Will the price of used and new cars go down?

[Mihle]

3 hours ago, Donut417 said:

In the US there are like 5 competing types of chargers as well. Europe I believe standardized on one, but typical America to do things the hard way. 

From my understanding, for new cars it's basically 2, maybe 3 ones in US, it's just that cars previously m, up to very recently, will have other plugs.

[Mihle]

2 hours ago, Zodiark1593 said:

Absolutely correct. If battery tech doesn’t advance sufficiently, we’ll just have to come to terms with the fact that moving around thousands of pounds of metal, at highway speeds, really takes a lot of energy. And we’d probably have to find a smarter way to address transportation than brute force (ie, shove more battery cells in the thing). 

We can make less cars need to be produced by massively improve/build metros and trains. (And busses/trams)

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

19 hours ago, HeroRareheart said:

That said going 100 miles on 4 dollars is nice when my grandparents' cars need $16-$20 to go the same distance lol.

Though that really depends on your cost of entry. It's something politicians and dealers love to omit. I saw a cheeky ad from a major automotive group in my area referencing how gas prices skyrocketed 40 cents in the past 2 weeks is a sign to go electric. Clicked on it and was greeted with a whole inventory of 70k-90k Electric Volvos...  Yes... even if I had a 50k trade-in which is highly optimistic for anyone, I still have to pay 20k out of pocket. And 20k out of pocket is not exactly an outlandish price tag for an electric vehicle whether you're trading-in for a new one or buying used outright. Heck, it's really low actually... 

 

If we do the math, I would have to drive:

 

$16 is the savings between going 100 miles if you were to switch to electric according to your estimates. 

 

$20,000 / $16 = 1,250 trips to break even.

 

1,250 x 100 mile trips = 125,000 miles (or 201,168 KMs)

 

That means I would need to drive 125,000 miles (201,168 KMs) to break even... And most people don't plan keep their cars for that long. 

[Donut417]

1 hour ago, Mihle said:

We can make less cars need to be produced by massively improve/build metros and trains. (And busses/trams)

In city centers yes,  but in the suburbs not really. Busses could be a help. BUT that depends on if people choose to utilize them and if they are reliable. Actually a city recently in the Southeast Michigan area pulled out of the SMART bus program due to reliability issues with the service. Why pay for something that doesnt work? 

 

Trains cant be built. The issue here is all current rail is privately owned. Building new rail is not really possible. Check out California's attempt to build high speed rail. Literally only 1/3 of the project is going to be completed because over half the money was spent before constitution began. Much of that money going to legal challenges as people dont like when the government eminent domains their land. 

[Needfuldoer]

6 hours ago, Donut417 said:

In the US there are like 5 competing types of chargers as well. Europe I believe standardized on one, but typical America to do things the hard way. 

There are four, and the market isn't as fragmented as you might expect:

 

J1772 - Used for Level 1 (120v) and Level 2 (220v) charging. Basically the de facto standard in North America, nearly every EV can use this natively or with an adapter.

 

CCS Combo 1 - DC fast charging port. It's implemented as a superset of J1772, so cars equipped with this port can still use Level 2 chargers.

 

Tesla - They have their own competing standard. Because Tesla. Every car comes with a J1772 adapter.

 

CHAdeMO - DC fast charging, far less common than the other types. I think the Nissan Leaf and Mitsubishi i-MIEV were the only cars that sold in appreciable volume with this connector.

 

 

These connectors carry either regular old mains voltage (110/220 AC) or high voltage/amperage DC. For Level 2 AC charging applications, the "charger" on the wall is just a fancy on/off switch with some safety interlocks. The actual charger that charges the battery is built into the car.

 

 

Edited March 14, 2022 by Needfuldoer
Fixed my speeling, added video

[HeroRareheart]

2 hours ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

Clicked on it and was greeted with a whole inventory of 70k-90k Electric Volvos...I would need to drive 125,000 miles (201,168 KMs) to break even.

Good god that's expensive. My leaf was only a good choice because it was previously a lease vehicle that had low milage and was found to have a defective battery, so it got fully replaced shortly before it got resold as a pre-owned. I got a practically brand-new condition Leaf for 15k.

34 minutes ago, Needfuldoer said:

CHADEMO - DC fast charging, far less common than the other types. I think the Nissan Leaf and Mitsubishi i-MIEV were the only cars that sold in appreciable volume with this connector.

