You’re right. You should be upvoted, not downvoted. And then there is the cost of accidents. I’ve had two people hit me (their fault in both cases) and both clearly expressed to me their intention to lie about the details of accident to avoid responsibility. They then followed through and lied to the insurance company, just as they said they would.

You might think I must live in a sketchy area to encounter such people. Well no. One was a specialist doctor at Stanford hospital and the other worked at Apple. But they both lied. My car defended me from severe financial costs these people could have inflicted on me. Thousands of dollars if you add up the two cases. And that’s in just a couple years of ownership. Both were caught on video and were held responsible despite their lies.

Of course it might seem that having cameras has nothing to do with being an EV. But some EVs do have a lot of cameras, and that’s part of the cost people complain about, but it’s also part of how the car has much lower total cost of ownership. It should be factored in when making cost comparisons, just like the lower maintenance costs you point out.

The way it does have to do with the car being an EV is that these cameras are backed by a massive battery, so they can be always on. ICE cars can’t come even close to doing that.

> You might think I must live in a sketchy area to encounter such people. Well no. One was a specialist doctor at Stanford hospital and the other worked at Apple. But they both lied

You must have been upper middle class for either too long or not long enough to not thing upper middle class folks can be sketchy as hell :-).

> Of course it might seem that having cameras has nothing to do with being an EV. But some EVs do have a lot of cameras, and that’s part of the cost people complain about, but it’s also part of how the car has much lower total cost of ownership. It should be factored in when making cost comparisons, just like the lower maintenance costs you point out.

Yeah, you can have a dashcam in any car ?

Was about to say the same. In my experience these privileged people are the most likely to pull this kind of tricks.

Maybe because they have been so privileged throughout their life that they feel entitled to not taking responsibility

Please, people are people. The "privileged people are the problem in this world" rhetoric is getting old.

Sorry to bore you. Its just, you know, we're living in the middle of history's largest income inequality[1]. Yes it is a problem for civil society and the rule of law when money and power get to elude justice and equal rights. People who unfairly abuse privilege are problematic, they are not 'the problem'. Not being held accountable is a privilege, and it is leads to highly anti-social behavior. It means laws exist only for lower classes. It means laws don't really exist, only power. Carry on, my beleaguered friend.

[1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/aracheology-wealth-in...

I don't necessarily disagree with any of this. But it is besides the point. OP was making generalizations regarding people of "privilege." I respectfully disagree. I feel that you find dishonest people in all walks of life. More importantly, I think this type of prejudice and "demonizing the other" is quite damaging to our society. "Privileged" is such a vague, subjective basket to throw people in. Who's privileged? Anybody who has something (physical or abstract) you don't? Let's attack ideas not people.

There is actually some interesting research on this.

Paul Piff had some findings that rich people are more likely to break rules to get ahead for example (he has a nice Ted talk btw). However, more recent research found that this is largely/likely due to wealth but being "primed" to think about money, i.e. if you think about money your less likely to help other etc..

Here's a BBC article that summarises the research quite well https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31761576

I definitely concur there is a broad distribution of dishonest behavior and it can't be monopolized by a certain caste.

The practical issue I'm concerned with is around the ability of a minority of people to afford 6-8 figure legal and PR bills and avoid accountability for all manner of issues. When you can tie up courts for years to play financial triage and get the best reputation money can buy, you aren't likely to be held accountable.

I know a person who drove their car into a wall while drunk and high in college. Their parents paid $5000 to an attorney and their DUI charge was eventually dropped. Another friend's life took a different course when they got their DUI under similar circumstances but without an attorney, and despite their earnest efforts it's been hard to overcome within the job market.

I'm arguing that the defacto disparity of legal budgets is quite damaging to the fabric that holds our society together, which is equal treatment under blind justice. It means an equal distribution of dishonesty is punished disproportionately according to familial wealth.

I think you'll find this definition of privilege quite in line with OP's meaning: https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Priviledge >A particular benefit, advantage, or Immunity enjoyed by a person or class of people that is not shared with others. A power of exemption against or beyond the law. It is not a right but, rather, exempts one from the performance of a duty, obligation, or liability.

I encourage people to read "The Life of Greece" by Will Durant. It resonates with our times.

They also had wealth inequality. Sometimes, it resulted in the poor and wealthy fighting. This fighting was often very brutal with each side putting the other to death. Once in awhile, an enlightened leader would come who would put into place a system for greater prosperity for all.

The suggestion that modern society has greater inequality than we had under feudalism is certainly the most laughably ridiculous thing I’ve heard today.

First, let me say I do think I interpreted that article's data incorrectly as the US at .81 Gini coeficient, when in reality its probably closer to ~.45. Medieval Europe was closer to 40, but definitely not the magnitude I took from my initial source.

There are several ways to look at inequality. The most simplistic way to so do is looking at relative wealthy by decile and comparing the ratio between the top and bottom. In feudal society, everybody was relatively poor, and the wealth gap may be on the order of 10-100X. In modern times, that ratio may be far larger and under a certain definition that would be mean higher inequality. I'll concede that this approach fails to capture the practical experience of the haves and have-nots over time, and having our's hit all-time highs isn't immoral if there is some baseline of sufficiency at the bottom. It also doesn't account for social mobility, which we exceptional at.

Still, we live in a novel time where orders of magnitude of wealth that haven't existed before. It is hard to fathom, and calls into question what is and isn't a de-facto privilege of enjoying.

I found this article which offers some more nuanced approaches to measuring inequality in different societies than Gini. https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/5388/1/MPRA_paper_5388.pdf

Not commenting on the rest, just wanted to say something about you claim that "our" (I assume you mean US) mobilty is exceptional. That is an often repeated myth, and in fact part of the US "folklore" ("rags to riches").

However this is not based on reality, the US ranks behind most European countries and canada on social mobility: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-the-social-mobility-...

Interesting, thanks for sharing. You're right about the folklore, and while there are some strong outliers that have done quite well in the US, but those would be hard to attribute to anything special about US education and support systems.

Although the ranking is named "social mobility" it isn't clear that that is what is measured; the report seems slightly confused.

The visual capitalist provides a definition of social mobility - children having a better life than their parents or being unconstrained by their socio-economic status. But the index they reference doesn't measure that. It measures more general Quality of Life metrics like prevalence of malnourishment or quality of the social safety net.

So while a high score reflects an easier life for the low end of the social ladder it doesn't actually measure their ability to move up it. I could on paper come up with a country that scored quite well on most of the index measures and had a rigid caste system where children could never outperform their parents and cannot escape their birth status.

at least in feudal times the peasants knew they didnt have a say in the matter

Our society should stop feeding children lies about systemic inclusivity.

