Batteries are a little too expensive. There needs to be a 20,000$ EV with at-least a 280 mile range and a 50,000K suv EV with a 500 mile range for mass adoption. Tesla is a great deal if you are in the market for a new car and you paid a bunch of taxes last year to get the full 7,500 rebate. Especially if you have a 30 minute plus commute because you save so much money on gas. That’s like 200 a month just on gas. Compare a 2023 corolla to a 2023 model 3
Corolla starting price 21,700. At dealer ship more like 23,000. Toyota never sells at msrp.
model 3 starting price 40,240. You always get msrp. minus 7,500 tax credit, 32,000. 9,000$ difference. Add in 1,000 for charger and port in garage. I paid about 800$ so leaving some room. so 10,000. on a 72 month loan that is 180$ monthly more. Less than the average gas savings. You also don’t ever get oil changes. No break changes but tires wear out faster due to the extra torque. Plus your car is waaay faster, and has a tablet with netflix, youtube, and gps. And it will last way longer than 72 months so those saving continue.
Throw away the tax credit and yeah it probably doesn’t make financial sense for most people to buy one. Still need a cheaper model.
Also I don’t think our power infrastructure is ready for everyone to have one and be charging every night. Needs to be a slow adoption. It might make sense to push for solar panels first. Those are great and decentralizes the power grid. Then you need to encourage people to charge in the day time when possible.
I see a lot of trash talk about on patriots.win about ford’s EV’s. I don’t know anyone who would buy a ford EV over a Tesla. Maybe the f150 EV until the cyber truck comes out. Ford car just have a really bad track record the last 10 years. No one wants one.
I think you are looking it a bit on a different angle. The cost of manufacturing an EV and also running it in the long term (see battery replacement) is way greater than the internal combustion engine ones. I mean ok with renewables and stuff but this agenda is non realistic. It needs more time for technology to adapt (eg better batteries) and also find better ways of recycling. I believe Hydrogen is the next big thing that the Japanese manufacturing is aiming at.
But like Teslas still have like 90% battery efficiency after 10 years. It’s not a cell phone battery. It’s much higher quality. To replace all the battery cells it’s like 15K. Which has only happened so far when someone basically only used a super charger everyday for 5 years. If you charge your car correctly. Meaning usually keeping it between 20% and 90% charged daily with a slow home charger that takes a few hours to charge it’s going to be going strong for 15 plus years. They are rated at between 300,000 to 500,000 miles. Thats the average life of a car. And you can replace it and it’s basically brand new at that point. Replacing a engine is gonna set you back like 8 to 20 K. It’s like the same thing.
Is it more expensive to manufacture? Yeah probably but it’s also a much better experience. So if the government is offering discounts people should jump on it. Driving a Tesla is a millions times nicer than driving a corolla. It’s not even close.
Have Tesla’s been around for 15 years? Not sure so we have to wait and see about the battery life. Battery lives are measured in charging cycles so agin6we have to wait and see. We should bkt also forget that the electricity used to charge them is NOT coming from renewable sources, this is marketing BS. You have to have huge huge PV plants to cover the charging needs plus storage facilities. So far not so many, so guess where this electicity comes from…yep from plants that use crude oil , natural gas etc. So again we should look into this holistically.
Have Tesla’s been around for 15 years? Not sure so we have to wait and see about the battery life.
It’s a good point but I have a coworker with a tesla from 2014 and he still drives it to work every day and the battery is still going great. And batteries typically start to store less charge. so yes in 15 years your tesla will not go as far. But we are talking like around 10 %. You can buy the long range version which is 10% larger. So in 15 years you end up with the base model. But yeah we will have to see. Lots of cars don’t make it from 2014 to now though.
We should also forget that the electricity used to charge them is NOT coming from renewable sources,
- highly location dependent.
- main point, i’m not actually an environmentalist. I mean I like clean parks and stuff, I don’t want the earth to explode but the environment is the least of my concerns here. The car is faster, no stinking fumes in my garage. I can leave the air condition running forever. It has all these really nice smart features. Batteries make for a better car experience. While I would like for someone to solve those power plant issues I really don’t care that much and would buy the car for the reason that it is a better car than a gas powered car for all my use cases.