You spelled it wrong, it's CHAdeMO. It's spelled like that because it's an abbreviation of, this is NOT a joke, "CHArge de MOve" and its also a tea pun. It's the standard, or was the standard IDK, in Japan and my car has it. It SUCKS. It works like no other standard so you can't adapt it to any of the other common place ones and the companies using it in the U.S.A. stopped using it so little infrastructure exists for it. It's also kinda slow compared to the other ones to so only suitable for a vehicle like the older Leafs because it's battery is small. TLDR; it's installed nowhere, it's unlike every other standard, it's a dead standard, and most importantly the abbreviation is stupid and a pun about tea.

Edited March 14, 2022 by HeroRareheart
additional info added

[Needfuldoer]

17 minutes ago, HeroRareheart said:

You spelled it wrong

Thanks, I fixed it.

 

But yeah, it was basically dead on arrival in the US.

 

Every EV here can use J1772, either natively (by itself or inside CCS Type 1) or with an adapter (Teslas, and AVCON on relics like the Ford Ranger EV). Even bikes like the Livewire and larger Zeros use J1772.

[wseaton]

People who push EVs live in a fictious universe where everybody is a home owner and has solar panels on their roof and the US electrical grid is at 75% capacity.

 

Back in reality......

 

I try to be pro green, but I can't handle the reality distortion. You can't own an EV unless you can afford one let alone have a convenient place to charge one. Most of my friends are renters, and their landlord isn't going to install mass charging stations, but will raise their rent 15%. Like Hicks sez ",game over man".

 

If you're that guy with a paid off house and has 10years into your solar investment so your Tesla doesn't require the local fossil fuel burning power station and stressed grid good for you. You're like, .00001 % of the population. 

 

My sarcastic mode sez the same people who push EVs pushed mass transit a couple decades ago. Since those same people don't feel safe using mass transit they moved out to the 'burbs and found a new cause. Oddly they vote the same way because they dont have to, well, live where people have to use mass transit.

 

Pushing EVs before pushing national grid upgrades, the supply of housing, and massive updates to energy generation, is, IMHO stupid. Windmills and solar and EVs won't solve the problem. Look what weather lulls at windfarms did the North Sea did for energy prices in Europe.Math sez nuclear, likely thorium etc has to brought online, otherwise EVs will just become another feature for home owners who have spare cash. This isnt politics. Its common sense.

 

I'm also not giving the car industry a pass. I live in the Midwest, and half the stupid cars on the road are big, fat bumpkin trucks twice the size of my Mazda 3. Fuel Economy standards for cars have been too lax and bought by lobbiests. There's no reason any passenger vehicle on the road shouldn't get 50mpg. Conventional passenger cars and trucks are too big, gas hogs and need to take a lesson from Europe where vehicles are half the size.

 

 

 

[DaCookieMonsta]

I live in a city where most the commutes are less than 8 miles the the cycle infrastructure is decent (but not NL-great) yet many otherwise fit and healthy people still use their cars because of convenience or because "it's just the way it is". EVs imo are an overcomplicated solution to a problem that can be resolved by old technology and frugal living, and the initial "investment" (no it is NOT an investment) is far bigger. For the price of a used EV, I can buy a small used ICE car with enough fuel to last 5 years.

 

 

[IPD]

The secondhand electric market has residual value that makes econoboxes from the 1980s look like solid investments.  So no, despite the FUD being spread by the well-to-do who have money to burn on such novel and frivolous purchases, electrics aren't going to replace IC engines anytime soon.

 

Nor am I convinced that the net pollution from harvesting the rare earth materials required for batteries--is a net gain; nor that it plays well into national security, given the hoarding going on.

 

Nor is the power-grid capable of handling transportation going 100% electric.  We are terrawatts short of being ready for that.  Not to mention the grid itself being highly vulnerable and nowhere near robust enough to handle the increased demand.  We've had several high-profile blackouts and brownouts--state & regionwide--in the past 20 years.

 

 

[pr1vatepiles]

I think the chip shortages and general world wide disruption has pushed prices up for everyone. Speaking as someone in the UK, i think we will again see the price rise as the ban on ICE cars comes in. The average Joe simply can not afford to get a new electric car, hell even a second hand one is out of the reach for most. I think we will see a steady rise over the next 5 years before they reach a peak and level off. 

 

 

[dalekphalm]

Like, ever? Yes.