Your additional suggestion that corruption in modern democracies is somehow comparable to the representation afforded to feudal peasants is only very slightly less laughably ridiculous than the parent comment about economic inequality.

I didn’t say anything about corruption, didn’t imply anything about corruption, and I am now clarifying that I am not referring to anything about corruption.

Children are fed lies about their role in this society and spend a lifetime acting surprised that their ideas never happen. We could also just stop doing that. Its not corrupt that we don't have a direct democracy, we just dont have a direct democracy. And the system we do have has different rules, which simply don't include the capability of “the proletariat” to have the same effect as immortal organizations with enough resources to maintain focus.

I didn’t say that. I was simply pointing out an exception: Poor people doesn’t know how to game the system and always follow the rule; while privileged do the opposite.

Even if rich people only abuse their power at the same frequency as poor people, the fact is that rich people have more power to abuse.

Studies show the rich are more like to be dishonest - it’s literally been studied and proven lol

It would be more convincing if you cited some of those studies

There is a lot of research from Paul Piff that you can Google. However, more recent research is a bit more nuanced and found that it has likely to do with a focus on money, a bit further up the thread I linked to a BBC article which gives a good overview.

I think psychopaths and sociopaths are pretty evenly distributed across the economic and career choice spectrums.

I know very little on the subject, but Kevin Dutton seems to think psychopathy helps one succeed in certain fields and thus these fields have a higher proportion

I think his 1 in 4 count is pretty accurate across the board.

I was under the impression that they’re more common in powerful positions.

What you think and what is are two totally different things lol

> Yeah, you can have a dashcam in any car ?

How about eight cameras covering pretty much all angles, that are always on, even when parked?

You can have a dash cam in any car, but having several cameras around the car recording is more rare. (And very helpful in case of an accident)

Having the cameras active even when the car is parked and you are not anywhere near the car is even more unusual. But super valuable in my opinion.

This will be standard soon, and is one of many reasons we will always be filmed by several cameras when in public in the future.

Likely doing this will become illegal in the future, given it's fairly creepy.

Is it creepy that my eyes are almost always open when I'm in public?

Not unless you've 8 of them all across the whole world's cities streets. And an eidetic nemory. Now, that's creepy.

But seriously, a street recording is not forbidden in many countries, right?

From a non-american point of view, I don't understand how a racist comment like this can be tolerated. Generalization like this is one of the reason why your country is so divided lately.

I never mentioned race. It didn’t enter the picture here [Edit: as far as I can tell but... the stuff can be subtle]. fwiw the doctor wasn’t white. Entitled, definitely. I do understand your point and would agree that white privilege is a thing.

What's "white privilege"? A secret spell that a white dude from a trailer park can pronounce to summon wealth?

> What's "white privilege"? A secret spell that a white dude from a trailer park can pronounce to summon wealth?

Unfortunately, it doesn't confer any mana. However, the white dude's stats for "culture fit" during interviews get buffed (+2 Luck), medical staff tend to believe him when he says he's in pain (+1 Health), and if he's ever in front of a judge, he gets a lighter sentence than those with darker complexions (+2 Charisma).

For me, being white in a mostly black HS but mostly white teachers & principle, "white privilege" ended up meaning I could skip out of study period to get a sandwich at a deli next to the school and come back and eat it, and the teacher would just smile and give a little laugh. Black kids got detentions for shouting in the hallway and all kinds of minor things that I also did, and never got detention for.

I'm an upper middle class white guy. I have no "privilege's" except being blamed for stuff by my skin color by those who claim to be fighting racism.

I have what's called "results" of hard work, good decisions and a healthy dose of luck to go from the poor kid of a single mother on government cheese and living on family couches to making a good salary at a good job. I earned my place - I wasn't "privileged" into it.

The only REAL privilege I have is being an American - and that's color blind. The top 1% globally make 30k/year and that's the vast majority of Americans. And I'm not ashamed of that... I'm proud of it - as I should be.

Any attempts to place race as a factor is done by what we love to call... racists.

I don’t like the term myself, but I think it is fair to acknowledge that plenty of people are disadvantaged due to their skin color, race, religion etc.

For instance I know I have more opportunities because I am white, belonging to western culture and culturally Christian (I am an atheist by celebrate Christmas and all that), than I would have had if I was black or muslim while living in the West.

But this is not uniform. My opportunities if I looked Asian would likely be very similar to looking white.

It isn’t a mystery that a culture favors people looking like themselves. Had I grown up in Japan I am sure I would have been at a disadvantage for not looking Japanese.

Disadvantage is due to far more than skin color, race, religion, etc... I think there are wide swaths of 'white' America that are disadvantaged as well.

Born into poverty is also a disadvantage. Having a handicap is a disadvantage. And I recognize that otherwise I would not be a social democrat.

And that is why I advocate social democratic policies such as reducing inequality. Giving everybody equal access to health care, education etc.

But the point is we should recognize the disadvantage somebody faces and seek to help rather than belittle it by saying “other people have problems too”

Stop the white adjacent bullshit. There is a substantial Asian underclass. Your opportunities if you looked Asian would only be very similar to whites if you were upper middle class Asian.

The difference is that some of those lower and lower middle class Asians who make it go up through the educational system (work hard and study culture).

That is why so many Asians defend magnet schools. How do you think many of them rose up from poverty?

The lower and lower middle class Asians don’t initially have the same networking opportunities or social access that whites do.

Also whites from disadvantaged backgrounds often face different difficulties.

Here is my vantage point of how the game is played. I went to a magnet high school.

The rich kids, irrespective of race, mostly didn’t have better grades. What they had was richer backgrounds and more opportunities (parents able and willing to pay for liberal arts colleges, willing and able to pay for them to go to medical or law school or pursue a PhD, willing and able to sacrifice the years to do so). There were some exceptions but it typically required whole family sacrifice and of course there was a gradient.

The poor kids didn’t have the knowledge or long term thinking. Decisions of what school to go to was based mostly on what was affordable. Decisions of what to do were limited to what major to take.

After school, the rich kids and to a lesser extent the middle class white kids have access to much stronger networks. These networks are the real difference maker. It lets you in on opportunities: jobs at hot startups, easier access to jobs, information on investment opportunities, getting promoted, etc...

It is these opportunities that have a huge multiplier effect.

If you are rich, you play the system. If you are poor, the system plays you. If you are white in the US, it’s easier for you to fit in but you can also fit in (speak right, dress right, think right) if you come from the same background/mindset.

