Electric vs Gas Vehicles: The Long Term Cost Comparison

Shopping for a new vehicle is often guided by the bottom line purchase price, but maintenance and operating costs over the life of your new car, SUV, or truck can vary widely and have a huge impact on the total cost of ownership. And that’s one more reason why electric cars make so much sense these days…compared to conventional gas or diesel powered vehicles the lower cost to fix or fuel a battery electric vehicle could charge up big savings over the long haul.

[COSMACELF]

@3:15 Running your charging cable across a public sidewalk would never be permitted in large cities... imagine someone trips on that cable?

[robertstotesbury]

Please someone tell me recharge time on the batteries. ???

[conchobar]

I would love to see how they came up with their $3k maintenance price difference. That seems quite low. A Chevy bolt only requires wiper changes and tire rotation/replacements over 150k miles. A Honda civic will need oil changes, spark plugs, coolant change, brake pad replacements, timing belt replacement (With water pump), a/c recharge, etc. On top of tire and wiper replacements. A Honda Civic owner will pay far more than a $3k difference in maintenance cost. Btw, I own both a Civic and Bolt.

[HotRod]

Huh... so everyone has a electric outlet at the beginning of their walk way and its totally fine to have a cord laying across a public side walk for all to trip on. I bet in this neighborhood no one would ever unplug your car either, just to be a jerk.

[BigEightiesNewWave]

lol THAT extension cord will take ALL DAY to charge that car.

[pxn]

How much does it cost to install a charging station at your house? That cost needs to be added in too!

[Cappellano]

Watching this as I received an 8000 bill for a replacement part for my EV. Not everything in the drivetrain is covered under warranty. Cheaper to maintain but not cheaper to repair.

[BigEightiesNewWave]

Time is money...who has 12 hrs. to wait for it to charge ?

[elfiero]

I will NEVER buy an electric vehicle until every at ounce of gasoline has been sucked out of the ground. or I die, whichever comes first.

[stevemilani]

$5000 to $15, 000 for a replacement battery at 2019 rates. I wonder what a battery pack will cost in ten years... :-(

[magneto]

What's 3k over 12 years. Its peanuts.

[kylemurray]

Pay an extra 10-25k for the car, get 3k in state rebates, then install a home charging station ~1k. See the irony here is that no company is going to shift to a model that the consumer actually saves money in the long run.

So, after the 3k savings on maintenance you're still paying at least 5-20k over msrp for an EV. Or, if you don't have a designated parking spot/driveway then you sit for 30min-1hr every couple of days at a public charging station staring at your phone in your car; additionally you have to worry about where you will charge on long trips. Time that far outweighs filling a tank for 5 minutes, basically at a station in every corner of the world. And the trade off is the "feel good" feeling that you are showing others you are cognizant about the world around you by driving EV? As you sit in a turbo charged vehicles that zips in and out of traffic 30 mph over the speed limit? Hmm..A ton of conflicting parts here for me to buy in.

Also, I think this is some overly friendly accounting being applied in this video. I live in a city where it's tough enough to find parking. I see a neighbor run a Tesla charging cord out of his door, similar to a battery tender for a motorcycle, and that's when he actually gets to park in front of his house... What a headache.

Add the potential for what I'm seeing as an obvious 'hardware update' and 'software update' fee once EV's start to dominate the market and you just have a new 'dealership/consumer' model. Tesla is charging a monthly subscription for auto pilot akin to having netflix or amazon prime. We all know how benevolent companies are when the first iteration of their products hit the market. Everything is free to fix, yada yada yada, then fast forward a few years and that iPhone you thought would last for a decade and that still works suddenly doesn't have software updates and can't open a webpage. Or that Amazon prime subscription with free delivery starts to charge 10 for food delivery. My point being, that if you fall under the spell of early price points without seeing the obvious room for companies to tier and charge for services, then you are not an informed consumer and likely young. What happens when there is a battery shortage? Or when the costs of batteries go up because of some supply chain issue?

So, IMO in reality you are not becoming more independent or self sufficient when you go EV; as vehicles become more dependent on computers and chips you are just giving more power to the actual manufacturer versus the local mechanic, who understands machinery and engines. We've seen this slow process; in the last decade or so you had to take your car to dealers and pay just to have the computers run a diagnostic. At every point of this evolution a job has been lost, from the manufacturing floor to the local mechanic and local dealership. Now with buyer models that are mostly online the dealer sales team will slim down. And as vehicle prices started to level off all of a sudden here's the push for EV, and EV's cost more!

Most base model japanese cars are built to last 10-12 years with minimum maintenance. Car manufacturers have just found out a way to charge more for a car with less parts, less hands building them, less people selling them, and a consumer that is dependent on the manufacturer for the lifetime of the vehicle.

I'll gladly lose .68 cents a day to not have to get entangled in a new model of reliance on the auto manufacturers, that in reality are absolutely NOT going to let their new customers save 3000k dollars over the course of a decade. The last people on the plane get the cheapest tickets.

[Sturmgeschutz]

Total costs per month is what I budget at and having to factor in a new car every 100 000 miles is just poor use of money.

[KS-kbzt]

Big hug from Poland to this mr who is leading program since 40 years 👍👍👍

[samaboff]

This guy has been doing this show for 30 years.

[Sublimelime]

What the adverse cost of electricity vs fuel? Just curious. I drive a 93 Chevy 3500. 29mpg and I live 5 miles from work. I only fill up my truck once a month and truck is strong @ 290k miles

[cmerighe]

The numbers don't add up. It takes years to save enough money in gas to cover the initial price difference.

[JonSayson]

You did not address the issue that the initial cost of ownership on an EV can be as much as $15000 more than a similar ICE car.

[vgamedude]

Only 3k over 12 years? Expected more than that. Still don't really think an ev is worth it over a cheap efficient gas or diesel.

[cja]

Will that guy get sued that plugged in across the sidewalk if someone TRIPS?