Just built a "hatchback" Slate with what I guess will be common options (speakers, wheel upgrade, spare wheel carrier, and a few other odds and ends) and it came to $35k. So, still pretty inexpensive, but also getting close to some existing EV sedans that are known entities and have pretty decent interiors. So, I'm not totally sold on these, but not not sold either. Need to see one in person, I think.
Compared to gas cars: Kia K4 hatchback is $26k with a lot more creature-comforts. Gets 34mpg, so if $6/gal gas is here to stay that's $0.17 per mile of fuel costs. My EV gets almost exactly 4miles/kW average and I pay $0.21 per kW so that's about $0.05 per mile.
So $0.12 per mile saved in fuel costs implies about 80k miles for break-even.
This excludes costs of servicing, which should be higher on the gas car.
[edit typo'd an extra 0 it's 80k miles for break-even]
[edit2]
After looking up my energy bill I pay $0.27 so it's between 10 and 11 cents per mile saved. Break-even is still under 100k miles.
That's based on the manufacturer's "lets not upset our dealers" maintenance schedule and is completely unnecessary. In reality you can probably bring your EV to the dealer once every 4 years or so. On that schedule you should:
- check the brake fluid for water
- change the cabin air filter
- change the gearbox oil
- check/change the battery coolant
If you're going in more frequent than that you're getting a very expensive windshield wiper replacement.
The real kicker is going to be repair costs. An EV has about 10% of the moving parts of an ICE car, so in theory repairs should be much less frequent. But if the ICE is a Toyota and the EV is a Tesla, YMMV.
You'll probably have to replace the battery at around 250,000 miles but at that point the car is worth pretty much scrap value anyways.
FWIW, my 10+ year spreadsheet of the maintenance costs on my last ICE lined up pretty well with that - about 1/3 of the costs were ICE-specific issues, 2/3 were for parts that would have been common to an EV.
> In reality you can probably bring your EV to the dealer once every 4 years or so.
Not really, I need twice-yearly seasonal tire changes/rotations.
How much of that 2/3 was brakes? In 100,000 miles on our ICE we replaced brakes twice and they likely need replacing soon again. On our EV at 100,000 miles they look like they'll last another 100,000.
Brakes were ~8.5% of the total, or ~17% of the 2/3. Some combination of being light on brake use (manual + efficient driving) and the road salt used here means I replaced the brakes from corrosion before they wore down from use.
I could budget for yearly service (rather than the never-service-until-required plan I went with) that would presumably lengthen the lives of my brakes as far as corrosion is concerned, but at current shop rates that would cost more than what my brake replacements cost.
>Not really, I need twice-yearly seasonal tire changes/rotations.
Are you somewhere where you actually need dedicated winter tires or have you just convinced yourself that rocking all weathers all year isn't feasible?
That feels like a bit of a trick question - as big as I am on dedicated winter tires, I think a lot of people are sleeping on modern all weathers.
So, living in Alberta, and spending significant time in the AB/BC rockies in the winter, I still think all weathers would be feasible, but I'm more comfortable with dedicated winters. (For that matter, when I'm buying winters, I'm always borderline on whether I should get studded or not.) (And as a parallel effect, with dedicated winters I can also run higher performance all-season tires during the summer.)
And if I ran all-weathers with my driving patterns, I'd still want to be rotating them yearly, so that would cut my dealer visits by half, but definitely not to once every 4 years.
And tying back to my last ICE vehicle - for the first 4 years of its life it would have been okay without a dealer visit if you took tires/oil changes out of the equation, but not for any 4-year period after that. There are just too many random little things that break down in cars over time. (e.g. after 12 years or so the cruise control buttons were getting really mushy - I replaced them myself for the cost of the $65 part, but YMMV on whether you feel a service visit is warranted when removing your steering wheel air bag.)
Op is in a salt state (road salt, snowy winters). Dedicated snow tires are much better than all seasons to the degree I will take a 2wd Civic (with lsd) on snow tires over 4wd 4Runner on all seasons.
Also rotating tires every 10-20k miles is good because most cars run higher camber in the rear (inner shoulder wear) than front and the fronts wear the outside shoulder more because of turning. Swapping them extends tire life by spreading the wear.
Not sure if I'm out of touch, but this looks like such a minor difference in cost that I'd expect people to not even take cost into consideration while making the EV vs gas decision.
