this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2023
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I mean, you're not counting the fact that the electricity isn't free either - and KWH costs are just going up. It's debatable how you ought to cost out the electrical work to put in a charger, and the charger itself. I really have no idea about the lifespan of the chargers, so it might not last a full 15 years out in the elements, it might last 50+ years.
The charger is just a few solenoids very simple device, and they don't get switched with current flowing. So probably last forever, for wall mounted hard wired ones at least.
True I did not count cost of electricity, because it's extremely hard to guess. Some places are .04$/kwh, some are .45/kwh, some are free.
What if you had free charging at work? Or apartment, or had solar, it could be completely free
I mean, I guess work could also just give me a gas credit card and pay that, but I have my doubts that'll become common. And yea, I left out solar because again, first it's impractical for a very large number of people (they don't have property to put up solar panels), and where it is possible it's another tens of thousands. I'm not even sure I'd call that a capital investment as I see lifespans for the solar panels being near the lifespans of cars, or at most 2x if you take the 20ish year estimate and take 10 years as a car lifetime, both of which seem conservative to me. Then there's the road taxes that as EVs become more popular, ICE will no longer subsidize completely via gas taxes, so that illusory savings will switch, and as they're updating the laws and changing mediums, I bet that's where local governments will find a way to increase that tax to make up for the impossibility of increasing the gas road tax due to politics - with the EV switch there's enough smoke and mirrors to get that through.
I still believe EVs can be cheaper than ICE, but it's going to work out to be far less than "advertised" by the early adopters who got all the subsidies, some unintentional.