce and degrade too quickly. With only 2 charging stations in my city I would also have to charge from home, where my electric bill is the largest monthly expense already. I love the concept but I won't be investing until they can at the very least outlast a budget combustion engine car (they can't even come close right now).
Almost everything you've said is just flat wrong and contributing to the FUD.
Degradation with modern batteries is minimal, with over 5000 charge cycles. They will still be going long after you've had your hips replaced.
There is nothing better to invest in right now. In a few years, all ICE cars will be lemons with tiny resale value, so buying a new one now is madness.
A monthly $100 electricity bill is better than a $300 gasoline bill, and if you have solar, you can charge it yourself and always have a free full "tank".
By “affordable” do you mean living way outside of your means and causing yourself to have a $1k car payment just so you can fake wealth on social media?
If so, then yes. Very affordable.
I paid $16k for a 2015 golf sportwagen diesel two years ago with 57k miles and average 38-44 miles per gallon. Electric can’t touch those numbers yet. In the future? Sure. But not anytime soon.
Hell yeah. The most I've ever paid for a car is $6k and I don't see a reason to ever go above that. My current car was $4500 and gets 45/55 mpg city/hwy (diesel golf).
I paid $8500 for my 2009 corvette with 50k miles. It got 35 mpg highway at 90 mph and I sold it for $19,000 a couple weeks ago with 100k miles.
Don’t forget resale value. It’s actually cheaper to daily drive a Lamborghini than it is your golf which is only worth about $9,000 two years after you bought it.
Agreed, I paid 1300€ for my first car, a 15 year old french econobox. It has 178k km on it and I get around 7l/100km, total range is between 700-800km on a full tank. Last time I checked there are no EV’s that will do that at the same price and will not for a long time
@@GreenBlueWalkthrough sorry but you got fucked on that deal bro.
@@MrPland1992 I have considered selling it. I could probably come close to breaking even, but there is no way I could replace it for a similar price.
Also, I really do love my GSW TDI. Its a manual with leather, fender premium audio, panoramic sunroof ( no issues yet! Lol) and the lighting package. Ive had one check engine light and it was a loose NOx sensor harness. I love this car and will drive it until it’s physically not able to be used as a vehicle again.
Electric cars aren't affordable but gas cars are also not affordable currently at new prices. Only used gas cars are worth it or ideally if you live in a well planned city, you don't need a car anyways.
sadly not true. at current prices only new gas cars are worth it, because of how brutal the used market is right now. electric cars depend on your needs
Salvage-title used cars are great if you know your way around a car.
You can buy a Chevy Spark for under $15k. The problem is that it's probably only worth about $10k the second you drive it off the lot. It just doesn't make a whole lot of sense for someone looking for a vehicle on a budget to take the appreciation hit of a new car when you can buy a slightly used one for significantly less.
Then the problem becomes what people are actually willing to drive. Most people want to drive a vehicle that is more than they can actually afford. They don't want to drive a Spark, they want to drive a BMW or something similar. They often fail to factor in maintenance costs as well.
@Fao Chi It was never $10k back, it was $7500 back, way back when EVs weren't selling very much.
@Fao Chi in the US the max was 7500 twards a car for a company that sold under 200k cars. tesla and a few others are well past it
Ive driven for 32 years. In that time along with a spouse added in later. Ive owned - 11 vehicles and spent less than 35 k and sold all but 3 of them that we currently have for a large fraction of what i paid for back or given them to kids who are still driving them. The only one over 10k spent (all were below 5) was wife's she had before were marred and was at the time still paying on (since paid off and sold) she now likes the little or non payment from buying used and taking care of it. A life of car payments upwards of a mortgage payment is no way to life a life. And electric till it can handle off road and rural middle America isn't going to happen. Let alone the winters here.
I had an affordable electric car (bought new), but the non rechargeable “D” size batteries didn’t last too long. Car came to an end when the remote control failed (that’s my story) and the car smashed into a nearby brick wall.
F for the car
Those batteries are relatively cheap to replace though :-P
@@psm322 Not in comparison to the car as a whole. D batteries cost a lot over time, if you have to commute every day :|
As a 2015 Nissan Leaf Owner, I only recommend it as a secondary commuter car. I work from home, but my girlfriend's cost to commute went from $80 a month to $3, and we didn't even need to install a charger. It just charges from an outlet; and we can still take my mustang for long road trips. I do agree this arrangement does not work for everyone though.
