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- Hacker News
- Could be worded better. Maybe say petrol is 10 times costlier? Multiplication is a lot quicker than division.
- Once they factor in my current budget for buying a car which is up to £2,000, insurance around £70pm, (relatively) inexpensive repairs and ease of finding spare parts/mechanics, we can talk.
All this kind of spin does is turn people who were on the fence, off electric. Just treat people like adults and say "whilst there are still lots of reasons to prefer a traditional car, electrics are the future, and here's something that shows the progress".
by ghusto - I live in the UK and own an EV and this article is misleading in how they get the 90% figure. All off peak charging tariffs in the UK have higher peak energy charges than their flat tariffs - so you make your EV charging cheaper at the expense of higher energy costs elsewhere. For me it’s about break even assuming 6k miles per year.
Also, if you do not have a home charger, you are very unlikely to come out cheaper than petrol. I think 40p/kwh is about the breakeven
by jacobp100 - Going through the comments, it looks like people in UK hate EVs. This is surprising, because the anti-EV arguments are mostly seen only in US (which is understandable, US is first and foremost a fossil fuel country).
All cars need parking and real-estate is wasted for parking at a humongous expense. Cars are next to some building. Usually, in most countries all building have electricity. UK has 230V, which means any outlet anywhere should work. All it needs is a cable from the nearest building to where the car is parked.
- Meta: As plenty of commenters have pointed out, this kind of statements (and similar ones like "PV electricity is the cheapest one", etc...) are entirely true _with some attached caveats_.
For example, an EV is both undoubtably cheaper to operate than a gas powered car ; and infinitely more expensive to operate if you can't afford to buy one in the first place.
Similarly, the price of kWh of PV-generated electricity is both lower than pretty much everything else as this point ; and, basically infinite when the sun is down and your 4h battery has run out.
Is there a proper math concept to fairly express those things ? "Mean", "Average" or "Median" fall short. Mean with very very large error bars ? "Average with substitution" ?
In the end, I can't wait for all those circumvoltions to be irrelevant (when EVs are just cheap to buy too, and electricity has enough storage to bake it into the price, etc...)
by phtrivier - Good, can’t wait to see what fertiliser and heating costs will be.
All it took was destruction of global energy markets and supplies.
Let’s celebrate!
by cloudie78 - Hopefully the article authors are only attempting to reach their target audience, but please don't encourage numerical illiteracy!
One-tenth the (fuel) cost, or 90% cheaper.
(That is, if you own a house with off-street parking).
by spiclk - Headline is misleading. Cheaper on per-mile operating costs but typically more expensive to purchase and insure. There’s also a nasty depreciation curve to contend with. Nobody wants a 10 year old Tesla, but a 10 year old well mentioned petrol car still has a ton of life left in it.
It still often ends up a bit cheaper across comparable vehicles but not a slam dunk and nowhere near as good as the headline suggests.
by cmiles8