Lots of viewpoints here, lots of opinions. Surprised nobody's argued for the forcible abolition of private transportation yet. To be fair, there is a bus in BeamNG...
Well, the stereo system let's assume to be 250W including regulation inefficiency, which is a huge over estimate akin to saying your Mazda/ford is 250hp. Tesla model 3 with the *small* battery is 50kWh and delivers 250 miles of range. Stereo running for 4 hours would only pull 1kWh from the battery, reducing charge from 100% to 98%. A difference of just 5 miles of range, that is all. The longer range model has already been demonstrated doing over 300 on one charge *with air conditioning and stereo on*
The Model 3 with the smaller battery is still not a cheap car, and wouldn't have been able to make it. The larger apparently has, but that's really not a cheap car, it would still have been dicey on any "extracurricular" driving once at the destination, and what were the terrain and driving style like? This still does not change the fact that with an ICE car, running out of charge is an inconvenience, whereas with an EV, it's a tow truck ride followed by a quite significant wait (even with fast chargers). And speaking of cost, lesser electrics (which would be unreliable for much more reasonable trips) usually cost 10-15 grand more than an ICE equivalent if you ignore the government money being used to make them artificially attractive, and for that you get stunted usability and a stunted driving experience. I can't wait, where do I sign up?
right now it doesn't outperform ice's value for money.. Although even though I do like ICE cars i do think i'd like to own an electric one at points, its so much more flexible... waiting in the carpark on a hot day with aircon on? Don't need a big old engine to drive a 5hp ac compressor really... so why not electric!.. same in cold weather... And for radio, your car can become less of a car and more of a mobile living space...
It depends. How much will said car cost? How much does your electricity cost? How much does fuel cost? Do you have solar panels? How much driving do you do per year? How often will you need to use public chargers? How much do said public chargers cost to use? Does your employer provide free charging for employees? So for some people EV's will work out cheaper. The initial cost to buy the car will be higher, but the running costs may be lower. Its the same sort of questions people had to answer about buying diesel cars. Since Diesel cars cost more, the fuel costs more, but the fuel economy is higher. So depending on your circumstances they could be cheaper, or more expensive.
So taking the "cheap" model 3, with its 50kWh pack again, its about £6.25 worth of electricity, throw in charging efficiency of 50% (which is a *huge* error, the real efficiency is up in the 80's to 90's) and we'll call that £12.50 for a 250 mile real world range. My current car is averaging 35mpg (imperial gallons not american gallons) or 35 miles per 4.55 litres, from a 55 litre fuel tank, giving a range of 423 miles. My last fuel receipt shows a cost of £1.31 per litre though that was for premium, a quick google search says regular costs £1.24 near me today so we'll work with that. 55 litres at £1.24 is £68.20. So, £68.20 to go 423 miles versus £12.50 for 250 miles. 16 pence per mile versus 5 pence per mile. Literally a 3rd of the cost. Or, I did 8306 miles between MOT's looking at the history of my subaru. £1329 versus £415, £914 saved. Now thats going to take quite some time to offset, but I have cheated here and been as fair as possible using the cheapest fuel in the petrol car (when in reality, british fuel tends to cost a lot more than £1.24) and being as mean as possible to the tesla with that charging efficiency of 50% (when in reality its 80-90) and assuming charging on peak, off peak the cost per kWh drops from 12.5p to sub 5p in this area so if you're charging overnight it'll be even cheaper. Looking at closer to £250 on peak, £100 off peak, to drive over 8000 miles. A saving of 1.2 thousand pounds. Bonus points. The tesla is actually one of the lesser efficient EVs. I simply used it as it is one of the only EVs currently capable of a 250 mile range. There are EVs with an even lower cost per mile, but a range of sub 200 miles, but the tesla is quite a large heavy vehicle with full fat tires, whereas things like a BMW i3 are much smaller with much skinnier tires for less rolling resistance, they may have tinier batteries but they get more range per kWh out of them. Wear and tear costs are also lower. EVs mostly brake via regeneration rather than wearing on pads, a cheap item I know, but it is something that is going to be wearing less at any rate, they dont require the same degree of regular servicing, basically just an air conditioning regas and thats about it. Theyre supposedly "lifetime oil" for their single gear transmission, while I disagree with any oil being lifetime, it is changeable in a tesla if you wish, and with only 1 wear item in it, should last much much longer anyway. Plus you have a lovely tesla feature for when you arent using the car (though this is an edge case and a half), it can be set to only charge off peak, it can also power your home on peak, so if you legitimately arent going anywhere that day you can have the car charge overnight with cheap electricity, then run the house from the car during the day, a very niche edge case, but doable, further cost savings when the family is over for christmas are great tho. For most people, you dont do 250 miles in a day, you can just stick the car on charge at home and forget about it. You can get over 200 miles of charge for 30 minutes of charging if you do. And well, cases like the above example of having to do a quite doable in electric car range, those are rare, but theres these 2 things called public transport and hiring a vehicle. From the maths above, it would have still cost less to hire a car once a year for that trip than it would be own the ICE all year around. Big thing about initial up front cost though? No economy of scale yet. Though thats coming. For reference though, the tesla is only £8.5k more than the BMW 3 series and only 3.5k more than the 5 series. So really, above *mean* maths again, its going to pay for itself in under 4 years versus the 5 series, but nearly 10 years against the 3 series, by which point you'll have done 83000 miles, tesla batteries degrade less than 10% for every 150000 miles so you should still be pretty much all there on range, nothing to actually go wrong with the vehicle, all good. Hell, the big killer of car electronics? Transient voltage spikes from the cars alternator and vibrations, one of these things is entirely absent in an EV and the other is much lower (we have done experimentation into both at work due to the nature of what work we do), so even the computers etc should be more reliable than those on an ICE car.