Factors like the (perceived) environment friendliness, comfort and (in)convenience are likely to be much more important.
California (and many other states) also charges you an additional annual EV registration fee of $121 in lieu of gas taxes. There was some noise earlier this year about a federal EV tax too.
$0.21 was from memory, so I pulled up my bill and it was actually low:
Southern California Edison on the time-of-use plan, charging during "Super off peak." Note that nowhere on the bill do they show one number for how much you pay per kWh. These numbers will change next month as we go from "Winter" to "Summer"
Delivery charges: $0.17664
CCA Cost responsibility surcharge: $0.02007
Nonbypassable charges: $0.00644 + $0.00591
Fixed recovery charge: $0.00619
Generation charge: $0.05958
Unless I typoed something again (oops 800k) that works out to $0.27 for the cheapest I can pay in winter. I compared last fall and this was by far the cheapest plan offered to me for overnight charging.
Varies widely by state and other factors. I'm at around $0.18 for 1kWh when you look at the overall bill including generation, supply, and all other fees.
(My car averages 3.3 miles / kWh, so ~$0.055 / mile assuming 100% charge efficiency... I'm using a 120V outlet so it's probably 75-80% charge efficiency, pushing the cost to ~$0.068 / mile.)
Can we stop being so out of touch and/or deluding ourselves to believe $35k is “pretty inexpensive” for people not living in a bubble; whether that is the Americas bubble or the tech bubble within the bubble or the urban bubble within that; let alone for a tiny two seater electric truck that has a 200 mile range.
The 45th percentile, i.e., the bottom 90% have a median income of roughly $40,000. $35,000 for a enclosed covered or even hatchback type mini SUV is not reasonable and you know very well when they come out with that, it’s going to be at least $40,000. None of that is inexpensive or even pretty inexpensive. That’s just rationalization and coping, trying to convince ourselves and others of things that are incongruent.
“Pretty inexpensive” would be an enclosed bed version that cost $22,000 maybe.
For additional context; the industry standard measure of income to cost ratio has risen from 9.3 weeks of household income gross pay for a baseline vehicle, i.e., civic, in 1973 to, 16.5 weeks of gross pay in 2024; and that’s based on the fraudulent official inflation numbers.
Yet more context, a civic can seat 5 people and still has a range of 450 miles on a tank of gasoline that you can find all over the place, even in far off rural places OSD puppy can carry gasoline with you if need be.
There is no sense in rationalizing and deluding ourselves about the real limitations that still exists that are real and are why adoption is not matching imaginations.
I completely agree. A base Prius is $30k. A base Kia Niro is $27k. Those are hybrids and not EV's, but 50+mpg is not bad. Those also come with power windows and many other features and creature comforts that the Slate doesn't.
$35k is not outrageous for a new car, but the Slate is supposed to be affordable basic transportation. Slate is selling barebones, stripped down basic transportation for the price of a middle class family car.
On the flip side, if you want a car that doesn't try to track you and record you, and doesn't upsell you on a subscription for seatwarmers, and doesn't use gas, Slate looks pretty attractive.
The center console touchscreen is just a self contained vestigial free entertainment, not the "core" of the car by any means. They're exactly what airplane seatback monitors are.
The trackers aren't in the infotainment. Removing the infotainment do not solve the tracker problem.
Most people don't buy new cars, they buy used cars. Particularly in the bottom 45%, they know they can't afford a new car - they might look at them but they know they know it is a dream (or the car they will buy in 5 years). Car makers know they can only charge this price for a new car because in 3 years it will still have a lot of value left - most new car buyers never pay the full price: they only pay the difference between the cost and the value in 3 years (plus interest).
Time was, CAFE forced Detroit to build affordable cars which folks could buy new --- rather miss that --- that said, I'm never going to buy an all-electronic vehicle w/ multiple screens (still annoyed about the radio on my current vehicle going out) GPS tracking and built-in monitoring by way of a backup camera and so forth.
Even at the height of that, most people were buying used cars. However the cheap CAFE cars did bring in a few people who would be on the fence of affording a new car. Those cheap cars also got people who could afford a bigger car, but the price was compelling anyway.
I can find 1000 watts of electric anyplace. However to get any reasonable range from that means my car has to sit there 3-4 days! This works for me because I only make the long trips on weekends (I ride my bike to work when the weather allows).
