Consumers are notably horrible, and for good reason (neuropsych/behavioral economics has studied this in depth), at making rational total cost of ownership calculations.

You can argue all you want that it SHOULD be enough to share lifetime costs, but it doesn’t work. Just look at people who still buy incandescent light bulbs because they are cheaper at the cash register, even though they will save a multiple of the cost of the bulb over its lifetime.

Consumers in the US seem to be swayed by monthly costs rather than total cost. You can get them to buy expensive things if they are financed and the monthly cost sounds reasonable. I wonder if you could say - well the house is $3000 more, but the monthly savings are XXX which is like getting your iPhone for free. It might work at the time of sale, but will be forgotten later when they have to actually pay their phone bill.

What do you mean exactly by "financed" in this statement? It feels like you're using it in a technical way, such as thinking of the purchase as having its cost spread over multiple time periods.

Financed means bought by the means of credit.

Over on today's $35k Tesla Model 3 announcement thread, there's a whole bunch of "Dark Pattern!!!" pitchforks being jostled about because Tesla threw fuel savings into their "effective cost" price tag (the MSRP is still $35k, but the subsidies and fuel savings bring the "effective cost" down to the mid/upper-20's).

We as consumers seem to ignore or discount future pain for lower prices now, which is why operating costs are ignored by average consumer if they mean higher upfront costs. And when marketers try to bring future savings into the present and get you thinking in terms of total cost of ownership, even the rational-types at HN cry "dark pattern!"

All of this is to say we haven't yet found how to make "it's cheaper to live in" an effective message.

Solar folks are getting there, though ("the system pays for itself in 5-7 years"), and with the rise of EV's, I think this reasoning will become more common.

I read through most of those earlier, and I'm not sure that you're being charitable in your interpretation of the conversation.

The "dark pattern" complaint is that actual realized savings (tax credits) are mixed with hypothetical savings (future cost of gasoline) and taken off of the sales price. Meanwhile, things like delivery fees, sales taxes and maintenance cost differences are not added back in.

It's one part standard marketing, one part underhanded marketing imho.

> And when marketers try to bring future savings into the present and get you thinking in terms of total cost of ownership,

That's because it is fundamentally inaccurate, and therefor counter-productive. I'm all for demonstrating TCO differences, but when you show a "price" of $26k and the actual price is over $40k with taxes and everything added back in, suddenly you get struck with a bit of cognative dissonance.