The fact of the matter is that the only thing that matters to most people is what makes economic sense to them. As for me, no way am I trading my 20 year old, fully paid for, cheap to insure, cheap to register ICE vehicle for a new EV with payments, higher insurance, and higher registration fees.
> The fact of the matter is that the only thing that matters to most people is what makes economic sense to them.
This is what I used to think for decades, people are rational and they make purchases based on costs/efficiency. I learnt thats not how the world works. Humans don't work that way, they buy for emotional reasons, status, what they've bought before (the power of defaults, familiarity), signaling identity (I'm macho, I drive a F350), what other people buy (social validation -- you don't want to stand out by being the odd one out, or subject of ridicule). Most importantly, what people think of EVs is manipulated by Big Oil, there is a lot of scaremongering, you can't charge cars (range anxiety), EVs catch fire, they spy on you, they have more electronics(all new cars have electronics), battery needs to be replaced every few years, it won't work when its hot, when its cold, batteries pollute more than gasoline, and so on ...
Whats worse is the vast majority of people are innumerate and illiterate, regardless of degrees. They can't do the math of how much driving an EV costs, because doing the OpEx calculation over a lifetime of ownership requires doing multiplication.
The 2 dozen people who can do the arithmetic either walk to work, bought a Nissan Leaf back in 2012+, or buy a used EV.
Looking at how Norway basically reached 100% EV for new cars, it is not that complicated to get people to make rational decision. The government subsidized new purchases by 50%, they removed bridge tolls and city taxes for EV users, reduced car taxes, and even reduced costs for people to use car ferries if they owned an EV. The only people who still bought an ICE car was those who had a hobby in owning ICE cars.
What makes economic sense isn't necessarily the same as what is rational. All of what you said is factored into people's notion of "economic sense". My main takeaway from that is that we can induce people to do better things with arguments and nudges outside of "pure" economic incentives.
> the only thing that matters to most people is what makes economic sense to them.
The other thing is the UX of figuring out how much an EV costs to charge is painful. It changes every few miles based on who your utility provider is, going through the various plans, figuring out the right plan. The vast majority of people are incapable of that.
It works out to be cheaper (a lot cheaper) for most people, but its hard to refute arguments by fossil fuel shills when they use Hawaii, CA or NY electricity prices. We can say, no its not true, but I can't refute the argument until you provide zip code and utility provider.
It would be awesome if we can state costs like, it costs $0.01/km for EV vs $0.08/km for gas. For eg: What Kind of EV Can a Low-Income Family Buy in China? ($0.01/KM) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4860RGi7IY
Is it really that painful? If you are charging from home, you just look at your local power rates. If you charge for one or two road trips a year, you don't even bother calculating that. If you don't have charging at home, then you add the charging costs of the superchargers you usually go to, actually I'd be surprised if your vehicle couldn't just tell you those numbers.
It makes sense in Hawaii, CA, and NY compared to local petrol prices. Heck, UK, France...it doesn't make sense in countries that heavily subsidize gasoline, like Iran, Saudi Arabia, and maybe Venazuala.
Chinese gas prices being what they are, and electricity prices being fairly low, you don't even need to really bother doing the math. The bigger cost is going to be parking and plate costs.
If you were living in Nepal and your country was getting all of its refined gasoline from India, and therefore that was super expensive, while China was helping your country build a bunch of hydro plants, oh, and they were sending a bunch of EVs to buy over the pass from Tibet, I think your math might change (but then you would highly likely not have that ICE car to begin with).
I fully agree with you but you're leaving out two ongoing costs that are usually in an EV's favor, fuel and maintenance.
That probably wouldn't make the difference for a fully paid for vehicle but it can make a substantial difference depending on electricity (and access to solar) and fuel prices.
The economy does not occur naturally. We can turn the knobs on this equation by just having some taxes. For example, carbon taxes. That should change your calculus pretty significantly.
Yes, lets continue on with the $7 trillion subsidies/year (worldwide), 10M deaths from air pollution, almost all diseases/cancers linked to pollution. Its sacrilege to talk about fossil fuel subsidies.
The comment I was replying to saying that almost all diseases and cancers are caused by it isn’t the same thing though. Disease and cancer has been around for a long long time before the use of fossil fuels.
I think "almost all diseases/cancers [that are] linked to pollution" is a much more likely read than "almost all diseases/cancers [are] linked to pollution"
Admittedly I did smush the two together so I'd have to rethink whether "all deaths [that are] linked to pollution" is as reasonable as "all deaths [that are] linked to air pollution" -- I suspect it probably still would be because of the sheer scale of fossil fuels, but regardless, desert sand still beats fossil fuels anyway
Eh, for cars _in particular_, people are quite resistant to doing the maths. If they weren't, then low-mpg cars would be almost unsellable. But people make decisions on cars quite weirdly.
This is a big part of it for me. With 'driver assist' systems that intervene when you're driving now being mandatory for all new vehicles sold in my country, I don't want anything newer than 2024. Practically , probably nothing newer than around 2020. You can disable driver assist, but for most modern vehicles, you need to do so every time you start the car. Insurance will eventually be used as a hammer to force compliance on this. Removing safety equipment that came with the vehicle already makes a car unroadworthy, so that's not an option either.