For practical EV purposes there is not electric everywhere. If there isn't enough at home chargers are hard to find. Sure they are all over - but they are not advertised and not at every exit: you need an app to find them. Using an app is not safe when you are driving so you better have someone else with you to figure out how to find them or plan ahead.
This is just fundamentally not true, literally every single home in the USA is capable of level 2 charging, the question is just do they have a 240v outlet somewhere nearby to a garage or parking spot.
Using apps like ABRP you can easily schedule your drip to have the optimal stops for route planning based on your battery technology, if you are doing a drive long enough to have multiple stops that should be part of your travel planning even with a gas car alongside a pre-trip check.
You can easily circumnavigate the entire USA with an EV that supports NACS!
> every single home in the USA is capable of level 2 charging
Agreed
> the question is just do they have a 240v outlet somewhere nearby to a garage or parking spot.
They almost never do. This is the key thing you are not understanding about my reply. We can get level 2 anywhere, but most of the time it means you have to have an electrician.
> Using apps like ABRP
That is my objection. When I drive a gas car don't need an app. I drive until my gauge gets "low" and then find the next gas station - I can be assured that almost anywhere I will make it to a gas station if I start looking when the gauge reaches 1/8 (though I refuse to let it go below 1/4 for safety reasons). No app needed for gas, there are big signs everywhere that alert me where I can fill up. Last road trip I looked for those signs wondering if I could have used the EV and there wasn't 1 in 300 miles: then I pulled up the app, and there were plenty - but none where in places you could see from the main road and none advertised (they were also a lot less common than gas stations)
> They almost never do. This is the key thing you are not understanding about my reply. We can get level 2 anywhere, but most of the time it means you have to have an electrician.
In my personal experience most, homes have a dryer outlet in the washroom connected to the garage at least in TX. It's no bother running a cable from the washroom to the garage.
> That is my objection. When I drive a gas car don't need an app
Any time I am making a long drive I always use a GPS app such as Waze or Apple Maps, I don't know what's on the road ahead traffic, accidents and closures the app will re-route me appropriately and optimally. If you made a drive so regularly you felt like you didn't need an app then you would already know on that route where charging stations are.
I do agree they are less common than gas stations because of a few reasons but that's set to change with time and market adoption.
For me, installing a 240V outlet for charging would entail...
Running a new circuit from the breaker box (back wall of basement) to the front facade (40' forward, 1 level up) with whatever drywall patching/paint comes with that.
That gets the outlet. But, I don't have a driveway, so I'd need to trench my front yard and the public sidewalk in front of my house, so I can pull the charge line through to the front edge of the curbing adjacent to my parking space.
I figure all-in, that's a $10k buy-in that only serves one of my two cars, so I'm stuck rotating cars every few days (not a big deal, just not ideal). Only one of my parking spaces is assigned - the other is "guest parking" open to anybody.
And I fully realize my situation might not be the norm, but it's not far off for many TH or condo residents.
TX is the key. Where I live nobody would put a washroom in an unheated space - the pipes would freeze and break. Thus no easy to get at dryer outlet. I'm not sure how far north things change, but my impression is not very. Rest areas in TX often don't put doors on the restrooms (thus heat is not possible), but OK does - implying that it gets cold enough to need them (but this was also very different ages of building so not a fair comparison)
I use a GPS when I don't know the route, but I've been to parents in a different state several times - I don't need a GPS interrupting my music to get there.
I agree EV chargers are being installed and will be installed more and more.
FWIW, placing a climate-controlled laundry room or mud room between the house and the garage is pretty common here in VA. It might not have the dryer (washer/dryer have mostly moved upstairs to bedroom level for new builds), but there's a good chance it won't be hard to pull that 240 circuit into the garage.
That's assuming you have a garage and the breaker box isn't already in it, which is also common.
Of course, I have neither, so installing a car charger would be expensive. Thus my continued use of ICE vehicles.
I do have my laundry room right next to the garage. However, I would not consider it a useful place to plug in a car, except maybe as an extreme emergency. It requires moving the dryer out of the way since the outlet is near the floor behind it. While this is certainly possible to do, it's not exactly easy. Also, your typical dryer plug is built to remain plugged in for years on end and so even if you would try this, it will wear out the socket really quick.
