Kinky KoboldsConsidering that the US electric vehicle incentives disappear at the end of the month, we've been looking into the economics of trading in our current gas-powered car for an EV. Unfortunately, even if we make some generous-but plausible assumptions about maintenance and energy costs, it's still basically impossible to justify.
While we are looking at a higher-end EV (a Hyundai Ioniq 5 Limited with all-wheel drive), we'd also be trading in a very sporty car (a Hyundai Veloster N with under 20k miles). So this is a reach, perhaps, but it's not entirely an unjustifiable comparison.
Even if we assume all of the following...
- Exceptional energy efficiency out of the EV (5 miles per kWh)
- Our trade in will get valued at the high end of its expected range
- Fuel prices will go up at 6% per year and electricity prices will go up 3% per year
- We do 90% of our charging at home, despite not having access to fast-charging hardware.
- Auto insurance will cost 20% less. This is actually what Progressive quoted us; even a hot hatch gets heavily penalized with insurance premiums.
- Maintenance costs are $0 for the first three years due to Hyundai's complimentary maintenance
- Vehicle registration fees will not change. Note Colorado already imposes surcharges on EVs to offset the loss of fuel tax revenue
- We'll drive 8,000 miles per year, which is up from the roughly 6,000 we currently drive, just to make any per-mile savings more significant.
... we're still looking at it being $10K more expensive over the next decade to trade in our current, nearly-paid-off car for a shiny new EV. With some more realistic assumptions (such as we keep driving only 6K miles per year), the difference quickly soars past $15K. This is also completely ignoring the effects of deprecation.
This kinda sucks! We're not sure if we'd be willing to trade down to the entry-level model of the Ioniq 5 (which might eliminate that cost difference) but we sure wouldn't be happy about it. We know, though, that there are $11,350 in federal and state tax incentives that won't exist if we go car shopping at a later date.
Are there any other considerations we've overlooking here? Is there anything that'd allow us to better justify this kind of purchase? Or is it really just a case of it being unjustifiable spending to trade up to such a nice EV no matter how we try to assess the math?
thefathippy