[Rcnesneg]

Originally Posted by Isaac Zachary

Keep tempting me! But if it would be cheaper for me, I don't know.

With Covid my driving has become unpredictable. I can't say for sure, but at a bare minimum I'll drive 9,000 miles a year, but have also driven over 30,000 miles in a year.

If I drive, say, 10,000 miles, at current fuel prices and the average drop in efficiency of my cars due to short trips, It comes to an average of $107 in fuel costs. Electric costs would be about $25 in an EV or less.

If I go back to 30,000 miles in a year I'd be spending $281 per month in fuel but only $75 or less if I went electric, assuming I could get all my electricity at the price of electricity at my home, which with a long enough range car would be mostly the case.

So fuelwise, I could save between $80 and $200 per month in fuel. But there are also maintenance costs. I change my oil every 5,000 miles, so 30,000 miles becomes 6 oil changes. I do them myself but go with mainly OEM stuff so that becomes around $40 a pop, so about $20 per month. Plus a couple air filter changes at $20 per filter, 2 filters, that's more like $50 per month more I could be saving total.

But the killer is the price. I'm almosts done with my $180 per month payments for the Avalon. After that, I don't forsee spending more than $200 average per month in repairs even with high miles. The last car I had made it to 700,000 miles without any major issues and I intend to keep my current car as long as possible too. $200 per month may actually be an excesive figure, but if it's the HV battery one year, the engine block the next, the catalytic converter the next, the brake actuator the next, it could come to about $200 per month in a pretty much worse case scenario, but could be half that easily, or less.

When comparing prices with an EV, the cheapest new long range Tesla 3 would put me at $709 per month at best. So even with $200 per month in fuel savings, $50 per month in potential maintenance costs, and $100 to $200 per month in potential repair costs, the Tesla still comes out at $250 to $350 more expensive per month, not to mention I rent and don't have an EVSE at my home. I also live hundreds of miles from the nearest Tesla service center.

Well said. It's different for everyone in terms of finances. I wanted a Tesla but didn't want to spend the money.

I drove the subaru 25000 miles a year which cost $4000 a year in gas (before it went up) and $2000-$4000 a year in maintenance. It was a massive no-brainer for me given the gas and maintenance costs.

I actually leased it first for $270/month but I liked it so much I bought it.

With the Niro EV my payment is $570/month and electricity costs me $30 a month. I'm on track for 30,000 miles a year since I suddenly want to take more road trips since they're so cheap. I'm going on a 3000 mile road trip coming up here soon with it. Total cost of the car was $33k+tax.

That being said, after driving a model 3 LR I'd get one in a heartbeat if this car is totaled today, even though it has less headroom in the back for camping, and it only tows 2000 lbs vs 2866 which would be inconvenient for me. A model 3 would cost $43k used if I'm patient.