One last thing, do you think that the rich and poor kids hung out together in high school?

I think this is quite a common reaction for someone white coming from low socioeconomic backgrounds and making it to a good wealth. This is quite an achievement, more than 40% of children born in the lowest wealth quartile stay there.

I believe it stems from the feeling that the talk of white privilege is taking something away from this achievement, so there is a counter reaction.

To that I say that yes breaking the circle of poverty is a great achievement, but acknowledging that others have factors that make it even more difficult does not take away from this achievement.

It's sad that you have a blind spot as to the benefits that have been afforded to you by society that others do not have. And, of course, since you cannot experience what life is like on the other side, you will continue to have this blind spot and deny that you have it.

I think one negative is that most of the debates about privilege are almost uniformly centered around gender and race. I.e., the features we can easily and quickly distinguish. (Ironically, the same reason why discrimination on those grounds is so pervasive).

I can’t look at you and tell if you grew up the child of a surgeon or a cashier. Or in a loving home or abusive one. With a trust fund or encumbered with debt. But I can make a fairly accurate guess at your gender or race.

What I think isn’t always articulated well is that people don’t feel like the totality of privilege and hurdles are taken into account in these discussions. We over simply our mental models and discussions to race and gender as if that was the totality of our life story and people naturally push back on this. (Not saying you are doing this) It doesn’t mean privilege doesn’t exist, just that it’s rarely as simple a picture as one tends to find in public dialogue and that’s why it makes some bristle

People focus on the white privileged males.... ignoring that the U.S. is full of uneducated, broke, white males with little going for them. The country is like 70% white... so of course on a numerical basis you're going to come across more well to do whites than other races.

But as a white male - the U.S. did repress the Japanese, American Indian, Muslim, Black, Jewish, Hispanic etc in large swaths, and numerous other minority races in localized areas.

and, around the world, those groups repress others. It's almost as if it's a human condition not limited to "white".

As a white male, I live in a country where I'm surrounded by successful people of all stripes - color, race, ethnicity, sexuality, etc, etc, etc.

Do we have a perfect history as a country? no... but we also provide opportunity to all - and we have POC in EVERY level of society. From cops to Presidents.

Absolutely - fully agree.

TIL that electing Barack Obama ended racism in America

TIL that I said something I never said...

(Hint: I never said Obama ended racism... in fact, I wouldn't say that because his policies and his party have made racism WORSE with their identity politics and making everything about race.)

Which Obama policies made everything about race? I totally missed that when he was president.

Undoing the damage done by the war on drugs and reevaluating the prison system would go a long way to equalize the playing field, if we really must get side-tracked by racially charged arguments.

The real problem with America is poverty. We need to help all impoverished people. All of them.

It's sad that race is being blamed by those claiming to be against racism.

My benefits, as said before, are being American - and I embrace those benefits. Nothing to be ashamed of.

"life on the other side" I refuse to treat others as less because of their skin color. You might be racist but I'm not. I'm surrounded by successful people of all color (and sexs, religions, lifestyles, etc) who don't cry victimhood.

You will continue to be either a victim or treating "POC" as victims who aren't smart enough or good enough - IE treating people different based on their skin color. (IE: Liberals talk down to POC because they look down on them. You might want to check YOUR "priviledge" and how you treat others - https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/11/30/white-liber...)

I refuse to treat minorities as if they aren't good enough... society shows that is a lie and, as I was raised, treating people differently based on skin color is racism.

You may be okay being a racist... I refuse to be one.

Completely agree. Most racism in the USA can be explained by poverty—of which "POC" are disproportionately represented. America's systemic racism is better described as systemic poverty combined abuse of the poor.

Yes, but the problems are interwoven. Poverty amplifies the problem of racism. But racism is what caused that poverty in the first place.

Now I do believe that more social democratic policies would benefit African-Americans a lot. But it would not completely eradicate the problems of racism and they would still be worse off than white.

The problem with only tackling racism and not inequality and poverty is that, even if you removed racism completely, African-Americans would still be stuck with being poor, simply for historical reasons.

Just like poor white people are likely to have kids which are poor.

> Poverty amplifies the problem of racism. But racism is what caused that poverty in the first place.

I partly agree, but I’d argue that it’s less complicated. I would rephrase thusly: Poverty IS the problem. And historical racism is the cause of a lot of that poverty.

> even if you removed racism completely, African-Americans would still be stuck with being poor, simply for historical reasons.

I agree in principle. The question is how you solve for systemic poverty. I think the first, most obvious step is to enact a very steep inheritance tax. That would be the most effective way to dampen generational capital inequality.

The second thing you could do is a generous UBI because that would dramatically benefit the systemically poor. The most effective way to lower income inequality is to raise the floor.

>Most racism in the USA can be explained by poverty—of which "POC" are disproportionately represented

And why do you think that is the case?

Historical racism, especially slavery.

Slavery ended 160 years ago. Other countries that practiced slavery don’t have as bad of problems as the US does now in terms of racial inequality.

You say historical racism, but what makes you think that it is only historical?

Did I say that slavery was the only reason? No.

Did I say racism is only historical? No.

Having words put in one's mouth makes conversation deeply uninteresting. Thus I shall end my contributions here.

If one group of people are at a disadvantage due to racism and discrimination, then how do you suggest one compensates for that?

Do you shrug and go "though luck! It is what it is," or do you use legislation to try to compensate and level the playing-field?

And to play the devils advocate. Say I was a racist and I was very okay with it along with 150 million other Americans. And together we make life miserable for POC. How do you suggest dealing with us?

What is your policy? What are your action points?

What's your suggestion? Reparations? Who gets them? People who were never slaves? Do descendants of union members - white people who freed the slaves - get credit and exemption from paying for it? And where you going to get the money? Taxes that hit the poor the hardest?

My action points? Stop treating minorities as victims and idiots unable to take care of themselves. Its called being a decent human being. Everyone - minorities included - already have opportunities for college and starting businesses and all that. It's called American Privilege's.

I thought I'd seen it all. Advocating for racial equity is now considered racist. You heard it here first, folks.

You must mean the privilege of being beaten by my father from the age of three after he came back from Vietnam. Or, the emotional abuse my mother handed out because she got pregnant in high school and blamed me for ruining her future? Or, could it be the privilege of being thrown out of the house after high school with the clothes on my back and $300 in my wallet. Maybe it was being taken advantage of the landlord that took my money for a room in his house, only to slip into the room at night to molest me, then throw me out after brushing off his advances. It must be all that privilege of being homeless, bathing out of a toilet bowl in a public bathroom.

But of course, I am a white male, so all misfortune in my life must be my own damn fault.