 

The used car market is explosive right now, mostly due to a massive shortage in new vehicles. This dries up the market from the top, forcing people who would otherwise buy new, to buy used instead.

 

Fun fact, this is also what would happen if everyone followed the common advice of "always buy used".

 

Once the new car market and supply clean itself up (this will slowly happen over the next while - no one can probably say for sure how long it'll take - I would guess another year at least), and waiting lists for cars drop to near zero (normally even a factory order would be fulfilled in something like a month or two tops and you'd have plenty of in-stock options), then the used car market will eventually drop back to normal.

 

The arguments about EV vs non-EV have literally nothing to do with this conversation.

 

Now, will the price of new cars go down? No. Why would that happen? You will start to see dealers willing to take a larger hit on their profit margins, so there could be small fluctuations in the new car price, but likely not significant ones.

[Imbadatnames]

On 3/14/2022 at 1:01 AM, Dillpickle23422 said:

Doubtful. Depending on location, maybe. In the UK, almost definitely, as they plan to completely replace all ICE cars with electric. The US, however, has a shitty power grid that could not possibly think of handling the amount of power required to charge said cars. Once the US gets it's act together, then I could see the price of ICE cars falling. As @bmx6454said, there are other factors. Most people will just hold on and bite the bullet with the gas prices. Basic rule of supply and demand will work, and the prices will fall. Most folks know enough to just wait. If these prices held like this for half a year, I could feasibly see a lot of people going and buying more fuel efficient cars (in the case of the US, a predominatly gas hog SUV country) and people in areas with sufficient infrastructure probably might consider an electric car.

In my personal case, I am already considering a more fuel efficient vehicle, as I currently get ~12mpg city (most of my driving) and ~15 highway. I really don't need such a gas hog regardless of fuel cost, and I would love more than 3 seats for my friends and some backpack space.

You think the UK grid could handle everyone driving EVs? That’s kinda hilarious. The current infrastructure isn’t good enough for the small percentage of EVs we currently have, the range isn’t near good enough on all but the most expensive models and electricity prices are going through the roof too that’s on top of the price to get a faster charger installed at your home, if you have a garage (most don’t) and assuming it would get nicked in the night. 
 

I don’t get how cars can be that inefficient. Mines not great and it gets 55 highway around around 30-35 urban

[IPD]

4 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

Like, ever? Yes.

 

The used car market is explosive right now, mostly due to a massive shortage in new vehicles. This dries up the market from the top, forcing people who would otherwise buy new, to buy used instead.

 

Fun fact, this is also what would happen if everyone followed the common advice of "always buy used".

 

Once the new car market and supply clean itself up (this will slowly happen over the next while - no one can probably say for sure how long it'll take - I would guess another year at least), and waiting lists for cars drop to near zero (normally even a factory order would be fulfilled in something like a month or two tops and you'd have plenty of in-stock options), then the used car market will eventually drop back to normal.

 

The arguments about EV vs non-EV have literally nothing to do with this conversation.

 

Now, will the price of new cars go down? No. Why would that happen? You will start to see dealers willing to take a larger hit on their profit margins, so there could be small fluctuations in the new car price, but likely not significant ones.

You cannot underestimate the effect effect that Cash-For-Clunkers had on the used vehicle market--and how it is still having an impact to this day.

[Donut417]

4 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

Once the new car market and supply clean itself up (this will slowly happen over the next while - no one can probably say for sure how long it'll take - I would guess another year at least), and waiting lists for cars drop to near zero (normally even a factory order would be fulfilled in something like a month or two tops and you'd have plenty of in-stock options), then the used car market will eventually drop back to normal.

Intel predicted the chip shortage until 2024. But auto companies use older designs, so its hard to say because I dont think anyone is building fabs for older designs or know if they can increase production some how. 

 

4 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

ow, will the price of new cars go down? No. Why would that happen? You will start to see dealers willing to take a larger hit on their profit margins, so there could be small fluctuations in the new car price, but likely not significant ones.

If they want people to to buy EV's they will have to. Most people are not going to pay $40k or more to buy a car. They will have to find a way to bring more affordable EV's, the current issue to is used EV's are a tough sell, because batteries have a limited life and to replace those probably will cost more than the car is worth. Plus its not clear how long EV's will be cheaper to operate. Because besides states charge additional registration fees, the utility is going to be looking to take their pound of flesh as well at some point in the future. 