Depending on how far your commute is. Level 1 charging may be appropriate for you.
Overnight charging will give you approx. 30 miles of range (depending on the car and state of charge). It's really hard to know without having an electric car for some time if it's going to be annoying for you.
We do get below freezing weather here. The washroom is conditioned space that leads to the garage. This is pretty common in most slab-on-grade homes since they do not have a basement
Also, who the hell still uses GPS instruction its annoying. I always have my gps muted
> This is just fundamentally not true, literally every single home in the USA is capable of level 2 charging, the question is just do they have a 240v outlet somewhere nearby to a garage or parking spot.
Technically true, but if you've only got 60 amp service to your home because it was built in 1955 and the cost to run a new service line is greater than the cost of a new car, it's pretty difficult to get any useful amperage to your level 2 charger.
The price of a 200-amp service upgrade should not cost more than $25,000. Even in the most extreme examples it shouldn't come anywhere near to that cost.
$25k would be on the low end for what my the electric provider charges for houses located like mine. That's just the cost of horizontal drilling and installing conduit.
Pulling the service wire, upgrading the panel, etc. are all normally priced.
My argument for pricing is based on the USA. A large majority of homes are connected via overhead hookup and often do not require a transformer replacement since they are oversized a reasonable margin and have been for decades, it only usually requires fairly minimal work.
Also, your price is in CAD not USD
Also also, for the case that you already have power unless it was installed a long time ago its probably already in conduit and doesn't require any horizontal drilling
Batteries are good at averaging out usage. Anybody who averages under 40 miles a day can do almost all of their charging overnight on a 120V outlet. As long as most nights you charge more than you use eventually it hits a full charge and is ready for your next long trip.
My mom has an EV, and when my parents bought their condo they got a promise in writing that they could install a charger at their parking spot. Condo board reneged on that agreement and so she's selling her EV to buy a hybrid. If gas prices return to pre-Iran-war it will be cheaper than paying to use an L3 charger, and even if they don't it will be far more convenient.
Sorry to hear that the HOA is earning their reputation :(.
> If gas prices return to pre-Iran-war it will be cheaper than paying to use an L3 charger, and even if they don't it will be far more convenient.
Yeah, that's Toyota's main argument for not diving head-first into EVs. Yes, merging the two technologies means you have the complexity of both... but after a decade+ of experience, they've gotten it down to be pretty reliable.
For a lot of people, that's still the best choice assuming you don't mind the budget for wear-items / oil changes ... etc. When my current econobox is _done_, I will probably go straight to EV just so I don't have wear-items to deal with and because I either drive a few hundred miles per week or fly. I don't need to account for family road trips or anything else that make the ubiquitous fuel station network worth it.
> merging the two technologies means you have the complexity of both
I (and many others) would actually argue many common hybrid drivetrains are actually simpler than many ICE-only drivetrains.
Things like transmissions and complicated AWD setups are incredibly complex. Planetary gear sets and using an electric motor for the rear axle to add AWD can make things vastly simpler mechanically than a regular pure-ICE. You need a computer to get it to all play nice, but in terms of moving parts and things rubbing it can be a lot simpler.
There are new hybrids available for $30k. There are new vehicles available for $22k. There are reasonable used vehicles available for $10k.
The problem with the Slate isn't that cheaper vehicles exist. The problem with the Slate is that you can buy nicer, better equipped vehicles for the same price.
In '73 a Chevy Nova just under $2500, which CPI is just under $20k. Median household income was around $12k
$25k is about right for a cheap new car today (you can get a few base models for less than that, but good luck finding one). Median household income is around $83k. So a cheap new car cost went up by 10x but income only went up by less than 5x. Inflation implies it should cost 8x as much, but it costs 10x as much.
Of course the Chevy Nova didn't have ABS, airbags, a touch screen, an automatic transmission, power steering, or retractable seat belts. Car companies could make models without some of these (though most are required by law; can't even have a car without a screen since RVC is mandated). But now they would be competing with used cars that have most, if not all, of these things and cost less.
A new Honda Civic is $25k, so the same as the Slate. The average new car price in the US is $50k, so double the Slate base price and still significantly more than the upgraded Slate I built. As far as I can tell, the US market has only one sub-$20k car - the base Nissan Versa.
> Can we stop being so out of touch and/or deluding ourselves to believe $35k is “pretty inexpensive” [...] let alone for a tiny two seater electric truck that has a 200 mile range.