Your experience does not invalidate systemic racism.

Racism is discrimination of a different race based on the belief that your own race is superior. Systemic racism doesn't exist in the United States. There are racists in the United States, but that doesn't mean institutions are inherently racist. Also, racial stereotyping isn't necessarily based on racism and not all bigots are racists. You can make an argument for systemic discrimination, but not on racial superiority.

You are right, but many feel that casting all into overly broad categories of privilege does invalidate their personal experience whether that was the intended aim or not

made up words like "systemic racism" doesn't make those terms real.

Nor does a party voting for Biden and Harris - creators of "systemically racist" laws and corrupt DAs that used those laws to jail innocent black men - have any moral position to talk about such made up words and expect to be taken seriously.

Granting that this privilege exists, why is that seen as something to be taken away, rather than expanded and guaranteed to everyone?

Those are just two ways to describe the same thing. It is impossible to grant equal privilege to everyone else without dismantling the systems of white privilege which are designed to prevent that from happening, and doing so would by definition remove privilege from white people.

You can dismantle privilege by tearing down existing systems or by building greater inclusivity into them. "Dismantling the systems of white privilege" is too vague to disambiguate this semantic dispute.

By analogy, you can force male-only clubs to close and you can force male-only clubs to be inviting to women. Either action would dismantle the systems of male privilege.

Ironically we've already been doing this for so long that at this point there are way more female only clubs/universities/organizations than there are male only.

Even Boy Scouts is now just Scouts and accepts everyone, but Girl Scouts is still girls only.

Indeed, though in some instances that’s as it should be. There are objectively rational reasons why women should have optional access to male-free spaces. There no objectively rational reasons for the converse.

(That said, I’m all for making all such restricted spaces as rare as possible. Any structural division, no matter how well intended, has a cost to society.)

I’d be interested in hearing more elaboration on the points about the double standard, particularly in the context of a society that values individual rights

It stems from the idea that women are weak and need protecting.

Some feminists call this idea "benevolent sexism", and oppose it on the basis that it supports the patriarchy™

Other feminists call this idea "affirmative action" and support it on the basis that it opposes the patriarchy™

Men are, as a statistical average, physically stronger. Men are statistically far more likely to rape a woman than the other way around. Setting aside any legal/criminal consequences, rape has substantially higher risk of long term, life altering consequences for the woman than for the man.

Now of course the better solution for this disparity would be to empower women with physical defence skills, e.g. Brazilian jiu-jitsu. And to somehow exorcise the male erotic fantasy out of mainstream female fashion/culture. But as desirable as those solutions are, we can't rely upon top-down social engineering being effective.

It's also important to point out that men being (on average) physically stronger doesn't equate to women being "weak". And having objectively more at risk does not make one "need protecting" in any special way. Such twisting of language is political gamesplaying—and not healthy discourse.

Since you seem to like statically facts, here is one. Here in Sweden, being Muslim and an immigrant is a higher statistical risk of becoming a rapist than being male. To put it in mathematical terms, the portion of all Muslim immigrants that was found guilty of rape was higher than the portion of all males for the same period.

The question that statistician and researchers have been asking if such statistics is at all meaningful in order to reduce crime.

>It's also important to point out that men being (on average) physically stronger doesn't equate to women being "weak".

I’m not necessarily disagreeing with your overall point, but when you say “weak” are you still speaking in the physical sense? If so I can’t follow the above statement. Weak/strong are relative terms. If you’re willing to say one is statistically stronger than the other, you are implying the other is statistically weaker. To not seems to be the type of wordsmithing used to avoid precise use of language. The reason I specifically put the “individual rights” piece in my previous comment was because I was hoping there was a basis outside the aggregate “average” argument that seems oblivious to individual rights.

I think the BJJ argument can actually be dangerous. Yes, it’s good for anyone to know self defense. But the vast majority of women won’t become skillful enough to overcome the (statistical) innate size/strength disadvantage, particularly any man with training. They can if dedicated enough, but if they don’t it can lead to false confidence.

I think the real issue with the argument is that it only plays well because it’s using terms that are currently socially en vogue. Consider how it would come across instead of saying “men are statistically more likely to rape” you instead advocated for a double standard based on “people of X race are more likely to commit Y crime”. It can be statistically correct and still morally wrong to advocate for such policy because it lacks a nuanced view of the problem.

> I’m not necessarily disagreeing with your overall point, but when you say “weak” are you still speaking in the physical sense?

Obviously I was not—otherwise I would have been entertaining a direct logical contradiction.

I am speaking in the terms offered by the user klipt earlier in this conversation tree. This is how dangerous rhetoric is formed. To call someone "weak", no matter how much you qualify its meaning, inevitably leads to many other subjective connotations that I do not agree with.

> To not seems to be the type of wordsmithing used to avoid precise use of language.

On the contrary, it's the type of wordsmithing used to avoid intentional misapplication of language.

> I think the BJJ argument can actually be dangerous. Yes, it’s good for anyone to know self defense. But the vast majority of women won’t become skillful enough to overcome the (statistical) innate size/strength disadvantage, particularly any man with training. They can if dedicated enough, but if they don’t it can lead to false confidence.

I think it's borderline offensive to assume that the "vast majority of women" won't become "skillful enough".

I think it's borderline offensive to suggest that building up confidence is a dangerous idea. Even "false confidence" can increase one's actual physical power. And to say that a policy is dangerous because it won't be effective in all encounters is ridiculous.

It seems you misunderstand the purpose of having broad BJJ training. It's not just about increasing skill. It's not just about increasing confidence (which for many women might be itself sufficient to stop an attack). Rather it's about the culture that would arise among MEN in response to a society where women have more confidence—whether objectively justified or not.

> you instead advocated for a double standard...

I did no such thing and I consider it highly offensive for you to imply that I did.

>I think it's borderline offensive to assume that the "vast majority of women" won't become "skillful enough"

I think there’s some miscommunication here. The qualifier is that most wouldn’t become skilled enough to overcome the strength disadvantage. To be fair, the same would apply to men with the same strength disadvantage although that would be less likely due to the lower likelihood for the same strength disparity. Most people won’t spend enough time developing that skill. If I had to speak in broad terms, it would probably take a purple belt (maybe a strong blue belt) to overcome a large strength disadvantage with even a moderate amount of athletic ability. Most people won’t put in that time, irrespective of gender. If you disagree, join an mma/boxing gym (that actually spars) and see what percentage of people stick with it for 4-5 years. I would venture a guess that most people who flippantly advocate BJJ as a solution probably haven’t been in a real physical altercation and don’t know how it would go down. And no, sparring/rolling in the gym doesn’t generally equate to this type of altercation. I never claimed its not effective because it can’t handle every situation (because nothing can). BJJ is not worthless, it’s just pragmatically a low percentage solution.

