Who ever thought the US would be a place where the federal government would prevent you from buying the coolest cars and coolest drones? Lame.

Yeah, you're living in state capitalism in the USA these days.

I've read this happened because sometime in the 80s comrade Reagan decided to own the Japanese instead of letting competition do its work (for cars, but with electronics similar things followed). He's somehow often associated with liberal capitalism and so on, but the guy believed that "monopolies are efficient", but at the same time by some magic if a monopoly stops being efficient, then all the capital and technology base for competition to replace it will just materialize in one place in one moment all by themselves. So I'm not even sure if "comrade" is irony. The ironic part is that the US president whose term coincided with Soviet system conclusively losing the Cold War is also the one who supported state capitalism and ideologic pressure in society.

A lot of people don't realize that the big car thing is due to government regulation. X footprint vehicle must attain Y MPG lest fines or what have you, so manufacturers are legitimately being incentivized to make larger ballooned out vehicles because that puts them in a different bracket for mpg requirements that's easier to attain. This is why the new 3 series is bigger than the old 5 series, etc

My 1st EV paid its own note with the amount of gas I wasn't buying to run it.

Not even a service?

Even if the energy came from 100% black coal, EVs still have less emissions than ICE

And then the battery production/disposal of course…

I'd guess the entire environmental damage of petroleum exploration, extraction, refinement, distribution, and combustion is greater than the entire environmental damage from battery material exploration, extraction, refinement, manufacturing, and eventual battery disposal when talking about a single ICE car vs a single BEV.

All of the ICE vs BEV pollution metrics I have seen to-date include the environmental cost of the battery, but only include ICE tail pipe emissions and exclude the environmental cost of everything needed to bring petroleum to market.

They use electricity. And my average monthly power bill is already over $400 a month. You think I want that to be even higher?

Some of your concerns may be valid, but I pay relatively high prices for electricity, 35¢/kWH, and even at that price, the hit to my electric bill is half what I used to spend on gasoline. Current gas price make that even better

Yeah, your electric bill would be higher but the increase in electricity you'd pay will be less than what you currently pay for gas, saving money overall. Only issue is the up front cost to buy one in the first place. And all the spying shit recent cars come with.

Most people can't repair a car themselves, especially true if it's something more complicated than brake pads and rotors. If you adjust your numbers to reflect what it would have cost if you had to pay someone for repairs I'm guessing it might seem a little crazy to invest that much in such an old car. If one were in a wreck and the car was totalled, insurance pay out wouldn't get close to the amount invested.

Me... I'm still driving a 20 yr old car. Low mileage since I've worked from home most the time I've owned it, but it's definitely showing its age. I can afford a new one but why would I want to right now? It still runs well and I have no desire to drop $50k on something to replace it. Happy now to keep my money saved.

No. They use electricity. And my average monthly power bill is already over $400 a month. You think I want that to be even higher? No way.

Fueling costs per mile (using the term "fuel" rather loosely for EVs) are significantly lower for electric vehicles than combustion, even taking into account plugging the thing in at home with an extension cord. It's going to be a rather long break even period when comparing to a salvage title clunker, but for someone shopping for a new car to begin with it makes sense.

It's not costing anyone "less" to be paying at the pump. It's just an easily forgotten regular expense that everyone is used to. Meanwhile, people have been conditioned to have a cow over seeing any increased number on their electricity bill even if it's only a couple of bucks. Right now with local gasoline prices it costs something like $60 to fill up my Subaru from empty and nearly $150 for my truck (it has a 35 gallon tank!) and the former I could easily do twice a month if I weren't riding so many motorcycles this time of year instead. In the Scoob, that's around 784 miles of driving for $120 in fuel. That's only be $47.04 if I had a reasonably recent EV and charged it at home.

I went through the same rigmarole replacing my house's oil heat with mini splits. Yes, my electricity bill went up... On average something like $40 a month. Meanwhile I stopped paying $300 to $400 a month to my former oil company for five or six months out of the year. $2000 - $480 = a $1520 or so net yearly savings I proceeded to blow on camera lenses and more motorcycle parts.

Honestly we aren't that far off from that. We don't have many 15 year old EVs but you can get a 8 year old used EV for 8K. I think you got incredibly lucky to get a 15 year old car that doesn't need it's transmission or engine or some other significant part replaced. Like others said you doing it yourself is what made your repairs much cheaper and to be honest you would be able to do the same thing on EVs for everything other than the battery and motors but depending on the brand you could fix broken batteries as well.

Lol if you're in North America look for an older ev with 3g. The network is shut down so there's no way it can communicate as long as you don't give it your Wi-Fi password.

Unless you plan on driving antique cars or living a short time, you are going to need to figure out how to rip out a cellular modem at some point to achieve that. There's no difference between EVs and modern ICE cars on the surveillance tech.

You can probably pull out the sim card that calls home. Plenty of guides out there too

Trucks are still tricky, but new EVs cars are about the same cost as new ICE cars. Used EVs are basically entirely reasonable and in some cases cheaper than used ICE.

Nothing new is going to beat a paid off car for affordability, but that's a pretty apple to oranges comparison no matter how you slice it.

You have higher taxes for electric cars? It's the other way around here.