<p>Well, no, I’m not fine with subsidizing Teslas - I would have thought that was clear when I said it was stupid. I am fine with a kick-start subsidy for electric cars that applies to practical cars like Nissan Leaf, Chevy Volt, etc. The same types of programs have been applied in the past to hybrids (success), CNG cars (failure), fuel cell cars (mega failure) to try to establish them in the marketplace - it’s in our national interest to reduce dependency on foreign fuel sources, and if done correctly as part of an overall energy strategy, these subsidies can benefit all of us.</p>
<p>I’m also willing to accept subsidizing the infinitesimal number of Teslas that will be sold along with the real cars, if that’s what it takes. Rich people are going to buy silly toys, and if we can get them to buy silly toys that don’t burn gas, that’s not all bad.</p>
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<p>I think you missed my point - we have all kinds of crappy energy policies and tax policies, and this electric car subsidy is far from the top of list if you want to poke at bad policies.</p>
<p>“So if you are looking at buying a big truck, like a Cadillac Escalade or Infiniti QX56 (above), the new rules will let you deduct 100% of the cars value in the first year (subject to a personal use disallowance essentially meaning it has to be used exclusively for work). The amount of depreciation that can be deducted also varies on the cost of the vehicle, with more expensive machines paired with much more significant deductions. According to figures in the Wall Street Journal, for any vehicle under 6,000 lbs and the first year depreciation deduction is $11,060, but the deduction for following years is much more significant for more expensive vehicle, with a $4,900 second year deduction for a vehicle over $31,000 compared to a $3,200 deduction for a vehicle costing under $20,000.”</p>
<p>This tax deduction existed for years before 2011, also. </p>
<p>Boo hoo to the whiners of the $7500 tax credit for electric cars!</p>
<p>^^^Not apples and oranges. It can be a doctor, a lawyer, a CPA taking that deduction, which means they’re using the vehicle primarily for commuting. And they can’t get as generous a deduction on the Tesla (or a Leaf, for that matter) because of the minimum weight requirement.</p>
<p>My brother just bought a Leaf & installed a charging station. They charge it very night & have whomever is scheduled to drive the most that day drive it. So far, they seem happy with it. H & I are curious about whether their battery will develop a “memory,” and not charge as much because they are constantly charging it before it has been anywhere near its capacity of use before being recharged. Supposedly batteries are getting more advanced & not having “memories,” but we wonder.</p>
<p>The tax treatment for the larger trucks was intended for medium duty and heavier work trucks for contractors, farmers, etc. using them for their businesses. Very large luxury SUVs from the late 1990s on to the present began to overlap in weight with these medium duty work trucks and therefore allowed doctors, lawyers, consultants, etc. to exploit this tax treatment for luxury SUVs that never go near a construction site or farm.</p>
<p>Himom, I know that my husband always tells me to charge batteries to full capacity - that must be why. And a lot of other things tell me to when they are being used for the first time.</p>
<p>NiCads were mostly phased out 7-10 years ago. They were replaced by Nickel-Metal-Hydride (NiMH) batteries which provide store more energy, can operate through cold temperatures and generally perform better than NiCads.</p>
<p>The Prius uses a NiHH battery.</p>
<p>The Tesla batteries are a lot more sophisticated - they have electronics to monitor and manage individual cells - this from an investor friend of mine.</p>
<p>My H has had experience with a LOT of batteries in his decades of working with electronics & other things. He still doesn’t trust that batteries don’t have “memories,” but we’d be happy to be proven wrong. Hope the LEAF works great & maybe we can consider getting an electric car & charging station as well. Who knows–will be thinking about getting a new car in the near future.</p>
<p>As a person who drives a 46 y/o vehicle and a 15 y/o vehicle, I wonder how expensive it’ll be to replace the battery packs in these electric vehicles at the 8 yr (or whatever) point and the effect on resale value as one gets within a few years of the end of the battery warranty point.</p>
<p>Internal combustion engines are just as happy 40 years later as they are when new (if maintained properly) and can go hundreds of thousands of miles and many years without a major expense so buying a 5-8 y/o car with an internal combustion engine, or keeping it for more than 8 years, isn’t a big deal but I’d be concerned about buying a car that has a potentially very expensive battery change out on the horizon. </p>
<p>I know the battery unit on the Tesla is crazy expensive (I’ve seen figures of around $40K). I expect a Leaf or Volt is much less expensive than that but still expensive.</p>
<p>The cost of gas, oil changes, and standard ICE maintenance costs over the course of 100,000 miles is well into the tens of thousands of dollars, while the electricity needed to recharge batteries is a small fraction of that and A/C electric motors have no real maintenance items at all - literally, one moving part. The short-term numbers on an ICE car definitely beat those on a battery car - particularly if you ignore the environmental costs, which we all tend to do. Long term, it’s not such an easy call. My guess is that, like PV solar cell generated electricity, the cost will keep coming down while the cost of fossil energy keeps going up (even continuing to ignore the global environmental costs.) Like PV, the cost to early adopters will be higher.</p>
<p>As a point of comparison, the Ford Model T cost the modern equivalent of $21K for a crude, slow, dangerous and unreliable car when sold in 1909. Horse and buggy was cheaper in the short term. The Fords still sold pretty well.</p>
<p>^^ I’m just picturing what’ll happen when these cars are around 6-8 years old or older. I can’t see buying one used at that point unless the cost was so low that it accommodated replacing the battery unit. I agree that the electric motor itself is likely not much of a concern since there’s little to fail but the battery units are very expensive. A prospective buyer isn’t going to care how much money the original owner saved in gas, they’re just going to look at the costs facing them if they purchase it. </p>
<p>I’m wondering if a lot of these cars will end up on the scrap heap at the end of the battery warranty period (or when they fail or are greatly diminished after the warranty period) rather than carrying on. </p>
<p>Hopefully the replacement cost for the battery packs will come way down in price by that point but that remains to be seen.</p>
<p>I was really shocked when I read that the design life for the Prius is 9 years or 180,000 miles. My Avalon has 245K miles in 13 years and runs just fine.</p>
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<p>Definitely a factor in the decision.</p>
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<p>They’re going to have to get that way down to get the price down to the $50Ks which is where they want to go.</p>
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<p>There are some environmental costs to electric cars too.</p>
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<p>The cost of fossil energy has been going down.</p>
A well maintained car should last over 200,000 before needing major drive train overhaul/replacement, but only if you don’t neglect the not insignificant periodic maintenance. We’ve got a 12 year old Sienna (same drive train as your Avalon) with over 200,000 miles on it - but the timing belt replacement costs over $1,000 every 90,000 miles. I recently had to replaced the coils at over $100 a pop without labor charges; and a valve cover has started to leak - I’m just adding more oil. ICE engines have been tweaked to a fare-the-well, but the result is a bunch of patches - ECV’s oxygen sensors, etc. - all of which are prone to failure, with repairs that are expensive for the majority of folks who don’t work on their own cars. There’s a lot of interim expenses involved in owning an ICE - and they add up. A battery pack is a single, major expense (whose cost will certrainly come way down once they become commodities instead of specialty items like they are now.) But the cost of battery cars will only come down (and opportunity charging options increase) when there’s more of them on the road. It’s a “chicken or egg” problem.</p>
<p>As to hybrids, they just add complexity and double your potential failure points. I’m not a Prius fan.