I’m not quite sure why you’re taking so much as borderline/highly offensive but it rarely leads to providing clarity in discourse. Again, there is real danger with instilling false confidence (I.e. when confidence outstrips one’s abilities) whether you are offended or not. I’m not interested in placating someone at the expense of putting them at higher risk.

Your opinion makes a lot of sense now that you've analogised rape situations to a lucid, rules-based sparring competition. If I were to grant that rather weird analogy as valid, you would be completely right and I would most certainly be wrong.

Again, you have the wrong takeaway. I’m saying the opposite. Your logic seems to be jumping all over the place; on one hand you say BJJ will help, on the other you say it makes no sense because it’s not a good analogue.

BJJ is heavily ruled based and that’s why it doesn’t necessarily simulate real world altercations. Many people dabble in martial arts, never spar, and develop the false sense confidence im talking about: There’s a saying in BJJ, “punch a black belt in the face, they become a brown belt, punch them again they become a brown belt, punch them again...”

Sparring in a gym is absolutely not stimulating a real life scenario which is why is can easily lead to false confidence. But it can show you your skill level without endangering yourself too much.

The point of the sparring comment was to illustrate how much work it is to get competent at a martial art. Advocating that BJJ will prevent rape is ignoring how few people will spend the necessary time to get skillful as well as ignoring all the blind spots that rule-based martial arts introduce.

Advocating BJJ is fine. Making someone think it’s going to save them without also pointing out that it will take years to be effective isn’t. People who miss that second part have probably never trained or been in a real fight or are trying to drum up business for their martial arts school. Honestly, it comes across as the you regurgitated the comment about BJJ because you heard it somewhere and ran with it. Anyone who’s trained in BJJ knows the first year or so you become acutely aware of how helpless you actually are on the ground.

Even if you're right on average (this is not establishing a position on whether that's the case, but hypothetically if you are), there are exceptions. Not recognizing exceptions is an issue even in this scenario. There are places where being white isn't advantageous, not only places one may travel to, but where one calls home.

Race has nothing to do with sketchiness.

To be fair, the sentry mode on Teslas is great but if we are going to talk about cost of accidents & Tesla ... it’s mostly a negative story. I’m an owner and fortunately avoided accidents so far, but the stories of people waiting on parts dealing with rentals for weeks or months are.. extensive. The cost of accidents is reflected in the fairly high insurance costs for Teslas. This may not be terribly different than a German luxury make you could be cross shopping in the price range, but it’s something to bear in mind.

>This may not be terribly different than a German luxury make you could be cross shopping in the price range, but it’s something to bear in mind.

Definitely seems higher. I just checked the price for insuring a 2019 Mercedes-Benz E-Class (hybrid). It was 1350 €/year or 2100 €/year if I choose the premium coverage options. For a 2019 Tesla Model 3, the same prices were 2030 €/year and 2670 €/year.

2019 Tesla Model S was even worse at 2400 €/year and 3260 €/year. Model S is definitely more expensive than an E-Class, so I also compared to a 2019 Mercedes-Benz S-Class (hybrid), which was about 16,000 € more expensive to buy than the Model S. Got 1920 €/year and 3060 €/year.

(Premium coverage options were parking coverage, glass insurance, better write-off compensation and temp car coverage.)

Those are.....insane insurance prices? Which country is this for? What kind of driver?

I got a new Volvo XC60 T8 last year(400bhp, £60k car), my fully comprehensive insurance as a 29 year old is...£400 a year. With their highest tier premium insurance option, with premium courtesy car, full EU cover, glass cover, full legal cover, 20 million euro liability cover....etc, full package basically.

Before that I had a Mercedes GLA45 AMG and my insurance was marginally more expensive, like £500 a year.

I can't believe any of the cars you listed would be more to insure than these two....so what gives? Why is it so expensive?

They're the quotes that I'm getting from my insurance company's website. For context, I am 27, live in Finland and don't have full bonuses.

Granted, the online prices usually suck compared to what you can get once you call (or get called by) an agent. If I tried buying my current insurance for my car it's giving me 1100 €/year whereas my actual price is 940 €/year.

A 2015 Mercedes-Benz GLA45 (49,000 €) would cost me 1380 €/year or 2040 €/year with all bells and whistles.

You should be driving a more suitable car for Finland, like a Lada or a Volvo 240 imported from Sweden.

Tesla has their own insurance product[1] to try and lower what they think are inflated insurance costs on their cars. I don't know if they actually do offer better prices. It would be interesting to know.

[1]https://www.tesla.com/insurance

Has Tesla indicated why they believe their insurance rates are inflated?

I vaguely recall (could be wrong) Elon said the other companies are not adequately taking into account Tesla safety features. Possibly including the cameras I mentioned.

They do take the safety features into account, but notice I said “adequately.”

Whether Elon actually said it or not, I think it’s a good hypothesis.

I think it's much more likely that insurance companies have the long-developed expertise to assess the risks and actual claims experience of insuring whatever it is they insure. It's the primary thing that allows them to earn a profit. And so if they all think that Teslas are higher risks, they are probably right.

Also there might be real numbers on the costs. Like cost of repairs and during unavailability period cost of rental vehicle if such coverage is included. Specially later I have understood has at times been issue. So if you need to pay your customer to have rental vehicle for weeks or months while car is waiting for parts at shop it does have an effect on premiums. And it absolutely should.

But that hypothesis doesn't explain the large price difference between the companies, which in both cases are underwritten by other companies with long-developed expertise.

It could also be that Tesla is just willing to take a smaller profit out of the business, relative to others.

The insurance market can't be that efficient, or the same driver with the same car wouldn't see such wildly varying quotes from different insurers.

Or, they think Tesla owners can afford to pay more.

Why is Tesla able to undercut them with their own insurance product?

That doesn't really jive with the fact that the S-Class has cheaper insurance rates despite being a more expensive car and whose ownerbase typically consists of very rich people.

I imagine that's only available in the US. The page is in English and there's only an American phone number even when switching to the local Tesla site.

It say only California at the moment. They say they are expanding to other US states. If it catches on I imagine they will continue to expand it if its not illegal in other places.

Way better prices. Saving about $3000 a year on two cars compared to Geico. But only available in the US for now as you may be aware.