It suppose is "pretty inexpensive" compared to other new trucks you can buy right now. However, my much more equipped, full size truck cost less, inflation adjusted even, than this thing when it was new. Today's truck market baffles me.
At the same size (17"), going from steel to alloy improves performance but reduces durability. Larger wheels (20") are generally a downgrade for performance and ride quality.
Engineering Explained has a video on this topic: NYvKxsYFqO8
- wider wheels are marginally less efficient but almost negligible
- rims with larger diameter have larger air resistance. Probably because the rim patterns intersects the air in weird ways but it's not explained. Tire walls are relatively smooth, so tires with higher aspect are way more aero-efficient despite having more marginally lower rolling resistance.
I'm simultaneously not interested in an electric truck & amazed the price is still reasonable if you want to turn it the truck into a hatchback instead. The range is also meh.
Same conclusion: interesting, but not necessarily interested. Hope they go places though.
I see lots of tradesmen in Ford Mavericks or Transit Connects. The Slate could work well for some of them - basic truck model, with the ladder rack for long stuff (like ladders or pieces of wood). Saves them some money up front, and gas and maintenance (in theory).
Yes and no. I'd think residential plumber or HVAC service tech can easily drive more than the stated range just going from job to job during a day. They're going to want to be sure that they don't have to stop to charge between jobs; time is money for those guys, and especially if the fast charging infrastructure is not well built out in their area it could be a showstopper.
A fast charge over lunch would be acceptable. However there are not near enough fast chargers. Every fast food place needs to have 1/2 of their parking spots equipped with a faster charger (1/4 if there is a way to limit them to people charging)
Yeah this is another concern I have. When I have time to fast-charge, it's likely the same time that a lot of other people want to fast-charge, such as during lunch. So you'd have to overbuild fast-chargers to meet peak demand.
Gas stations have this problem too but it's not as bad, because filling up a fuel tank takes maybe 5 minutes not 20-30.
City Vans have completely died in America for the last few years until the Promaster City's recent resurrection. Something like this is a dire need for in city tradesmen in the US.
My boss's have been asking me how life is with my Ford E-Transit, but it doesn't have enough range for most of our site technicians which end up driving 200-300 miles a day.
I really hope it gets a US market release. So far only Ford (e-transit) and VW (id.BUZZ) have attempted EV vans in the US and they both cost extreme amounts of money new.
I bought an E-Transit anyway to setup as a Home/Office on wheels. Really hoping that in the future we see aftermarket long range batteries for these first two decades of mass market EV's being produced.
Electric vans will remain ecpensive until the eSUV market has been saturated: the cost to make either is similar, and using the limited inputs and lines to make more of the lower-margin vehicle model makes no sense when the market can absorb more of the higher-margin ones.
Ah yeah I forgot the eSprinter and Rivian Van because they are both $80k-100K depending on how you outfit them.
Similarly the GM BrightSpot Vans (which are now dead as a platform).
Although if you get lucky you can find used GM Bright Spots for $40k, and used E-Transits for $20k. Haven't seen any used eSprinters yet on the market.
Amazon is a Rivian investor and ordered a bunch of them.
Rivian vans start at $80k, which is in the same ballpark as the R1S starting price of $83. Rivian axed the cheapest SUV trim in its line-up, so we're even less likely to see cheaper Rivian vans now.
Ford Maverick is a hybrid for about the same price and I could definitely lean more easily towards that kind combo at the moment.
The Transit Connect is discontinued in North America and was only ever a plug in hybrid here (outside a 500 unit collaboration in the early 2010s) but maybe one of the newer electric variants of the Transit lines will make its way over some time (e.g. looks like the Ford E-Tourneo Courier is an all electric in Europe).
A base trim Hyundai Ioniq 5 is now $35K in the US. The Slate looks very cool, I'd take 3, but it doesn't seem a good value as basic transportation, not including the perceived value of no telemetry, etc.
Yeah, you could buy a basic one and add the rear seats and roof later.
But, is that likely? Most people buy cars on credit and won't have $10k cash to spend on those bits later. I guess they could put it on Visa, but that's a terrible financial choice.
If these become popular it should be reasonable to expect the aftermarket to provide less expensive options. These are clearly where Slate's margin will live right now.
