Tesla Achilles Heel
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Lets say I don’t care about the planet or the future of the planet and I don’t care about product cost or the cost of maintaining the automobile. Lets say I’m the guy that buys a new car every 3-4 years and the only thing I really care about is money I’m putting in the tank.
Your video says most EVs get something around 100 MPGe some kind of energy equivalency comparisons. Right now I have a little Kia Soul that might stack up against a small EV and my Soul gets about 30MPG. So the EV is going to be 3 times as efficient in terms of moving me and my car down the road.
Now I care about money only and I realize there is road tax mixed in with gas and at this time the tax on EV hasn’t caught up but for the sake of argument lets say EV is 4 times as efficient and energy is energy as it is to me because I’m only interested in money.
Right now as I said before we use 20 gallons of fuel per week or 20x4.33=87 gallons per month at $4.25 per gallon, that’s $370 a month. If I account for 4x when comparing MPGe I could assume my electric bill will jump $92.5 a month and my gas bill will go from 370 to zero. So I can save $277 per month or $3,300 per year. If I could get 10 years out of it that would be a savings of $33k. If I traded it after 4 years I would have saved $13k in fuel.
I admit I don’t follow this real close but are lots of people talking about the pure dollars they are saving. Why are they marketing to saving the planet when they should be showing people this is a way of keeping money in your pocket. I know if Kia came out with a gas powered Soul that had the same features as mine and the same get up and go and I would get 100-120 MPG I would be trading in today.
Lets say I don’t care about the planet or the future of the planet and I don’t care about product cost or the cost of maintaining the automobile. Lets say I’m the guy that buys a new car every 3-4 years and the only thing I really care about is money I’m putting in the tank.
Your video says most EVs get something around 100 MPGe some kind of energy equivalency comparisons. Right now I have a little Kia Soul that might stack up against a small EV and my Soul gets about 30MPG. So the EV is going to be 3 times as efficient in terms of moving me and my car down the road.
Now I care about money only and I realize there is road tax mixed in with gas and at this time the tax on EV hasn’t caught up but for the sake of argument lets say EV is 4 times as efficient and energy is energy as it is to me because I’m only interested in money.
Right now as I said before we use 20 gallons of fuel per week or 20x4.33=87 gallons per month at $4.25 per gallon, that’s $370 a month. If I account for 4x when comparing MPGe I could assume my electric bill will jump $92.5 a month and my gas bill will go from 370 to zero. So I can save $277 per month or $3,300 per year. If I could get 10 years out of it that would be a savings of $33k. If I traded it after 4 years I would have saved $13k in fuel.
I admit I don’t follow this real close but are lots of people talking about the pure dollars they are saving. Why are they marketing to saving the planet when they should be showing people this is a way of keeping money in your pocket. I know if Kia came out with a gas powered Soul that had the same features as mine and the same get up and go and I would get 100-120 MPG I would be trading in today.
If your calculations are correct then I agree with you that that's the economics should really be the thing being highlighted. That said, I suspect that that argument is weak in many cases. For example, are $13k savings in fuel after 4 years sufficient to cover the price difference between EV and ICE vehicles? I keep my cars for many, many years and use a lot less gas so I doubt that the economics argument would win. Moreover, most EVs out there are either must more limiting that the vehicles I own (e.g., compared to a Nissan Leaf) or nearly twice the price.
Eddie_T
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There's only one truth that would explain it for me and t doesn't require a video, a bunch of charts and thousands of words to explain. It comes down to cost per mile to operate and cost per mile for ownership. The cost per mile to operate might be close to the same for all but the cost for ownership per mile will vary considerably.
In my current situation the cost per mile for ownership is past. I drive a 96 Prism which has a tax value of $714 and gets 35-40 mpg. Any move from that be it ICE or EV is going to raise my cost per mile if ownership is included.
Should I need another vehicle a used Kia Soul would be attractive (but less MPG) so I am holding onto the Prism as long as I can.
It's a bit like phone plans my plan costs me 0.06 per minute on a $25 phone. Those people with unlimited minutes don't know their actual cost per minute because they don't know how many minutes they use so they never divide ownership + plan cost by actual minutes used.
In my current situation the cost per mile for ownership is past. I drive a 96 Prism which has a tax value of $714 and gets 35-40 mpg. Any move from that be it ICE or EV is going to raise my cost per mile if ownership is included.
Should I need another vehicle a used Kia Soul would be attractive (but less MPG) so I am holding onto the Prism as long as I can.
It's a bit like phone plans my plan costs me 0.06 per minute on a $25 phone. Those people with unlimited minutes don't know their actual cost per minute because they don't know how many minutes they use so they never divide ownership + plan cost by actual minutes used.
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Spicoli43
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Lets say I don’t care about the planet or the future of the planet and I don’t care about product cost or the cost of maintaining the automobile. Lets say I’m the guy that buys a new car every 3-4 years and the only thing I really care about is money I’m putting in the tank.
Your video says most EVs get something around 100 MPGe some kind of energy equivalency comparisons. Right now I have a little Kia Soul that might stack up against a small EV and my Soul gets about 30MPG. So the EV is going to be 3 times as efficient in terms of moving me and my car down the road.
Now I care about money only and I realize there is road tax mixed in with gas and at this time the tax on EV hasn’t caught up but for the sake of argument lets say EV is 4 times as efficient and energy is energy as it is to me because I’m only interested in money.
Right now as I said before we use 20 gallons of fuel per week or 20x4.33=87 gallons per month at $4.25 per gallon, that’s $370 a month. If I account for 4x when comparing MPGe I could assume my electric bill will jump $92.5 a month and my gas bill will go from 370 to zero. So I can save $277 per month or $3,300 per year. If I could get 10 years out of it that would be a savings of $33k. If I traded it after 4 years I would have saved $13k in fuel.