Only available in California, according to their website, which means it effectively does not exist. This is a product that’s been “coming soon” to the rest of the US since April 2019. Unless you live in CA you should include the high insurance costs into your estimate of TCO for a Tesla and treat “Tesla insurance” as a PR stunt.

What's this madness of driving a car that you cannot afford to repair out of pocket?

I understand paying for mandatory liability insurance, since you might hit a Bugatti Veyron and do damage far surpassing your net worth. But I have no idea why would someone pay 10% of the vehicle cost per year to cover repairs to their own vehicle due to their own driving mistakes. How about... they drive a cheaper vehicle until they learn how to drive?

This is the worst fucking take I've read in a while.

>How about... they drive a cheaper vehicle until they learn how to drive?

I have insurance against fire, theft, vandalism and parking lot damage. Please do tell me how your awesome driving skills prevent these sorts of damage.

I'd also very much like to know how you live your life if you have the money to pay for your car to be repaired out of pocket in case of fire, theft or having a moose come through your windshield.

The part about driving skill is definitely just wrong, there are many reasons why cars get damaged. Though I agree that it's way better to drive cars that are cheap enough to repair or replace out of pocket.

Insurance companies make money by overpricing the actual risk. And they make a LOT of money. The expected value of an insurance contract is negative to the buyer. Coverage of tail risk (e.g. millions in liability), makes sense since you don't want to get bankrupted, but when there's a capped risk you can tolerate (e.g. value of car), avoiding the insurance statistically saves you money. Insurance companies pay their actuaries very well to guarantee this.

Plus, not having to deal with insurance companies makes car repair so much less stressful in my experience...

> The part about driving skill is definitely just wrong, there are many reasons why cars get damaged.

There is a long list for sure - but they are all very unlikely. The risk of having your car stolen can be mitigated with a 50$ GPS transmitter. Fire? What year is this, cars still spontaneously combust, or maybe do you live on an active volcano? A moose going though your window sounds like a life and death situation, having your car totaled and walking away safe and sound would be glorious.

If you were to purchase insurance for such risks, it would be negligible compared to the major source of insurance claims, trafic accidents. So you are are either paying for other's people accidents, and it makes no sense to continue to do so, or you are actually getting a positive value out of it because you are a bad driver, case in which it makes sense to try to improve your driving, while keeping the insurance.

All of my non-mechanical car damage has been either from someone else's driving or while the car was parked. The last one involved a guy who had a seizure at the wheel and barrelled through a red light in a truck. There wasn't any way to avoid it, fortunately it was a light swipe though.

My most expensive repair was in a parking lot where someone scraped and dented the entire side of my car trying to get into a space they really should not have. I'm under the impression most damage to cars happens in parking lots or street parking.

Still, as I wrote above, I still agree that insurance for the car isn't worth it, even though at some points it would have had positive value for me. In the long run it statistically won't.

For experienced and attentive drivers that tend to be hit by others, it's important to have proof of liability. The dashcam (preferably one that operates when the car is stopped) has saved me multiple times. Insurance companies control the claims process and setup rules that disadvantage the uninsured. Whenever I am in a trafic incident, I stop the car on the spot and take at least a bunch of photos with both vehicles involved from multiple angles, the damaged area and any debris , the general vicinity, lanes etc. The capacity of self delusion and/or outright lying of people is fantastic, I have had one claim the incident happened in a completely different intersection.

If you have such proofs and credibly convey the message that you know the law and are willing to sue, then all damage becomes fixable on someone else's insurance and you pay only normal wear and tear on your vehicle. In 200.000 Km, I only had a single fender bender that was my fault, around 200€ in damage - while insurance would have costed me in the 5000-10000€ range for the same period. Since I am an aggressive (within the limits of the law) driver, I was involved in a dozen or so minor accidents.

It's not really a capped risk, because there's nothing stopping your car from being stolen more than once.

That's a good point. So more precisely, at any instant your current risk is capped. I think that's more important, since it defines your worst case outcome. You could keep buying new cars, and after the 20th one is stolen go bankrupt, but you probably wouldn't do that if you can't afford it, so bankruptcy isn't a possible outcome.

The capped instantaneous risk lets you go for the option with highest expected value without having some chance you'll get instantly bankrupted.

I don't think it works like that. If you're just talking about avoiding bankruptcy, well you could just buy a car and not replace it the first time if it's stolen/destroyed.

Presumably in this scenario you actually require a car. That said, insuring it will cover you for any number of losses in the year, whereas setting aside an amount of savings equal to the value of the car will cover you for only one loss.

You can't just be chasing the positive EV when the variance is potentially large. For example, if Warren Buffet offered to flip a coin with you for your net worth, plus $100 bonus if you win, the expected value is very slightly positive but I believe you'd be unwise to take bet that unless your current net worth was very low already.

The risk depends on your net worth and earning power, as you allude to. Your net worth might have low variance if the ratio between it and your car's cost is high.

This is the most precise way to phrase the original recommendation. Don't get insurance for things that are easy for you tolerate the variance on. That can be true if you buy a cheap car and are pretty well off. What's the actual chance your car gets stolen 3 times in a year? After the first 2 times maybe you could change the place you store your car, get a GPS tracker or something?

There were 6858 vehicles stolen in NYC in 2020 (nearly doubled 2019) [0]. There are roughly 2M cars registered in NYC [1]. That's a 1 in 300 yearly chance to have your car stolen at least once. If we assume events are uncorrelated, there's a 1 in 100000 chance of two or more thefts, and a 1 in 25000000 chance of three or more. The odds of dying in a motor vehicle accident in the next year is something like 1 in 8000 [2].

That aside, there's all sorts of optional coverage that most people definitely can tolerate the variance on without calculation.

> You can't just be chasing the positive EV when the variance is potentially large.

There are many investment strategies that are exactly this. Writing options is one example. Forgoing insurance, like option writing, isn't possible without sufficient collateral of your own. I recognize that this is not possible for everyone. There are some cheap cars that work fine though. The biggest takeaway is to second guess the sales pitch on premium insurance plans.

Your example is another instant bankruptcy case, with reward that doesn't come close to compensating the risk.

[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/nyregion/car-thefts-nyc.h... [1]: https://dmv.ny.gov/statistic/2018reginforce-web.pdf [2]: https://www.iii.org/fact-statistic/facts-statistics-mortalit...

> I understand paying for mandatory liability insurance, since you might hit a Bugatti Veyron and do damage far surpassing your net worth.

The amount of mandatory liability coverage in most jurisdictions will be a rounding error to totalling a Veyron. E.g., in California the mandatory property damage coverage is $5,000, while the value of the Veyron is about $2 million. So, with mandatory liability coverage your still out of pocket, well, essentially $2 million.