While this is true, please note that actually acquiring a second car for commute only is not free. With the calculations you have shared you are saving around 900-1000 USD per year, so it will take multiple years to cover cost of the Leaf itself, until you will start saving money.
And saving 70$ a month, your car will pay for itself in 40 years!!!
@@danbosch- wrong. The car cost less than 8 grand. Also, on what planet do you expect any car, let alone an electric one to pay for itself? You're trolling.
Looks like you're lying, a Honda Fit can travel 1000 miles for $ 80, to travel 1000 miles on the Nissan Leaf you will need almost 300 kilowatts. Does 300 kilowatt cost you $ 3?
Car companies should be making much smaller and lighter electric cars to cut the cost. Many people just need a 1-2 seater.
Electric vehicles are actually very old. They had a huge market share in the early 1900s. Yes much older tech but so were gas powered vehicles from the same time.
yep
It was during a different time. The original electric vehicles used lead acid batteries and didn't go very far... they were very much limited to cruising around the city they lived in. At the time, ICE cars were harder to drive, not particularly reliable and finicky to run on changing gasoline developments. Additionally, the road network outside of cities were largely dirt or gravel paths... so ICE cars didn't have a obvious benefit over electric or steam. Of course, as development of the ICE engine and the road network made the ICE cars dominant after WWI.
And steam power was first discovered by the Ancient Greeks, what's your point?
There's such a thing as being too far ahead of the curve.
Yeah it's like comparing a FreeValve Camless Engine to a Ford Flathead. Microcontroller BMS to monitor and secure Hundreds of volatile energy dense sells did not even exist 30 years ago. What made Long Range BEVs possible now is that we can gang up hundreds of cells and prevent them from EXPLODING. Soo the vintage electric car comment is actually misleading.
Man I thought you’d be like a lot of TH-cam finance bros but I thought wrong. You seem to be a very compassionate level headed guy. I like that you’re looking out for poor folks.
Spot on! E-vehicles are not yet economically competitive with internal combustion vehicles. Hybrids might be. The real gaslighting is the unavailability of reliable public transportation buses and rail) because we are taught to not want that.
Bingo.
how is 45K affordable
If you are out of touch with people who are broke, it is affordable.
I know people to whom an $850k house is affordable, who wouldn't claim that is affordable to _everyone._
Its very affordable to people who like to take 70 month loans
There is a reason I have three early 1980's VW diesel Rabbits in my driveway at this time, and are my daily drivers. The most expensive set me back $1100. However, at a minimum of 45 mpg (one is getting 56 mpg in the summer and 52 mpg in the winter) and a 10.9 gallon tank I get at least a 450 mile range.
Now when it come to "Right to Repair" there are parts available for just about everything, and service manuals that go into detail on the tools and procedures required to do any repair down to engine rebuilds. Plus, with the old style diesel injector pump (think old tractor) converting to run on plain vegetable oil is possible. But bio diesel is also an option without modification.
Now as far as efficiency, electric vehicles are much much better. But, as Louis pointed out in his earlier video the infrastructure is not there, and won't be there for quite some time. To fill a typical gasoline car, you go the the gas station and spend maybe five minutes filling (if you pay cash first, then go back for change). A typical station may have 10 pumps and sometimes a small waiting line, but usually has open pumps. Now, increase that filling time to 30 minutes for the same number of vehicles. The typical station now needs 60 chargers to fill the same needs.
When you look at the electrical power required to propel a small lightweight car at 50 miles per hour (I did this as part of a physics assignment) it takes about 15 kW of power. This is just the rolling and air resistance on a flat windless road. Now if a "fill-up" takes 30 minutes and gets you 500 miles, at that small car efficiency, that is 10 hours (150 kW hours). That means each charging "pump" is putting out 300 kW. Multiply that by a busy station with 60 chargers, that means each station of that size needs to have 18 MW of capacity on demand. Now, how many gas stations are in your area, and how many pumps are at each?
omg, I grew up with my parents both had Rabbits one faded light green the other faded light blue. The memories of I have of the 4 of us driving from Central Florida to North Ohio straight through 3 gas station stops and 1 extra rest stop in Virginia. Is making me want to cry not sure if it's from the nostalgia or remembering the body cramps.
