For most US drivers, EVs offer emissions benefits and cost savings

rrobin_reala about 2 hours ago 23 commentsRead Article on news.mit.edu

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wood_spirit•about 1 hour ago

My experience - in the Nordics, but this is transferable - is they are also much nicer to own and drive. I don’t know anyone who went electric and then went back. The generation who went electric a few years ago is now on their second or third electric car. The makes and models in favour is changing (cue tangent on Tesla brand death in Europe) but the power source choice is not. So as more people get one, I expect their market share to just climb and climb.

zdragnar•34 minutes ago

Depends on who you ask, I suppose. One study in the last year showed only around 1% of EV owners in the US planned to go back to gas for their next car. A different study showed that number was actually 46%. Yet another said it was actually 22%.

I'm inclined to think the number is closer to the higher end, at least in the US. There's still a lot of areas where the charging infrastructure is awful, and if you live in an apartment or are traveling, that's an important consideration. Another is the insurance premium cost, due to the expense of replacing batteries.

I imagine these issues will continue to be less challenging for people over time, as more second hand batteries, recycling and infrastructure continues to expand. Even at current gas prices, though, it didn't make financial sense for my family when we traded in a car two months back.

apparent•about 1 hour ago

How do they account for the cost of having to rent ICE vehicles for road trips that do not suit EVs (some do, and some do not)? Do they factor in the cost of insurance, which some say is much higher for their EVs?

I have owned PHEVs and like them quite a bit, but if I'd bought them new I still wouldn't have reached the payback period. It seems that a PHEV typically costs $12k more than the ICE version, so the payback period is quite long (I think I estimated it to be 50k miles, assuming you charge for free at work, and gas is $5/gallon).

EVs and PHEVs can be great for some people, and some may even save money with them (maintenance is blessedly low). But I find it unlikely that for "most" US drivers, they would save money (and of course they would save on emissions, this is kind of a useless thing to add to the headline).

650REDHAIR•13 minutes ago

What road trips are you taking frequently enough that an EV just won’t work?

Faaak•about 1 hour ago

EVs and PHEVs are completely unrelated though: price, reliability, and mileage wise

eckesicle•38 minutes ago

The linked website carcompare.com was quite interesting in how clustered the data is.

Pretty much _any_ EV car is better both cost wise and emissions wise than _any_ PHEV.

The same holds comparing PHEV with ICE.

Not to mention that EVs are just so much more fun and satisfying to drive. Even a mediocre EV these days will do 0-60 in 5s.

At this point buying anything but an EV for the typical driver is just objectively the wrong choice.

close04•5 minutes ago

> EVs are just so much more fun and satisfying to drive. Even a mediocre EV these days will do 0-60 in 5s.

I always thought that there’s a lot more to driving satisfaction and “fun” than slamming that pedal in a straight line. But most drivers will settle for 0-60 because it’s “accessible” fun, everyone can slam the pedal (and sadly this is so visible in daily traffic). There are very few EVs that manage to mask their weight in a corner.

deathanatos•about 1 hour ago

Unless things have changed, when I looked a couple of years ago, I couldn't make the math math. The cost difference outweighed the savings, IIRC, even if we assumed electricity to be free.

The bigger problem, though, was that the EV we were considering (a Prius) was scarce. So even though I couldn't make the alleged price make sense … well, if there's no supply, then the price may as well be $∞.

So IDK, since that lack of supply also seems to suggest other people disagree (or put utility to the ecological aspects).

hellcow•about 1 hour ago

Electric cars face a lot of depreciation, so you can get a really good deal on a used one. Plenty of supply, low cost, and cheap to keep running.

jerlam•8 minutes ago

I'm not sure this will be the case going forward, as much of the depreciation in the past was due to Tesla's $10K+ price drops, the cancelled EV rebate, and luxury manufacturers making bad but expensive EVs.

achow•24 minutes ago

That would work other way too, EVs would be expensive to upgrade to newer models. Though nowadays it is not that big a concern, but battery pack replacement at some point need to be accounted for.

sollawen•about 2 hours ago

But I think American drivers probably don’t care about these things.

arijun•about 1 hour ago

You don't think Americans care about cost savings, with how much they complain about gasoline prices?

michaelt•11 minutes ago

The 10 bestselling vehicles in the US are: Pickup truck, Pickup truck, SUV, Pickup truck, Toyota Camry, Pickup truck, Electric SUV, SUV, Pickup truck, SUV.

Americans don't like having less money in their pocket - who does? - but it's pretty clear that for American car buyers, fuel efficiency is just one concern among many.

After all, a gallon of gas costs the same no matter how rich or poor you are. If government policy keeps fuel affordable for familes in the 25th percentile ($41k annual household income) then a family in the 75th percentile ($153k household income) can easily afford the fuel needed to commute to their office job in a crew cab F150, if they so wish.

deathanatos•about 1 hour ago

I've never understood the thing about gas costs. It is oft complained about. And while it always seems to be a point of contention, a quick google search suggests the cost is ≈$200/mo on average¹. Rent and healthcare vastly outstrip that; groceries is more but not by as significant a factor.

richiebful1•36 minutes ago

It is a commodity product and the price is everywhere you go. It's just a low effort topic to talk about, like the weather or the local sports team

apparent•about 1 hour ago

I think they do care about cost savings, and the near-universal retrenchment of car companies culling their EVs in the wake of the expiration of the $7,500 federal tax credit tells you that these vehicles do not save consumers money. If they did, people would still be clamoring to buy them.

rdtsc•29 minutes ago

Yeah that was kind of surprising. EVs were supposed to a no-brainer cheaper and more reliable car. I was expecting it to cost no more than half of a ICE car, but they are just as expensive and even more expensive to insure often.

I could see the government having a tax program or incentives to build charging stations. But the cars should have needed that, they should be selling themselves.

sollawen•35 minutes ago

American, you know, they care about AI, chips, and Ukraine ......

actionfromafar•about 1 hour ago

To an extent... but Culture Wars, Rolling Coal and owning the Libs is more important to a large minority.

beardyw•about 1 hour ago

Hard to make an opinion when EVs are not being scrapped to any great extent.

yieldcrv•about 1 hour ago

> “We even did a sensitivity study to see if the range is reduced in very cold climates, and we found that, even in the most unfavorable conditions, EVs still reduce emissions by a substantial amount,” Miotti says.

the range is so bad that he couldn’t even finish the thought about range

that’s hilarious and I’m an EV driver, in warm and sunny southwest though

linzhangrun•about 1 hour ago

The US does not have the same power infrastructure as China.