Some of you think I’m being most unfair to EVs when I say they’re economically irrational to buy. In other words, my claim is: They might suit you, make you feel good - whatever - but they do not save you money.
Also, they're hardly maintenance-free.
Podcast (audio-only version, for listening in the car, etc.): [ Ссылка ]
Save thousands on any new car (Australia-only): [ Ссылка ]
AutoExpert discount roadside assistance package:
[ Ссылка ]
Did you like this report? You can help support the channel, securely via PayPal: [ Ссылка ]
I’ll be entirely generous here, and give the most generous assessment of this possible, without being a functionally insane EV zealot.
Let’s say you never pay for a single recharge, because you’ve installed rooftop solar. Let’s call that a $6000 investment. Plus the price premium for the Kona Electric (versus petrol) of $25,000. That’s $31,000 you have to recoup. To save money with your EV.
Petrol in Sydney is $1.43/litre today. But let’s make that $1.50. That’s 13.5 cents per kilometre for the petrol, let’s make it 15 cents per kilometre. Versus zero in the planet-saver. Is that generous enough? (I think it probably is.)
And in the spirit of ongoing magnanimity, let’s say it costs you $500 per year more to service that new petrol vehicle, and hell, I’ll even throw in another $500 per year to replace things that are non-service (or at least not standard service items) like brake pads, because they wear out quicker in the petrol. So, $1000 more per year, for the petrol, on top of the price of the fuel.
This is spectacularly generous to the EV, to the point of incipient nuttiness.
When you run these ‘la la land’ numbers, you save $2250 annually on the fuel. (That’s 15 cents per kilometre times 15,000km.) Plus $1000 because EVs, according to some of you, are allegedly ‘maintenance free’. (Pro tip: They're not.) That’s $3250 saved, a year, in total.
Any you have to pay back $31,000 - being $25k extra for the electric version of the Kona plus $6000 for the photovoltaic array because you hate paying for coal-fired electricity too.
That’s going to break you even in 9.5 years or 143,000 kilometres. After that, you’ll actually be saving money. But you’ll be in a nine-and-a-half year old car, and most people who buy a $75,000 car don’t stick with it for nearly that long before going again, because, you know, affluence.
And this is as generous as I can be about EV break-even points and economic rationalism. For most EV owners in Australia - and this is before putting an EV road-user tax in place - the break-even point is going to be upwards of 200,000 kilometres.
Conclusion: There is no money-saving dimension to EV ownership.
If you hate my analysis, that’s probably cognitive dissonance tapping you on the shoulder.
