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To: Tell It Right

Don’t forget increased tire costs, depreciation, and/or battery replacement.


25 posted on 07/28/2025 6:24:59 AM PDT by alternatives?
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To: alternatives?
I accounted for those. As well as increase car insurance (my car insurance doesn't have an EV rider, but it costs more and thus has higher premiums). As far as tire cost goes, the EV crossover weights 10% more than the old gas crossover it replaced. Thus I assumed tire wear to occur 10% faster. Of course, that doesn't account for driving it like teenagers with zippy acceleration. LOL But my wife and I seem to have gotten past that. I also accounted for the state of Alabama charging $200 more for car tag renewals than for gas cars, for EV owners to pay for road upkeep (since we're not paying gas taxes). IMHO that seems fair, just part of the math.

And don't forget less brake pad wear with most braking done through regen. So I assumed the brake pad savings to offset the tire wear extra cost. So far that seems to be right.

As far as battery replacement goes, that's 100% correct, assuming we'll want to replace it at 10 years. But on the other hand I was buying a used ICE car every 7 years (we drive a lot). Will we replace the EV battery at 10 years? I dunno. It depends on if we eventually replace the old gas pickup (190K miles). We don't drive it much, so it may last another 20 years. Or we may have to replace the gas pickup and it be the newer, more comfortable car we take on trips anyway. Thus the EV's battery wouldn't need replacing if it still has plenty of range for local driving (which is where the real gas savings is -- the home charged miles).

As far as depreciation goes, that might matter to others, but not to those of us who drive a car till the wheels fall off. Every time I've sold a car I've gotten so little out of it anyway, I intend for the EV to be no different.

6 years from now in 2031 will be the break-even point of the EV/solar/home energy remodeling project's savings = extra cost. So far it's saved me $7,200 in cash flow (think of that as $7,200 staying in our Roth IRA's to grow tax free) while I make payments to a loan I took out to buy supplies and hire contractors for the project (including making payments on the EV beyond the $400/month savings we did to buy/repair our cars). That year 2031 be the 9 year anniversary of owning the EV and the 10 year anniversary of the small solar system I installed to try it out in my climate with mine and my wife's energy consumption habits. I liked it enough to convert my 2 nat gas appliances to electric, upgrade the solar and batteries, and buy the EV (since it was time to replace my wife's gas crossover anyway). That was in year 2022. In year 2031 the total energy cost savings - extra costs that come with an EV will equal the balance left in the loan. That doesn't include the gains from the cash flow savings being money left in our Roth IRA's growing tax free (I left that out to add some pessimism to my project engineering).

Every month I track this when I get a power statement. My inverters tell me how much power I consumed during that billing period, compared to how much the power company says I pulled from them (they don't know about the 80% of my power I consume that didn't go through the meter because my solar system kept it in house). I also look at my EV odometer to see how many miles I drove that month and look at the price of gas at the nearest gas station. And for every 5K miles my spreadsheet calculates an oil change savings (based on the cost of the last time I had the oil changed in the gas pickup).

35 posted on 07/28/2025 6:56:28 AM PDT by Tell It Right (1 Thessalonians 5:21 -- Put everything to the test, hold fast to that which is true.)
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