With Higher Gas Prices, Should You Consider Buying a Hybrid or EV?
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With Higher Gas Prices, Should You Consider Buying a Hybrid or EV?
Has talk of $5-per-gallon gas got you thinking about buying a hybrid or electric car? Indeed, the economics improve for hybrids and EVs improve with higher gas prices, but the payoff still may not be there.
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You've gamed the whole thing by cam paring what ever cars you like to compare.
Why not compare the $40K Chevy Volt with a $40K gas car like a BMW?
I have both. A series 3 BMW and a Chevy Volt. I like driving the Volt more as it is way more fun to drive.
I have used only 23.5 gallons driving my Chevy Volt 13,800 miles in 14 months. I drive my Volt 98% of the time on my home's cheap domestically made electricity instead of gasoline made from foreign oil.
The positive impact on society by reducing my need for foreign oil and not polluting as a gas car by driving my Volt is huge.
The price of something is not it's value.
You people need a deeper understanding of how plug-in electric cars are used by their owners.
We don't buy gasoline. We don't care about gas prices. We don't want to be slaves to gas prices anymore.
So much for your bean-counter analysis.
The article totally ignores that, and therefore is suggesting that a Nissan Leaf for example will require the same amount of money to maintain as its gasoline counterpart, and that is of course plain wrong.
To even an average person who is not mechanic/electric/car savvy, it should be obvious that an EV cuts down seriously on the maintenance costs. Let's see, what breaks most in a car? and what requires regular maintenance in a gas car? Oil, Oil filter, Air filter, Belts, Spark plugs, Battery fluids, Exhaust system (emission tests), and almost every single part of the mechanical engine and of course, the big fat costly transmission and its friends. An EV car does not have any of those, it does not need any of them. It only has a battery pack (proven and warranted to work for at least 10 years), a converter to switch DC to AC power that goes into a melon sized electric engine which does not need a transmission.
Electric motors have been around for decades not years, and they are heavily used for heavy duty tasks in almost all industries, unlike gasoline engines, they do not have many parts to break anyways, so either they work or they don't in case of a manufacturing defect that usually shows up during the first month of usage.
So no, the economic equation is neither iffy nor controversial. but it is indeed constantly changing in favor of EV.
I think as of today, where we have excellent EV vehicles like the Tesla Model S, the Nissan Leaf and the Toyota EV RAV4. it is stupid to drive a gasoline car if living in or in a vicinity of a city.