These hidden EV expenses suprised me
💰 When you’re filling up gas, you’re paying a gas tax of about 20 to 40 cents a gallon which goes towards repairing the roads we all share. When you’re driving an EV, you’re obviously not paying that gas tax and as of the last couple of years, most US states have added an EV tax fee that ranges from 50 dollars to over 300 dollars a year that you pay when you renew your registration.
💰Electric Vehicles weigh much more than comparable gas cars and you have a hundred% of your torque available instantly, so your EV tires tend to wear out much sooner than you’d expect. Most tires we’ve changed on our Teslas cost us between 200 to 300 dollars/tire, and needed replacement generally at about 20 to 25 thousand miles, where with lighter less torquey non-EVs, you can expect closer to 35 to 50 thousand miles of life out of your tires, and they’re likely to be a bit cheaper too.
💰 There are also 3 different types of charging expenses:
1. Just like the iPhone, when you buy an EV, some manufacturers make you pay for your charging cables separately.
2. Installing a charging station. the installation that can run anywhere between $300 to $1500 according to Home Advisor. Then you have to get a trained electrician and possibly upgrade the electrical grid in your home to handle fast charging. The home charging units themselves can also run between $400 to $700. But once all of this is set up, you are saving big by charging at home. Looking at the average utility rate in the US, charging the most common EV at home, the Model Y, will cost you about $10 to fully charge. While at a public charging stations it can cost 3x as much. In California, drivers pay about 30 cents/ kWh at Level 2 chargers and 40 cents a kWh for fast charging. That's about 30 dollars to fast charge 300 miles of range from empty to full.
3. Charging fees if you leave your car plugged in too long at a public station. Tesla Superchargers cost you a dollar a minute after you’re full while some ChargePoints have a fee of $20 an hour after 4 hours of being plugged in.
💰 Another expense that might catch you off guard is the higher insurance premiums on EVs. There’s obviously several factors behind it, one because most EVs are still more expensive than comparable gas cars and they’re loaded with advanced tech, high-capacity batteries and other sophisticated parts. Repairing or replacing them is costly, hence the high insurance premium. According to insurance data, the Tesla Model 3 costs an average of $2300 per year to insure, which is about $600 higher than the average insurance rate for a comparable sedan in the US.
💰 If you have issues out of warranty with your EV, you really don’t have too many options as far as getting them repaired. That’s because unlike gas cars, there’s no right-to-repair laws in place for EVs, so carmakers can hold you hostage for any issues that come up. Things like diagnostic systems and parts might only be available from the dealer, and there’s almost always a pricing premium for servicing with them.
Because of the right-to-repair laws in place for gas cars, its given room for basically an ecosystem of after market car-repair shops to grow. But with EVs growing so fast, its brought the intellectual property factor back in the auto industry. So EV manufacturers can prevent an owner from tampering with the car since the cars basically contain a bunch of electronic equipment, just like Amazon's Alexa or your iPhone. So there is that factor of having little to no options to where and how much you pay to get your EV repaired besides taking it directly to where you bought it from.
⚡️⚡️⚡️Even with all these factors, driving electric is so much cheaper, especially when looking at the long term ownership costs.
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