I own a Leaf (around town), Pathfinder (long distance), and a 1979 240D (classic and indestructible). I won't even consider a Tesla because they are quality $hitbuckets. I don't ever see me replacing my Pathfinder for long distance travel with anything electric for years because waiting 45 minutes at a Supercharger is not appealing when I can fill up my Pathfinder in 5 minutes. Props for the VW diesels...my 240D is not much faster but it will easily cruise at 75 mph on the highway.
I like diesel rabbits, they sound almost exactly like my kubota lawnmower and are also mechanically injected. Not sure if they're IDI or not but it wouldn't be surprising.
Not many EVs have 150 kWh batteries, if any. Any kind of power feed in the megawatt range would require its own substation, as well as the distribution to support that kind of load. Considering that the US power grid is straining just under people's average AC usage in the summer, I'd say we need to address that problem first. We don't have the generation or distribution capacity in this country to support a rapid switch to EVs.
Growing up, the rule for cars in our family was, it has to be under $1500 and it has to be a popular 10+ year old car, so that we can pull parts from the scrap yards to fix any issues that come up. Even now looking at a car at 3k is a tough choice.
I don’t see EVs getting more affordable in the next 10 years. We have a lot of shortages which will drive up costs exponentially, specifically cells and chips.
Everything is going up in price including BEVs.
It isn’t sustainable to have everybody driving around in a giant electric F150.
my portfolio say otherwise
sn: i have no financial outlook past 2030 so pardon nihilism
@@thegoodsmaster the entire stock market is a huge bubble right now, inflation will be the straw the breaks the camel’s back. There’s way to much hype surrounding tech and clean energy.
"isn’t sustainable to have everybody driving around in a giant electric F150." That's stupidly impossible. Ford just made some absurd promises to build 150K units by 2023. I doubt they were even get to 100K. Giant Capacity EV are too resources intensive and we have limited supply. There is no sustainability problem, it's a self limiting problem. That problem does not exist.
@@thomas735 AYO FLASH SALE IN ALL DEPARTMENTS COMING SOON???????
You're 100% correct there is no affordable option
What, every car brand has it's own specific charging port? What happened to standardizing electrical ports? You know, like every electronic appliance has the same shape of plugs so you don't have to buy a different socket for the damn thing? This is ridiculous.
they dont, its only a tesla and nissan thing, but thats changing too
Yes. All EV charging ports should be compatible with all EV’s.
Well at least on the other side of the pond in Europe we have a standardized charging port for all electric cars.
bullshit, there are barely 2 or 3 charging ports, what is needed is more charging stations throughout countries.
@@Kepe do we? last time I drove a leaf (after repairing the CHAdeMO port) it has both CHAdeMO and type 2, and thers more than just that .. I guess the type.2 is a standard but its slow as treakle. suitable for an overnight domestic charge yes, suitable for a taxi wanting to get back to the rank and make a fare!? god no.
Right now, the afford EVs are used and aren’t for road trips. Used leaf’s aren’t bad for driving around town and for work/school/errands. Eventually we will have affordable new EVs and I think they will eventually replace ICE cars but that is decades off. Like you said, battery prices and charging availability are the main issues. That’s why they cost so much. I’d also add that EVs would become more affordable with an increase in mass production. I think most automakers aren’t comfortable going all in on EVs yet, which makes sense.
What I’m most curious about owning an electric car is how much the electric bill goes up.
mine went up $100 because I was charging during the day, then I fixed that to only nights so its only $50 exta a month. WAYYY cheaper than gas
Take the battery capacity divide by charging efficiency (about 85%, so .85) = total kWh to fully charge.
Multiply that by your electric rate to get the cost to fully charge.
Divide by range to get the cost per mile.
Compare that to the cost per mile for your gas car.
@@uwucaffeineaddiction4023 untill they tax eletricity like gas, then even people who dont own an ev and are poor suffer.
My last bill was 28 cents KwH in the Northeast. So quite a bit.