[Donut417]

Just now, IPD said:

You cannot underestimate the effect effect that Cash-For-Clunkers had on the used vehicle market--and how it is still having an impact to this day.

That was probably the stupidest thing the government ever did. Yeah some of these cars needed off the road, but some people could only afford those cars. And all because they were looking to support the auto industry due to their stupidity during the financial crisis. Just like how they supported the housing market, found out that 20% of the mortgages are owned by the Fed. No wonder banks are willing to give a person a $500k mortgage when the government is buying them. 

[Dillpickle23422]

2 hours ago, Imbadatnames said:

You think the UK grid could handle everyone driving EVs? That’s kinda hilarious. The current infrastructure isn’t good enough for the small percentage of EVs we currently have, the range isn’t near good enough on all but the most expensive models and electricity prices are going through the roof too that’s on top of the price to get a faster charger installed at your home, if you have a garage (most don’t) and assuming it would get nicked in the night. 
 

I don’t get how cars can be that inefficient. Mines not great and it gets 55 highway around around 30-35 urban

I have no idea what the UK grid is like, as I don't live there. In regards to the awful inefficiency, I drive this: 

A 2005 F150 XL with a 4.2L V6. As of current, I average 13 city, and 15 highway after taking the sand bags out that I drive with in the winter (it is RWD, no traction control, and lots of snow). The clearer one, not the raining one, is it right now, I just took it. 2nd was when I blew a power steering line.

As to why it uses so much fuel? A) it's old B) It's nearly 6000 pounds, and was by no means designed for fuel efficiency, as gas was far less expensive (relative to income) than it is today. 

Not sure where you live, but where I'm at, it's somewhere around 19 cents per kWh. 

[Needfuldoer]

1 hour ago, Donut417 said:

They will have to find a way to bring more affordable EV's

 

This is why I've been beating the plug-in hybrid drum for years. Engines are cheaper to make than batteries, so why make a ton of batteries to haul around just in case you might maybe want to possibly go somewhere 52 miles away perhaps?

 

Give a plug-in hybrid enough electric range for an average commute, and a small engine with a big enough gas tank to equal typical ICE car range for the "but sometimes" use cases.

 

If a plug-in hybrid only has 1/3 as much battery capacity as a full EV, but that's still enough for most daily driving, that's potentially three times as many cars running on electricity most of the time (instead of one 100% of the time and two 0% of the time) with no more battery manufacturing capacity needed.

 

It's the best of both worlds, if you can get the word out. [Insert long-winded rant about GM's marketing incompetence here] 

 

2 hours ago, Donut417 said:

Plus its not clear how long EV's will be cheaper to operate. Because besides states charge additional registration fees, the utility is going to be looking to take their pound of flesh as well at some point in the future. 

 

I did the math a while ago, and it turns out running my Chevy Volt on public charger electricity at 20 cents per kilowatt-hour costs more or less the same per mile as if gas was $2.00/gal. (Figuring an average of around 120 MPGe and low 40s MPG, in US gallons. That's with just the propulsion power source changing, since it's the same exact car and driver on the same roads with the same habits.)

 

Or to put that figure another way, that's the same as filling up @Dillpickle23422's truck for 75 cents a gallon. Electric rates would have to triple before charging an EV costs the same as the average cost of gas over the last few years. This is unlikely to happen because it would require tripling all electric bills across the board (which would go over well) or installing separate meters for all EV chargers so they can be itemized and billed at a higher rate than stoves and refrigerators.

 

The electric utility gets theirs from EV owners because they're buying more electricity. The ones losing out are state highway departments, because the cars are driving on public roads with disproportionately low contributions to the highway fund because they don't pay gas tax. (Or in the case of plug-in hybrids, very little of it.)

 

2 hours ago, Donut417 said:

They will have to find a way to bring more affordable EV's, the current issue to is used EV's are a tough sell, because batteries have a limited life and to replace those probably will cost more than the car is worth.

That hasn't been as big an issue as you might expect. Actively cooled, overprovisioned LiFePO packs have proven to be durable. It's the early compliance cars and cars that didn't have thermal management on their battery packs (Spark EV, Focus Electric, first-gen Leaf, etc) that have had short lifespans. But even they're not as short-lived as the spicy pillow in a phone. In general, a battery should be good for the life of the car so long as it makes it into the main stage of the bathtub curve (just like any other part of the car).