There are a lot of reasons apparently why it might not turn out that way..

Frankly, I don't believe it's "fair" for somebody to be exposing everyone around them to such financial risk. IMHO if you purchase a 2m vehicle and drive it around on public roads, you need the insurance to close the gap between avg/state mandated coverage and what your losses might be. The laws should prob reflect that and limit the average consumers liability.

You probably don't want to think about the “financial risk” for wrongful death liability that lots of people expose other people to if the financial risk for property damage through improper driving that supercar owners expose people to seems unfair.

The value of a shiny new Veyron. Once it's driven off the dealership premises, its value begins a free fall to the ground. I'd be surprised if an average veyron is worth more than 300k.

> The value of a shiny new Veyron. Once it’s driven off the dealership premises, its value begins a free fall to the ground

Generally true of mass produced cars, very often not true of small production run, high-priced supercars, which often do the opposite.

Including Veyron:

https://www.hotcars.com/bugatti-veyron-has-actually-increase...

But, even @ $300K instead of $2-3 Million, that’s still a huge multiple of the mandatory liability coverage in most jurisdictions, so carrying only the mandatory minimum wouldn’t do much for you if you cause one to be totalled.

>Only 450 Veyron were produced by hand up to 2015, selling at prices of at least EUR 1.16 million. These include various exclusive special models which are now sought-after collector's items. Their value has hardly fallen in recent years. More recent used vehicles achieved an average price of EUR 620,000 at international auctions and dealerships in 2011; two years later this had already gone up to EUR 730,000. Currently it’s virtually impossible to find a Veyron on the market for less than EUR 1.3 million, with certain models fetching even considerably higher prices

https://www.bugatti.com/media/news/2019/bugatti-classic-cars...

Trying to apply the same logic to a rare car of which there were under 500 units produced and even less now (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NJmB1F2mdE) as you do to your economy car is just wrong.

I wouldn't bother insuring against crashing into a car thats so rare. Otherwise I'd have to insure myself first against bear attacks, lightning strikes and high energy cosmic particles.

As others have said, insurance covers far more than incapability accidents. However, the most important is that it gives you peace of mind -- you're essentially buying peace of mind, for a theoretically small fee (compared to average cost). It's somewhat rare to buy genuine peace of mind (instead of just inconvenience, that is more available).

Tangentially related, I also recommend a good offsite backup scheme (costs a little, but well worth it) versus "taking care of your devices/drives".

It's mandatory if you finance the car. And car loan rates are pretty low, so it often makes sense to take one (including the insurance) even if you could buy in cash.

Though if you have any financial assets to use as collateral, you can get cheaper leverage elsewhere. Then you don't need to buy an insurance contract with negative expected value, for a capped risk that you can tolerate out of pocket.

I borrowed for 6 years at 0.0% on my last car purchase. Even taking into account the portion of insurance that was surplus to the expected value of the insurance, that was about the cheapest money I could find.

I dont think you understand how insurance works in the states. If you get in an accident unless the other driver admits fault insurance companies negotiate and settle. If you aren't an insurance company they will stick you for the whole cost or the cost of litigation and time wasted will far out weigh the benefits of not buying insurance. Only time it makes sense to not insure is when you car value is close to the deductible.

Are you in a "no fault" insurance state?

Where I am, you make a police report, and they determine who (legally) is at fault.

I've avoided two accidents in my model 3 due to its automatic avoidance system, so I'll put up with the alleged slow fix times.

Don't know about that last point. Gas cars have a starter battery and alternators which probably produce enough juice to power cameras, that don't take a lot of power.

While the car is running, certainly. But a 600WH starter battery (which is lead-acid and doesn't really like being run down) is no match for a 60,000WH lithium traction battery.

A typical four-camera 360° setup probably draws about 5-10 watts, more if it's performing motion-detection on the images. You'd be unwise to run that overnight on a typical starter battery, especially in winter. But it's a drop in the bucket for an EV.

(Personally I think this is an egregious amount of "vampire power" to waste if nothing's going on, but apparently a lot of things are going on.)

The above post didn't state it happeed in the middle of the night, so I assumed a moving violation.

My two cases were indeed moving violations, but the cameras are there at all times if you choose to leave them on. Well until your battery drops too low, in which case the car prioritizes saving energy for driving. Some people turn them off at home if they feel the power usage is not a good tradeoff. For example if they have a secure garage with cameras already.

Everyone lies after a car accident. The claims adjusters expect it and only go off the evidence.

> But some EVs do have a lot of cameras, and that’s part of the cost people complain about

I’m still trying to figure out why EV owners rationalize the inclusion of basic consumer electronics to somehow add thousands upon thousands of dollars to the price

you don’t know if they would have been held responsible even without video

As an EV owner, I can say that the maintenance cost savings are being hyped up, at least if you buy a new car every 5 years. About 70% of the expenses I had for my recently sold ICE car are relevant for EVs, too: Yearly inspection (yes it’s cheaper with the EV, but still necessary for most brands; pollen filters need changing and AC needs cleaning), new brakes because they were rusty (a problem even worse for EVs), new tires and seasonal tire rotation, new 12V battery (every EV has one too), new wipers, and cleaning. You’ll probably spend a bit less time at the mechanic with an EV, but the difference won’t be that big.

If you keep your car for longer, an EV will require less expenses for moving parts, but it might offset this by requiring a new battery after 8-12 years (right now, batteries retail for $12k and more, let’s hope this goes down soon).

Given that, fuel savings are really great. With my old ICE car a round trip to the big city cost €10, while with my Ioniq it’s only €3 in summer, when charged at home (even though we pay €0.20/kWh). Maybe €4.50 in winter. So on average we’re looking at something like 60% savings in fuel costs even with our expensive middle european electricity plans.

Curious about brakes because of the things you mentioned brakes and tires cost the most. Original brake pads on my 2014 Subaru lasted me 85k miles, although I did change the fluid at about 40k. That was 5 years for me, so why are the brake issues worse for EVs?

Brakes can get rusty if they don't get engaged frequently enough b/c you're using the regenerative braking most of the time. I've read that a lot of newer EV's will periodically engage traditional brakes to help alleviate this issue though.

FWIW I just had my 2018 leaf inspected and at 22K miles they said the brakes looked good.

Yes, that’s what I meant. For some reason my ICE’s brakes were so rusty after 5 years that they had to be replaced.

VW uses drum brakes for that reason now, at least for the ID3. Those don’t really rust AFAIK.

