Technology

A large portion of depreciation and insurance is fixed, not based on actually driving. And maintenance is lower with EVs as well.

Still though, you are right, 1/9 is specific to fuel, and it's deceiving. If it.were truly 1/9 we wouldn't be having this conversation because all vehicles would be EVs.

What's there to maintain? Even the brakes barely get used.

depreciation per mile is usually a bigger cost than fuel.

OK, this might be something that a fleet manager would care about, but the average driver wouldn't consider in a hundred years. You don't have to swipe your card and pay for depreciation every four days. Not to mention that depreciation has no bearing on vehicle type and little connection to physical reality at all.

And if anything, EVs maintenance is lower than expectations. There is no robust recycling of EV batteries for instance because it turns out that the batteries last reliably for 30 years and most of the ones produced are still in service. Also EVs are by nature simpler, with many components being solid state. ICE are rube goldberg masterpieces, the result of decades of continuous development.

Depreciation is irrelevant and only brought up by combustion promoters. A car is a tool, not an investment in itself. The only relevant metric is overall yearly cost until the car dies.

Changing cars every few years, which is where depreciation matters, is an expensive luxury no one actually has to play.

It says "cheaper to drive" not "cheaper to own."

Regardless, taxes and insurance are roughly the same. Maintenance on an EV is FAR less than an ICE car (no oil changes, fewer brake changes, fewer moving parts to replace over time). So if "fuel" is 1/9, and maintenance is just replacing the tires and putting in new wiper fluid, then driving is going to be much cheaper.

"to drive"

It's literally correct.

It's not 1/9th to own or registre. But it certinly is cheaper in reperations and service.

Trump's stock trades included a LOT of oil company stock the past few months. He's been raking in billions from this.

EVs cost about the same as petrol cars these days. The two cheapest cars on sale in the UK are actually EVs. Not good EVs, but still capable of being city runabouts.

Damn if that's the case, solar installations there should pay itself a lot faster huh?

And heavily subsidised petrol and diesel

Tbf our electricity is expensive enough to scare away industry from the uk. And yet this fact appears true because diesel has shat its pants.

I wouldn't really blame the PCP. It's not as predatory as it sounds at first, especially considering it uses the wording "balloon payment" for one of the options at the end of the term. The horrible value you'd get on a PCP is nearly the same as the depreciation plus interest you'd have on a normal car loan over the same ownership period if you were to sell. Meanwhile traditional leases are far less flexible, often not even offering a buyout option, let alone one at a price guaranteed by contract.

The bad value is in wanting to drive a new vehicle. There's practically no upside to buying new over used, even if it's only 30k miles or so on it.

For EV's specifically people also drastically underestimate the battery lifespan based on early gen Nissan Leaf's and similar early vehicles lacking a true battery thermal management system. There are excellent deals to be had for 3-4yr old EVs.