Public transportation, where it exists, can burn as far as I'm concerned. For me, the driving is half the attraction of any trip. As far as rental cars, rental companies frequently won't rent to anyone under 25 (like me) unless it's on a corporate account, plus it's still not your car - so it's unfamiliar, have to be more careful with it (unless you're fine with being the kind of person who trashes other people's stuff when they're not looking), and in the US, it's probably an autotragic. Also, ownership costs are lower where I live than where you live. Registration is a flat $170 for two years, or $210 for a permanent but non-transferable registration. Oh, so it's only 8500 pounds (which are currently worth more than dollars) more than one of its direct competitors, and only 3500 more than its direct competitor's big brother. Barely any difference there, really, most people wouldn't notice. On a more serious note, tell me more about what it's like to be so rich that you don't even have to care about that amount of money! Also what about emergencies and etc. Say you're coming home from work and there's an accident blocking the entire road, forcing you to sit in traffic for a long period of time before taking a long detour. Then you finally get home and realize you have some urgent need to drive 40 miles in another direction (family member in hospital, etc.). An electric car is far less flexible for contingencies like that.
Uuuh nice a topic i like to discuss! So your math experiment doesnt quite hold for most for example your car is a focus ST if im not mistaken so its a sporty hot hatch wich uses a bit more fuel than a 3 series or for my example a diesel audi a4 with the 3.0 tdi with 272hp wich i have normal data for it used in my test drive 5.8l of petrol with a normal driving style. So it would have a range of 1000km (600 miles i think?) fuel costs are 1.19 per litre so a full tank of gas costs 69 euros. Also for me i drive around 22k km per year so it would be 1518 euros for diesel (1400 pounds) the tesla would cost 523 pounds (surely i have a error here?). The next thing yes on paper the diffrence is smaller price wise when bought new but normally you get around 20 percent on a new bmw or audi here (last year i could have bought a new M2 with a 32 percent discount). The other thing is i dont know if tesla does have discounts on new cars. If i had a bit more time i would do the math properly hopefully i remember to do it properly tommorow.
Notice I calculated the time taken to get a return, I also never did registration costs so great, you're telling me registration is cheaper, but I didn't demonstrate any form of registration anywhere, but for good measure my car is £200 to tax per year the Tesla is 0. And as we've established, you can sit in traffic all day in an electric car, it's more efficient at doing so than ICE
News just in, leasing a car is the cheapest form of car ownership. Because the car only costs £200 Who even cares about the total cost of ownership eh...?
Oh look, more nudgy government BS. But as far as time taken to get a return, that's with current (i.e. most people still using liquid-fueled cars or none at all) electricity prices. If the powers that be succeed in their goal of getting everyone to drive electric, you can bet prices for electricity will fly into space, if you can even get any at peak hours. Then more power plants will have to be built (with environmentalists guaranteed to get in the way no matter what kind they are, unless they're wind or solar which should be subject to environmentalist obstruction and are pretty worthless anyway), which will cost money no one will want to pay, and probably jack up prices even further at least for a while. The point was more about "long detour + unplanned extra trip". An electric car with a given range will function adequately for someone whose routine fits neatly inside said range, but reality has a habit of not conforming to anyone's routine. And that's still assuming you have an expensive, rangey electric like a Tesla. With lower-level electrics (which are still ruinously expensive, especially for what you get), any unplanned trip or loss of power becomes a major problem almost by default. Or maybe there are no unplanned detours, but maybe a breaker trips or the power goes out overnight while you sleep. And now you're stuck there with a half-charged car that can't get you where you need to go and no way/not enough time to charge it more. Just consider yourself lucky that you didn't wake up to an earthquake and have to grab food and water from the one store in your town with a backup generator on short notice.
