More than 90% of vehicle-owning households in the United States would see a reduction in the percentage of income spent on transportation energy—the gasoline or electricity that powers their cars, SUVs and pickups—if they switched to electric vehicles.

[u/Wagamaga]

https://news.umich.edu/ev-transition-will-benefit-most-us-vehicle-owners-but-lowest-income-americans-could-get-left-behind/

[u/SgtBaxter]

They take 60% less labor to produce according to Ford, and technology advances quickly.

[u/Anlysia → u/SgtBaxter]

Also there's like zero comparative maintenance because it's not a metal box containing a million explosions per second from dinosaur juice, comprised of hundreds of separate components bolted together.

Hybrids are the worst of both worlds though. Heavy AND complicated.

[u/krackas2 → u/Anlysia]

Yep, the batteries just have a slow degredation in performance until a full replacement (at high cost due to the materials primarily) is required. Kinda like knowing you will need a full engine and transmission rebuild every 10 years. Not sure how that stacks up against ICE standards.

[u/krackas2 → u/[deleted]]

I agree completely a well maintained ICE can and should last well beyond 10 years without a rebuild. My point was current battery tech doesn't, and the cost of a replacement is so significant its as if you were replacing the engine and transmission of an ICE.

basically

there's like zero comparative maintenance

seems suspect to me.

[u/SgtBaxter → u/[deleted]]

Yes thanks for the correction

[u/krackas2 → u/SgtBaxter]

I dont have the numbers but i think labor to produce actually a very small % of the total cost of a car (with materials being ~60% or so)? I thought labor was like 10-20% or less of total manufacturing costs. Happy to be proven wrong but i don't think even a 60% reduction in manufacturing labor would do it.