----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Why is good acceleration important?
Because no one ever advertises how slow their vehicle is.
LOL, I stand corrected. I should have saId "successfully advertises". Anyone know how many of those they sold in 2020?----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------All Hat No Cattle said:
Why is good acceleration important?
Because no one ever advertises how slow their vehicle is.
Remember This?
- Volkswagen announced it will stop worldwide production of the iconic Beetle by summer 2019. The move comes as the auto market continues its march toward SUVs and crossover vehicles.
- The company sold roughly 15,000 Beetles in the US in 2017, a dramatic fall from the more than 420,000 units sold at the peak of its popularity in the late 1960s.
Assuming this aged well with the current fuel pricesYes I'm new here, so sorry for the run-on post but I have a genuine question: Those that are buying this, what drove the purchase decision, and did you run any sort of numbers on payback?
I'm hoping that I don't get a bunch of, frankly, fanboy responses, because it seems whenever I ask that in a Tesla forum (or in any forum with Tesla owners), they tend to bend over backwards to justify their purchase as being financially sound, when in fact it isn't. If you like a car for the tech, that's fine, just like you're not buying some high end sportscar thinking it's going to be cheaper than a 4 cyl to drive - but don't lie to yourself either.
Every time I am in the market for a new car I give EV's (and other technologies) a chance, but they always fail the first bar - payback. That is, let's run some rough numbers on how long it will take the EV to pay for its premium based on cost per mile driven. If it's close or reasonable, then we can include other factors like insurance (seems to be hit an miss, as reports have, for example, Tesla insurance to either be normal or very expensive), maintenance (which I think the EV fanboys tend to over exaggerate), etc.
It seems I live in an odd area where gas is fairly inexpensive and electricity the opposite. Right now I can fill up for about $2.05/gal,. Meanwhile, electricity (TOU rates, meaning the absolute best it's going to get) is about $0.171/kWh (non-TOU is $0.195 and TOU peak is $0.247!). Using that and stated efficiencies for certain vehicles I can get a cost/mile - for the Mach-E it's about $0.056/mile. For an ICE that gets 28 mpg (e.g. Honda HR-V, which I would consider a comparably-sized vehicle) that cost per mile is $0.075/mile using $2.10/gal gas. That gap is $0.0192/mile. So, for 100,000 miles that's $1917.21, or let's call it an even $2000 for every 100k miles driven.
Immediately this should raise some flags, as the EV premium is far more than $2000, and most would consider even a 100k PBP too long (in industry, a rule of thumb is 2 years, and for me that would be more like 40k miles). Indeed, running those numbers, not including taxes, insurance differences or "maintenance" BUT including tax credits, puts the PBP for the Mach-E Premium at nearly 900,000 miles. No amount of adjusting for "maintenance" or other costs is going to bring this down to the point where an argument can be made. [using an Escape under the same circumstances, gives a PBP around 750k miles]
I'm just wondering if I am far off here, or perhaps everyone lives in an area where gas is crazy expensive and electricity cheap (or free, e.g. solar)? Or, it could be that no one cares about the cost difference and they just like the car. That's fine too.