[Donut417]

17 minutes ago, Needfuldoer said:

did the math a while ago, and it turns out running my Chevy Volt on public charger electricity at 20 cents per kilowatt-hour costs more or less the same per mile as if gas was $2.00/gal. (Figuring an average of around 120 MPGe and low 40s MPG, in US gallons. That's with just the propulsion power source changing, since it's the same exact car and driver on the same roads with the same habits.)

That math doesn't work when more people are taxing the grid. The other side of it, I have not seen even ONE charging station around where I live. Most people charge at home. ALSO charging isnt 100% of the cost. Gasoline and Diesel have taxes on them. Do you expect the government to give up on collecting those taxes? NOPE. It a chunk of change to pay yearly registration fees on EV's in Michigan. Furthermore with energy companies like DTE pushing smart meters and such, they can charge based on load very easily. My bother in law had his air conditioner in his last house on a separate meter so DTE could turn it off if the grid was strained. How long before you have to have a special meter on your charger? How long before the government adds usage taxes on that? Also who wants to sit and wait at a public charger? 

 

23 minutes ago, Needfuldoer said:

battery should be good for the life of the car so long

Who decides the life of the car? The company who made it? My dads car is 15 years old, is the battery going to last that long? With the cost of some of these EV's they need to fucking last. 

 

I for one wont be buying an EV any time soon. I personally think that the government needs to stop pushing them on to people. They put the cart before the horse. We don't have the infrastructure to handle the extra load. We dont have charging stations on every corner like we have gas stations. We don't have the materials in the US to build enough batteries. Further more we don't have the wages for people to afford this shit. Besides the car, you almost always need a level 2 charging station and not every one has the money to install one. Because 110v is not going to charge the car fast enough. 

 

27 minutes ago, Needfuldoer said:

Give a plug-in hybrid enough electric range for an average commute, and a small engine with a big enough gas tank to equal typical ICE car range for the "but sometimes" use cases.

Problem there is gas goes bad. So..... unless you use it regularly, it could go bad in the tank and thats probably not good for the engine to suck in bad gas. 

[8tg]

On 3/14/2022 at 4:45 PM, Donut417 said:

In city centers yes,  but in the suburbs not really. Busses could be a help. BUT that depends on if people choose to utilize them and if they are reliable. Actually a city recently in the Southeast Michigan area pulled out of the SMART bus program due to reliability issues with the service. Why pay for something that doesnt work? 

 

Trains cant be built. The issue here is all current rail is privately owned. Building new rail is not really possible. Check out California's attempt to build high speed rail. Literally only 1/3 of the project is going to be completed because over half the money was spent before constitution began. Much of that money going to legal challenges as people dont like when the government eminent domains their land. 

Basically this, people who live where these programs worked, don’t really see why it worked, and why it doesn’t work elsewhere. The biggest one being America, where these programs are repeatedly tried and they all fail, and it’s simply due to scale.

 

Such projects cost obscene amounts of money when you have to scale them up heavily and service less population. The reason the UK has relatively decent public transit is because the entire UK is about the size of Indiana + Illinois. However the UK in its entirety has 3.7 times more people than Indiana and Illinois combined. The places where that infrastructure makes sense already have it, cities like Chicago and Indianapolis have trains, busses, bike paths, whatever. But there is almost no inter city connections servicing smaller areas because there’s nobody there to use them.

The few places that have them basically just have train lines, like the southshore line which runs along Lake Michigan to get Indiana residents into and out of Chicago.

These two states have 2 major cities, and Indianapolis is fairly small for a major city, and maybe 4 total minor cities scattered about them. It’s all about population density.

 

Heres the most populated cities in the UK:

21 on that list, ending at 306k because I didn’t want to stitch together the whole list.

Here’s Illinois:

we go from 2.6 million to 199k people in the first two cities

indiana isn’t much better, Indianapolis has less than 1m people

 

To remind people, the entire UK is the same size as these two states alone, Indiana and Illinois.

 

Now scale up that type of problem to encompass the entire Midwest.

And then the entire southwest.

And then the whole US.

 

And then you see the issue, there’s not enough people to use public infrastructure that would cost exponentially more to develop because it needs to cover a drastically larger area. “Just make more trains lol” is not a solution. My nearest grocery store is a 30 minute drive from my house, there are no busses here, because everything is a 30 minute drive from my house and people would rather the convenience of their own car over waiting for public transit. The rest of life here requires a car, the incentive to use public transit is not a matter of necessity for the average American, but of having free time or wanting to save some money. Nobody needs to take a bus, train, ride a bike, walk, whatever, because they own a car and it’s just easier to drive anywhere.