You really can't pull nudgy government bullshit when in the US, you literally have legalised corruption allowing government/oil industry to nudge you to gasoline. Fun fact. Most of the US it is illegal for a solar panel at home to be wired in such a way that it could feed energy back onto the grid as doing so could be dangerous in a storm if a line comes down, it may still be live. Firstly, factually incorrect as the homes RCD/GFI will trip and prevent feeding power externally. Secondly, it is perfectly legal to wire a gasoline generator in such a manner that it will do the exact same thing. Who proposed this law? An oil magnate. --- Post updated --- Should also be noted. The CO2 emissions of charging a car for a 200 mile range are actually lower than running an ICE for 200 miles. Power generation industrially has hit over 80% thermal efficiency, ICE on the road doesn't even scratch 40 usually.
In the UK the only road related taxes you pay are emissions taxes. Essentially the roads are totally free for everyone to use (walkers, cars, cyclists, buses, lorries, etc), and are funded by general taxation, as is everything*. But if you are emitting any emissions, you have to pay an emissions tax. Vehicle emissions cost the country huge amounts of money, to not tax them would mean that the government is directly subsidising them with all tax payers money. Which is ofc communism (I am joking, ofc, but why should I have to pay for your V8 engine?). But I think it is fair to say that people who contribute most to the issue, should also be the ones responsible for paying the greater share of the cleanup costs. *All income from government branches essentially goes into one pool, it is then allocated by central government. This is to prevent branches of government trying to generate more income for themselves, so for example, money from speeding tickets does not go to the police. Therefore the police have no financial motivation to issue huge fines for their own personal gain.
No doubt when EVs are the main form of transport they'll change it, mass of vehicle is in use in some countries and quite logical in terms of heavier vehicles generally wearing the road surface more and requiring more maintenance, though like aljowen says, taxation in UK goes to one pot, all forms of it. --- Post updated --- Over here, you can't get much off the list price of a car new. Maybe a £500 extra thrown in, but that's about it. Second hand there's more room to haggle it, and there's ex demo cars on the cheap of course. But 100% brand new non demo, you're gonna spend practically 100% of the price tag, though unlike the US of course, the price tag includes tax and dealer fees with no hidden costs. And yeah I drive an ST, but of the 6 cars I've owned, it's the most efficient yet, it is capable of 45 on a nice flat stretch of my work commute (not that my commute is long) but my commute is generally quite short and not overly nice on car fuel economy as is, the Subaru did a mere 20mpg on it and was barely capable of 35mpg at best. The Renault courtesy car with its hyper efficient diesel was only capable of 45 on it, being driven efficiently as possible, I don't strive for efficiency in the ST. But I feel I made up for that by using the absolute cheapest fuel price possible (not representative of average prices in the UK which are higher, diesel even more so) some quite expensive electricity and massively overestimating inefficiencies in charging to make the Tesla cost way more to run than it actually wouldm
I think replacing Ultra Low Emissions zones with zones where vehicles are taxed based upon size could make sense. Make it legally binding that towns above a certain population density are required to enforce it within their city centres. So, similar to Japans kei cars, except it only applies where space is an issue. Then the rest can come out income tax. I guess another option would be to put a tax on all publicly available parking spaces per m² (including commerically owned publicly accessible parking). Since parking spaces are often considered to be a form of subsidisation towards motorists. It would make it more profitable to offer multiple sizes of parking spaces (since you can fit more inside a m² area), which would make smaller cars easier and potentially cheaper to park. Or tax based upon environmental impact of a vehicles production. Paid upon purchase of a vehicle. At that point, putting a "carbon tax" on all goods could be considered an option I guess. I want to make it clear that I am not fully endorsing any of the above. Just thoughts about where I could see it going based upon which current issues look like they may become an increasingly hot topic on a crowded island.
Same for me my Skoda octavia vRS with petrol is one of the most fuel efficient cars ive owned normaly it has on my work commute 48-49 mpg and over the full tank it has a mpg of 35 because i drive like a lunatic mostly. The absolute record i had fuel economy wise was 58mpg wich is bonkers for that kind of car its less than my moms 1.2 TSI Skoda Rapid wich should use less.
saw these at car show: this thing 1969 Dodge Charger 'General Lee' 2000 Lotus Elise 340 R 340 built 1960s Alfa-Romeo Gulia Quadrifoglio race 1975 Chevrolet Cosworth Vega
Some proper odd balls there. Nice. I think I prefer the lotus in its stock form, but it's awesome to see what is possible. Bet its an awesome short distance beach cruiser sunny day car.
