| ▲ | cmiles8 2 hours ago |
| Headline is misleading. Cheaper on per-mile operating costs but typically more expensive to purchase and insure. There’s also a nasty depreciation curve to contend with. Nobody wants a 10 year old Tesla, but a 10 year old well mentioned petrol car still has a ton of life left in it. It still often ends up a bit cheaper across comparable vehicles but not a slam dunk and nowhere near as good as the headline suggests. |
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| ▲ | jillesvangurp an hour ago | parent | next [-] |
| > typically more expensive to purchase and insure The cheapest car for sale in the UK is an EV at this point. The market is rapidly filling with EVs in essentially all price segments. Most EVs are still under warranty when they hit the second hand market for the simple reason most EVs on the market were produced in their typical warranty period. |
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| ▲ | stinos an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Headline is misleading Honest question: how else would one interpret 'cheaper to drive', if not 'cheaper per-mile operating costs'? Wouldn't they have used plain 'cheaper than' if they would have meant 'purchase+operating'? |
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| ▲ | cmiles8 an hour ago | parent [-] | | Because driving includes a lot more costs than just fuel. And as others are calling out, nobody wants a used EV so deprecation is a real cost to every day regardless of if the car is driven or not. | | |
| ▲ | tverbeure an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | > driving includes a lot more costs than just fuel Oil changes, break pads, oil filters, spark plugs, … For whatever reason, my wife’s car needs yearly scheduled dealership visits that always cost a few hundred. Meanwhile, my 5 year old EV has had none of that, other than one of those recalls that required a technician to park 15 minutes on our driveway to tighten some bolt (which my wife’s car also had, but it took another visit to the dealership.) The depreciation thing is true, but I drive my cars into the ground anyway, so it’s not a factor for me. | |
| ▲ | neilalexander an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | I think "nobody wants a used EV" will change, there is already a growing amount of evidence that battery deterioration is nowhere near as bad as feared on average. ICE vehicles also tend to get less efficient over time as well due to wear and tear, build-up, degrading sensors etc, it's just that nobody talks about that. | | |
| ▲ | otherme123 an hour ago | parent [-] | | Right now I would hesitate to buy a used car with 5 years and a 100% of 300 km range but down to 250 km due to battery wear, when I could buy a new car with 500 km range. Owners of first Leafs got hit by already low initial ranges (~120km), so even a 20-30% battery wear have huge impact or car usability. That would change when ranges stops growing (about 700 km, maybe, the same as ICEs?), and used cars have the same range than buying new. 600 km instead of 700 km? Good enough. |
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| ▲ | piltdownman an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| They tend to be in much lower insurance bands and tend to incurr significantly lower motor tax - comprehensive policies for EVs are higher due to the (current) dearth of parts and licensed repair centres versus ICE cars running on multi-year platforms or sharing parts across lines that share a single monocoque design (e.g. VW, Ford, Toyota versus Tesla and their publicised parts shortages). The problem is that, for economy of scale reasons, Comprehensive insurance is often cheaper than third-party cover in the UK, despite people tending to never claim so as to keep their no-claims bonus and not spike their premium out of affordability. With 3rd Party the EV option would be cheaper as they tend to be involved in less accidents, and when they do they tend to dissipate more impact on their side due to more modern crumple-zones and safety features. |
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| ▲ | pwagland 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Depends on the specific car, Tesla's are notoriously expensive to insure, but I believe that the Volkswagen ID series is much more reasonable. |
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| ▲ | cmiles8 an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | They’re extremely expensive to repair for one, which drives up the rates since many are just written off after relatively minor accidents. | | |
| ▲ | consp an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | The torque/hp figures also do not help since they are in correlation with abuse and thus higher crash rates. e.g. a Tesla just for liability is significantly more expensive due to hp, you get nothing for crashing it, same weight Model 3 vs ID.3 both 60kwh but 205 vs 150kw is 115 vs 85 euros as a first owned car for a 35 year old and it drops quickly with less power (rates also differ for where you live, don't try to insure an audi with specific trim of wheels on some cities). | |
| ▲ | tonyedgecombe an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | The main reason is the performance. Many early EV's had blistering acceleration and this was reflected it the number of claims insurance companies were getting. |
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| ▲ | buggeryorkshire an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | My girlfriends X4 was stolen 4 months ago. Replaced it with an Audi A6 etron. Her insurance renewal came up 30 quid cheaper at 510 last week! We were stunned. The EV was definitely the right choice, due to luck rather than knowing Trump was about to kick off with Iran. It costs us £8 to charge the car overnight for around 380 miles range. |
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| ▲ | bArray an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > There’s also a nasty depreciation curve to contend with. Nobody wants a 10 year old Tesla, but a 10 year old well mentioned petrol car still has a ton of life left in it. It's worse, there's almost no second hand market for the vehicles. There is barely anybody trained to repair them (even if they will sell you the parts) and if they are crashed significantly it's almost always a write-off. > It still often ends up a bit cheaper across comparable vehicles but not a slam dunk and nowhere near as good as the headline suggests. Only because of government meddling. Fuel is almost uniquely taxed 3 times, which pays for subsidies to pay for green energy initiatives. I think I'll hold out with my diesels and petrols and see how this all goes. |
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| ▲ | thedougd 35 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | In the US, the used market for Teslas is quite strong, even into the high miles. I recently purchased a used EV and found the Teslas weren’t discounted enough from new for my liking. They moved quickly too, except for the ones with salvage titles. I ended up getting an off-lease Hyundai EV because they tanked in value in part due to their ICCU failures, which are now covered under an extended warranty. | |
| ▲ | mschuster91 an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | > There is barely anybody trained to repair them (even if they will sell you the parts) No longer true at least in most decently urban/semi-urban Western countries/regions. The parts shortage is real though, it's always been a plague for Tesla, and most established manufacturers never really recovered from Covid (and in the case of wiring harnesses, Ukraine) as a lot of their supply chain closed down shop for good. > and if they are crashed significantly it's almost always a write-off. That's true of all modern vehicles, no matter the engine type. Crash resiliency comes at a cost, the frame absorbs the crash energy and permanently deforms. Yes you can bend even an aluminium frame back into shape but it will never be as strong as before, and anything carbon-composite or plastic is out of the question as well. | | |
| ▲ | londons_explore an hour ago | parent [-] | | Crash damaged cars have loads of good components though - typically allowing nearly all non-crash repairs to be done by just swapping parts about, unless the manufacturer has got software locks on swapping parts. | | |
| ▲ | mschuster91 21 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Many legislations implicitly require parts locking by anti tamper measures, which is killing off the spare market as well. |
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| ▲ | throwa356262 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Also it is extremely expensive to repair some EVs. Why do you think Tesla insurance is that high? |
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| ▲ | jacobp100 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The cost of servicing an EV is much cheaper, however |
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| ▲ | pornel an hour ago | parent | prev [-] |
| 10-year old Teslas are great, you just need a sticker "bought before Elon went crazy". |
