<p>^^ My old Dodge has over 200K miles and hasn’t had any of the issues or expense you describe. It still has the original timing chain, electronic ignition, O2 sensors, etc. The only issue has been the water pump which I’ve replaced myself 3 times for about $50 a pop.</p>
<p>ICE engines of today are very reliable and generally inexpensive to maintain. It usually boils down to just doing oil changes. Many (perhaps most) new cars don’t even need any maintenance other than the oil change for the first 100K miles. This includes the spark plugs which are good for well over 100K miles nowadays and there are no points, cap, condenser, etc. to worry about anymore.</p>
<p>The cars with the rubber timing belts that need periodic replacement have a known maintenance cost that people need to consider since it can be somewhat expensive to replace.</p>
<p>Regardless - the question I asked is basically how a used electric vehicle will do compared to what we’re used to with a ICE car due to the impending battery replacement costs. I guess we’ll see in about 5 - 8 years from now. Again, hopefully the costs of a replacement battery will come way down by then. It’s possible it will.</p>
<p>The new Siennas (around 2000 and after) have had a lot of problems
for Toyotas. My manager has one and her maintenance issues have been
way higher than mine. I replaced two oxygen sensors recently - they
were original.</p>
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<p>It’s not a bad car for discussion of electrical issues though.</p>
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<p>Yes. Gasoline was in the $3.90s earlier this year. My fillup
last week was $3.39. Of course you could just look at this
chart of West Texas Intermediate.</p>
<p>I just had a look at the long-term chart of natural gas. It was
over $15/mbtus in 2005. it’s $2.62 today. I definitely noticed
that in my heating bills this past winter. First time ever that
we didn’t pay three digits for our monthly natural gas bills.</p>
Being able to work on your own car can save you money - I installed the new coils, and saved hundreds for a simple job. But most people don’t and can’t. The shop quoted me over $800. What would those three pumps have cost if you had to do it at a shop? (Reminds me - I forgot the fuel pump I had to replace - cost over $400 because they had to drop the tank to replace it.)</p>
<p>One of my tools is technical analysis and so yes, I use past price and volume action as factors in my trades.</p>
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<p>I went big into oil in 2000 and got mostly out a few years ago. I’ve done very well in commodities since 2000. So yes, I have made the bet that oil isn’t going to do well. Supply is increasing and demand is decreasing. Central bankers are much less willing to print now than they have in the past. Governments seem a lot less willing to print too.</p>
<p>What has happened with wages in the US? Do we have inflationary wage pressures here? Do you think that we will have inflationary wage pressures here in the next five years? Or are we going in the opposite direction? We have relatively low oil and gasoline prices in the US right now but reports are showing that consumers are not responding with more travel. What does that tell you?</p>
I don’t know since I do most of the work on my cars myself but I’m sure I wouldn’t have liked the cost. After having done it before I have it down now and can do it pretty easily. I always buy a factory shop manual (not a Chiltons type) when I buy a car so it makes working on the car myself easier.</p>
<p>It would not be surprising if the design life of most cars was in the same time frame.</p>
<p>Prius batteries do not seem to have a reputation of wearing out and needing replacement frequently. Last I checked, the MSRP of a new Prius battery was about $2,300 to $2,800 (depending on what generation of Prius; some on-line Toyota parts retailers offer them for hundreds of dollars less than MSRP), but salvage batteries from crashed Priuses are significantly less expensive.</p>
<p>Of course, the much larger battery of a full electric car will cost more.</p>
<p>Crude broke key support of $80. It’s below $79 this morning - even the storm in the Gulf isn’t helping. Supplies in the US are quite plentiful and I see gasoline prices continuing to head lower.</p>
<p>One of the companies that I own is Equity Residential which is a luxury apartment real estate investment trust. I saw an article about two companies buying up real estate to put in place EV charging infrastructure. My REIT is one of their major customers along with Cracker Barrel, WalGreens, Simon Property Group (largest US Mall operator), and a few parking lot management companies.</p>
<p>I don’t have any interest in car charging companies but thought it was interesting that there are some major league companies putting in and looking at putting in EV charging infrastructure.</p>
Over in China there’s hundreds of open pits full of grossly poisonous sludge left over from rare earth metal mining for battery production. There is no free lunch.</p>
<p>Solar and wind seem to provide the closest to the environmental free lunch but probably wouldn’t produce anywhere near the amount of energy needed to migrate transportation from oil to electricity and any solution would probably increase the need for ng/coal/nuclear generation.</p>
<p>^ Right, but current solar and wind technologies use a lot of land space and aren’t the most attractive visually. Solar and wind also do not provide consistent power, so you’ll need to back it up with nat gas/coal/nuclear generation.</p>
There’s direct damage to the environment from many of the solar farms and wind farms. I’ve seen huge swaths of pristine desert and mountain passes blighted by these.</p>
<p>Solar could be more effective than it currently is and in a way that doesn’t blight the land if it’s build on existing rooftops or designed into the structure of buildings. This is starting to happen more and more.</p>
<p>One needs to be careful with the wind farms because they really do change the landscape. Didn’t the Kennedys throw a ruckus when it was suggested to put a wind farm in their ‘view’?</p>
<p>Talk to people who live within the morning or afternoon shadow thrown by the rotating blades of a large windmill. Even with blinds and drapes shut they get a strobe light effect in their homes.</p>
<p>“The middle of nowhere” includes places I don’t want to see destroyed such as pristine desert and mountain passes. It takes a fair amount of destruction to put these in and provide roads, etc. to maintain them. </p>
<p>I agree that some locations are appropriate from an environmental impact perspective but I’ve seen them placed in areas that were formerly nice, scenic, pristine areas - something like a mountain pass as opposed to land that’s already been changed from its natural state like a ranch or farm.</p>
<p>“The middle of nowhere” is subjective - some view desert and mountain land as the middle and might not care and therefore consider them up for grabs but I consider them pristine natural areas that we shouldn’t further destroy by these solar and wind farms that take up a huge amount of real estate for relatively small power output.</p>
<p>I think these are actually better off being placed not in the middle of nowhere but rather, where the people are and therefore the power use is to minimize power transmission loss and where the natural landscape has already been altered. I think solar lends itself to this more than wind power.</p>
<p>Well, we have areas that really aren’t accessible WRT the middle of nowhere.</p>
<p>We have a nuclear plant in Seabrook, NH and the residents of the town get low property taxes in return for the potential for a disaster. Same thing with the AEP natural-gas fired plant in Londonderry, NH. We also have a very small amount of coal-fired and hydro electricity generation in the state and they both have their issues though on a small scale.</p>
<p>We have 24 MW of production right now, 99 under construction and 30 proposed. I don’t think that I’ve seen anything in the way of protests over the wind farms in NH - but there is a lot very sparsely populated and inaccessible land in the state.</p>
<p>Wind power" also kills birds that get sucked into the rotors…</p>
<p>While efficiency is getting better, building in the middle of nowhere presents transportation issues as electricity loses power the farther it travels in the lines. And of course, electric can’t be “stored”.</p>
Here’s a ten year chart: [Interactive</a> historical crude oil price chart](<a href=“