 

I still have to drive this point home because every time people from outside the US bring these things up and forget entirely how big the us is. There are places in this country that look like this:

This is needles to Barstow, California. There is 180 miles of desert between these two points, 289 kilometers, under 100 people live here.

This is the distance approximately between London and Sheffield, except with an iota of the amount of people in that gap.

And these types of distances are common, especially out west, and there are even longer ones like that.

If we go by population alone there are some roads in the state of Kansas that go the entire width of the state and maybe service 1-2k addresses.

And smaller distances get more common, 60 mile gaps, 30 mile gaps, 15 mile gaps, about the point where riding your bike to go get groceries is just impractical because it’s an hour both ways at a decent speed, and you’d be one of a handful of people doing that so the towns never bothered building bike lanes.

[Imbadatnames]

7 hours ago, Dillpickle23422 said:

I have no idea what the UK grid is like, as I don't live there. In regards to the awful inefficiency, I drive this: 

A 2005 F150 XL with a 4.2L V6. As of current, I average 13 city, and 15 highway after taking the sand bags out that I drive with in the winter (it is RWD, no traction control, and lots of snow). The clearer one, not the raining one, is it right now, I just took it. 2nd was when I blew a power steering line.

As to why it uses so much fuel? A) it's old B) It's nearly 6000 pounds, and was by no means designed for fuel efficiency, as gas was far less expensive (relative to income) than it is today. 

Not sure where you live, but where I'm at, it's somewhere around 19 cents per kWh. 

Our version of that is the 3.2L ranger which does around 32MPG 

 

Its 28.5p per KWh here which works out to 35c

[dalekphalm]

19 hours ago, IPD said:

You cannot underestimate the effect effect that Cash-For-Clunkers had on the used vehicle market--and how it is still having an impact to this day.

As a Canadian... I didn't have to deal with that

 

While some people do import used cars from the US, I'd be shocked if it was a significant amount.

19 hours ago, Donut417 said:

Intel predicted the chip shortage until 2024. But auto companies use older designs, so its hard to say because I dont think anyone is building fabs for older designs or know if they can increase production some how. 

Indeed it's hard to say, that's why I ballparked at least a year for the shortage to loosen up.

19 hours ago, Donut417 said:

If they want people to to buy EV's they will have to.

Cheaper EV's is a much different question than Cheaper New Cars in general.

 

EV's themselves will drop in price over time, as the tech evolves and becomes cheaper. But more importantly, cheaper pricepoint models need to be created (eg: something even cheaper and more barebones than a Leaf).

19 hours ago, Donut417 said:

Most people are not going to pay $40k or more to buy a car.

True - but used EV's are a legitimate option, and ones with decent battery life can be had for a great discount compared to new. This will only get better as more and more new EV's are purchased.

19 hours ago, Donut417 said:

They will have to find a way to bring more affordable EV's, the current issue to is used EV's are a tough sell, because batteries have a limited life and to replace those probably will cost more than the car is worth.

All good points - but the limited battery life issues are often extremely overblown. There are Tesla's for example (not that I'm a huge fan of them in particular) with over half a million Miles on the ODO and they're still kicking. Rarely are people buying used ICE vehicles with that kind of mileage unless they're $500 clunkers.

19 hours ago, Donut417 said:

Plus its not clear how long EV's will be cheaper to operate. Because besides states charge additional registration fees, the utility is going to be looking to take their pound of flesh as well at some point in the future. 

It can still be cheaper in the long run, since it's just inherently a lot less expensive to operate a power plant and create electricity. Granted, this relies on competent power generation and competent electrical utilities - something that not every region has.

 

But in the long run, even if EV's end up being more expensive to run than gasoline - if that's the price we must pay to ensure we curb our massive amount of GHG pollution? So be it.

 

And the great thing is that even though EV sales are increasing every year, it's still a somewhat slow process, so there's plenty of time to fix infrastructure and prepare for EV's becoming the mainstream car type. Some places are already essentially ready to go. Large parts of Ontario could make the switch literally right now and not have any issues at all (Primarily due to heavy investment in the electrical grid after the 2003 North American blackout - we have excess generation capacity to spare. So much so that we literally sell some of our excess at a loss to New York State because it's a smaller loss than just doing nothing with it).