I admit I don’t follow this real close but are lots of people talking about the pure dollars they are saving. Why are they marketing to saving the planet when they should be showing people this is a way of keeping money in your pocket. I know if Kia came out with a gas powered Soul that had the same features as mine and the same get up and go and I would get 100-120 MPG I would be trading in today.
Ok, what you
KNOW adds up maybe... What you DON'T KNOW would have to be experienced, such as the tax.
1) Do they require charging when not in use? Do the chargers automatically shut off?
2) When you trade in a Tesla after 4 years, based on the dealership not giving a warranty on the battery to the new owner (pretty much a guarantee), what will they give you for it when it would normally be out of warranty after 8 years? Who would buy a 4 year old Tesla knowing they would probably have to fork over $17K just for the battery in 4 years?
Why isn't the battery system a series of maybe 3-5 normal car batteries that cost $200 each or so instead of a massive $17,000 battery like Tesla?
There is a LOT of unknowns to EV's, or at least I don't know them, but I would literally take a Lawyer with me to the dealership to see them squirm over what I see as a rushed gimmick at best.
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Even gas engine cars are all over the place in price if all you want to do is go from point A-B. When cash for clunkers came along I helped my buddy haul cars from the dealer to the crusher and we cried just about every trip. We hauled a beautiful Caddy with the northstar engine that looked perfect. Why not give that car to someone that only drives 10 miles a week and it would be perfect? No they put glass in the oil and ran it out of gas trying to kill the engine and it wouldn’t die. They added more gas and another bottle of glass and when it wouldn’t die they said good enough.
If someone can actually prove to me that 100MPGe is true I will keep an open mind and start looking. It is odd when you think about it they may be burning fossil fuels to make the electric and then selling me the electric to charge my car and they can make money selling the electric still and I can cut my cost by 3-4 times. It is kind of a win/win that defies logic.
If someone can actually prove to me that 100MPGe is true I will keep an open mind and start looking. It is odd when you think about it they may be burning fossil fuels to make the electric and then selling me the electric to charge my car and they can make money selling the electric still and I can cut my cost by 3-4 times. It is kind of a win/win that defies logic.
Cash for clunkers killed the used car market and took a lot of great cars off the road for lower income people. It was an incredibly stupid program. If you go to the scrap yard today you just find a big hole in the years covered by Cash for Clunkers.
Spicoli43
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Now, the Obama admin is pushing the approval of E15 under the guise that it's cheaper. Well, if you don't know what E15 is, that 10 cents or so per gallon savings doesn't ever catch up to the cost of a new engine.
This is just another example of the Obama admin trying to fix a problem that they created. You don't hire the arsonist to put out the fire.
They are hoping people buy into the E15 without any research and kill their engines.
Destruction starts with a D also... Not a coincidence.
This is just another example of the Obama admin trying to fix a problem that they created. You don't hire the arsonist to put out the fire.
They are hoping people buy into the E15 without any research and kill their engines.
Destruction starts with a D also... Not a coincidence.
That is a big one. Still, even if a vehicle supports it, it is important to realize that E15 is less energy dense than the current E10 standard (i.e., folks will be using more of it), hence I'd be very interested in seeing a cost comparison on whether the cheaper price per gallon is actual worth it or it is yet another hypocritical attempt to sling mud at us.
I know several corn farmers and their prices are going thru the roof this spring. Fuel being a big one along with fertilizer, plus just about everything else. They also grow beans that go to bio fuel and no difference there. So add all the food into the fuel you want the results are not improving a thing. Corn is best left to drinking.
I thought the idea of E15 was a bad one I would have thought that the price of ethanol would go up a lot due to the large increase of inputs for that crop although those won't really be felt until this year's harvest. I thought reducing the amount of ethanol in blends might be a better idea especially with summer blends starting to come to the market. Of course the corn mafia would never allow that.
Spicoli43
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Well, everything from the D party is Hypocritical, they don't try to hide it at all, while the R's like to cheat and steal, but you have to dig for it.
If I had play around disposable cash, I would buy 2 identical cars, the cheapest econo whatever, give them the ultimate tune up, new plugs etc, fill one with E15 and one with E5 from Costco or wherever. I would then test them, just driving 20 or so miles around here, never going over the speed limit. I would track everything from the MPG to what the plugs looked like at the end of the experiment, which would be 7000 miles or whatever the recommended oil change was for the cars. That would be the full scientific experiment for me, even though E15 isn't a good value like you say.
Reading around looks like E10 will get you 3-4% lower milage while E15 will get 4-5% less. So if you get 30mpg now you would get maybe 0.3-0.6 less mpg. That assumes you're using E10 now which almost all regular gas is. The bigger issue is possible engine damage. Cars since 2001 are good with E10 not sure about E15. Again this requirement is brought to you via the corn mafia and their paid representatives.
So is it better or worse that a party is openly hypocritical as you suggest or that they do their best to deceive you so you are unaware as you also suggest? Either case is the reason I haven't voted for either party the last 2 presidential elections. Don't see it happening this time either. But as long as people keep voting against someone instead of for someone we'll keep getting more of the same.
Eddie_T
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I think my Prism is a 96, it's so old I don't remember. It has survived E10, plugs are original. I have never looked a the plugs but mileage hasn't dropped in 136K miles. The only repairs have been a clutch master cylinder one belt.
The Farmers I know just finally got the last of last years corn cut a few weeks ago. They all have dryers and grain bins and never sell right after the harvest. They know the price trends and try and get in right before the South American markets with some and then will be selling the rest to make room for this years crops. Drying is a big deal as moisture content changes the price and they dry it with propane as a heat source they go thru one of those big tanks in a week and constantly being refilled.
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