Technology

A large portion of depreciation and insurance is fixed, not based on actually driving. And maintenance is lower with EVs as well.

Still though, you are right, 1/9 is specific to fuel, and it's deceiving. If it.were truly 1/9 we wouldn't be having this conversation because all vehicles would be EVs.

depreciation per mile is usually a bigger cost than fuel.

OK, this might be something that a fleet manager would care about, but the average driver wouldn't consider in a hundred years. You don't have to swipe your card and pay for depreciation every four days. Not to mention that depreciation has no bearing on vehicle type and little connection to physical reality at all.

And if anything, EVs maintenance is lower than expectations. There is no robust recycling of EV batteries for instance because it turns out that the batteries last reliably for 30 years and most of the ones produced are still in service. Also EVs are by nature simpler, with many components being solid state. ICE are rube goldberg masterpieces, the result of decades of continuous development.

Depreciation is irrelevant and only brought up by combustion promoters. A car is a tool, not an investment in itself. The only relevant metric is overall yearly cost until the car dies.

Changing cars every few years, which is where depreciation matters, is an expensive luxury no one actually has to play.

What's there to maintain? Even the brakes barely get used.

It says "cheaper to drive" not "cheaper to own."

Regardless, taxes and insurance are roughly the same. Maintenance on an EV is FAR less than an ICE car (no oil changes, fewer brake changes, fewer moving parts to replace over time). So if "fuel" is 1/9, and maintenance is just replacing the tires and putting in new wiper fluid, then driving is going to be much cheaper.

"to drive"

It's literally correct.

It's not 1/9th to own or registre. But it certinly is cheaper in reperations and service.

Sounds like big oil propaganda you're spouting. These are the kinds of talking points I hear from right-wing media.

The truth is EV technology has advanced quite a bit in recent years, and the batteries don't deprecate as quickly as the anti-solar crowd still claims.

And as someone else already pointed out, EV maintenance is cheaper because there are less parts.

And road tax for EVs is bullshit, but the reason for it is that combustion vehicles already pay it because it's factored into the price of gas. Or maybe that's not the same in the UK?

Also, the headline doesn't claim that the total expense drops to ⅑^th^, it says the cost to drive it does. That's a very different claim from the one you're pretending they tried to make.

I often get paid for charging mine. They paid me 30p on Sunday.

why is it dumb to tax EVs for mileage? aren't ICs taxed similarly through fuel tax?

roads gotta be paid for somehow, and it's fair to tax actual usage

Trump's stock trades included a LOT of oil company stock the past few months. He's been raking in billions from this.

I had a coworker go on an insane rant about his hatred of EVs after somebody mentioned Teslas. I wound him up even more by saying I'm fine with EVs just not ones built by Nazis.

I'm waiting for battery technology to improve in terms of power density and for infrastructure to improve in terms of power delivery.

My situation is admittedly unique, I want a low slung comfortable hatchback, I street park, and I need a car that can do 6 hours of road in a single day with no prior planning.

Since I don't have a house, I can't charge at home for peanuts. I instead have to go fight for one of the two 7.5kW stations in my neighborhood and move my car as soon as it's done charging or get a ticket.

There's also only one 350kW station on my way to and from work, and last time I tried it with an IONIQ 5, it took 35 minutes to charge and it was in the middle of buttfuck nowhere at a closed Ford dealership. Work has chargers, but you have to share the output with everyone else so I only gained like 3%.

To top it all off, battery technology seems to be preventing good long range EV hatchbacks from taking off. I tried the IONIQ 6, and it felt like I was sitting on the floor, but elevated. Bizarre.

I expect they will keep trying to hold back EVs and compete forever, so never let your guard down. There will always be someone, somewhere, wanting to pump oil and feed it to a combustion engine for money. They'll say it's their culture, for Jesus, for their family, to feed baby koalas, to revive a poor dead rat, or whatever it takes to burn some form of petroleum, change climate, and try to buy a yacht or an island.

Damn if that's the case, solar installations there should pay itself a lot faster huh?