I thought drum brakes were considered inferior/cheap/old tech and that everyone switched to disc about 20 years ago? Edit - I should add that when buying a car in the early 2000s having disc was considered a nice feature like "rack and pinyon steering" which was frequently mentioned then too

Indeed! But since EVs rarely need the posterior brakes (if at all), low maintenance becomes more important than performance. Changing 2 disc brakes costs ~€500, and I‘d rather not pay that every few years.

I had a Neon in the late 1990s and it had disc front and drum rear brakes, I assumed it was just because it was a cheap car. That's super interesting how it just isn't as needed for EVs.

>so no waiting in line for 45 minutes every two years either

Pretty fucked up that you only check for air pollution and not actual road-worthiness.

Here all Teslas had an inspection failure rate after of 10.8% (61,000 km driven on average) in 2019 after three years of driving, which is quite bad. For comparison, Mercedes-Benz E-Class and BMW 5-series both had 7.1% (108,000 km and 91,000 km driven on average). This suggests to me that Tesla owners should really spend more time queuing at the shop and at an inspection center.

>Pretty fucked up that you only check for air pollution and not actual road-worthiness.

Pretty fucked up that some states waste everyone's time and money checking for actual road worthiness when that's basically a rounding error compared to all the other sources of danger on the roads.

IMO this is one of the few things CA does right. Obviously CARB is a corrupt money grab shithshow but the idea that you don't really care what people do so long as the cars aren't belching pollution is well thought out.

I get that not seeing shitboxes with rusty fenders makes everyone feel warm and fuzzy inside but mechanical failure simply isn't a common source of accidents compared to everything else and inspection programs can only do so much to address it.

Well Tesla owners are told that their cars need zero maintenance so why would they even think about having them inspected routinely?

No they're not. There's a very clear 2 year maintenance cycle.

They're told their cars need zero maintenance in the same way that Toyota owners who get their information from the internet think their cars have magically been engineered to defy the laws of physics.

Sure the fine print in the manual says there's a service schedule, but the pop culture trope says otherwise.

No they weren't.

> Is this true if you also consider maintenance

Yes, I think you’re vastly overestimating how much these things cost. A $15k car might need a $100/year in oil changes, and then like $500 in service every $30k miles or so. The most expensive part is probably replacing tires, which is common to the electric car as well.

All of the maintenance on ICE cars gets bad in that 120k miles+ range. But at that point you’ve had to replace the battery on your Tesla, which almost buys you another new $15k car.

Do you have a source for these numbers? According to AAA [0] (and my experience), the average cost of car maintenance is upwards of $1000/year.

Also its more than just oil that electric cars don't need replaaced. Electric cars don't have transmissions and rarely ever use the brakes two more leading causes of both regular maintenance and costly repairs of ICE cars.

[0] https://www.thebalance.com/average-car-maintenance-cost-4775...

Not OP, but I can pluralize his anecdata. I've had my car for 9 years (~120k miles - sat rarely driven for a couple years in the middle). The only maintenance I've had is oil changes (2 or 3 times a year, so $100 estimate seems accurate), brake pads (once or maybe twice? average annual cost maybe $50), engine air filter (like $10, once or twice a year), tires (similar with electric - cheaper for my car with 15" wheels). The only unexpected maintenance was an electric short in the windshield wiper (could happen just as easily to an electric. $100 labour and a $30 part from a scrap yard)

> 2 or 3 times a year

That seems massively excessive oil changing for your mileage.

Fun fact - the same car manufacturers tell British people to change their oil every 21k miles or 24 months, and tell American people to change their oil every 3k miles or 6 months. For literally the same car, being driven in potentially identical conditions.

Americans are just changing their oil needlessly! And they have a whole industry of ‘oil change shops’ you don’t get in many other countries to do the needless work! Bonkers!

I follow the manufacturer's suggested interval of 8000km. The same car supposedly has a longer interval in Japan (16000km), but using a different engine and definitely different operating conditions. It's just not enough of a cost or hassle for me to bother deviating from the recommendations.

I do happily ignore the oil change shop stickers that say it should be changed in 3 months/5000km.

Biggest part of their quote is tires, which apply to the electric cars as well.

1k a year is absolutely insane. That must scale up with expensive cars. A new battery, new brake pads, and and windshield wipers don’t even come near 1k and you don’t even have to replace any of those annually.

> But at that point you’ve had to replace the battery on your Tesla

This isn't true. Typically after 100k miles Teslas lose about 5-10% capacity. I suppose if you are bumping into that limit a lot, it might be a problem, but it would make far more sense to sell your current car and buy a new one at that point. You could get decent resale value out of it because lots of people would be perfectly happy with a Tesla with a 280 mile range versus 310 miles.

There are Teslas out there that have clocked over 300k miles and still have more than 70% of their rated range. Again, even if the current owner has an issue with ~200 miles range, selling a Tesla with a 200 mile range won't be a big problem.

Hard to say long term since EVs are so new. What might be the lifetime maintenance cost of a 30 year old EV with several battery pack changes? No stats exist on that yet.

While EVs are unarguably simpler, the gas cars do have 100+ years of effort into making them reliable. Gas cars today (and even back into the 90s) are so extremely reliable that basically no drivetrain work at all is needed well into the 200K mile range unless you get unlucky with a lemon.

The things that do tend to generate repair work are shared between the platforms. Electronics & wiring, controls, seats, power windows are in my experience the worst offenders. EVs have all that.

Our Fiat 500e's (two) have spent a lot more days in the dealer shop than any of my gas cars ever, FWIW.

It is kind of nice to not have to worry about oil changes! But a ~$50 oil change twice a year won't ever make up for the large cost difference of an EV.

So purely from a cost perspective (not talking about climate impact!), the EVs are not cheaper to own.

Check out this total cost of ownership comparison of a wide range of Internal Combustion, Hybrid, and Battery Electric vehicles:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/01/15/climate/elect...

If you go to the source of that graphic, you can find more info. The Tesla’s are fairly high on the cost scale, particularly when comparing to other cars (as opposed to SUVs and trucks which typically have heavy duty components and more expensive maintenance)

https://www.carboncounter.com/#!/explore

If you don't live in the USA be sure to go into the settings as there are a number of defaults which may not match your life.

For me, at least, the price of petrol is about 2.5 what the default is and the default yearly distance driven is at least twice what I would do .

As far as I can tell the vehicle sticker prices in the US are about 0.6 to 0.8 what they would be here but you can't change that within the model anyway.

Brakes, don’t forget brakes. Regenerative braking puts less wear and tear onto discs and pads, turning them from wear parts to something that might last the lifetime of the vehicle

I’m also curious about resale. Batteries degrade and a good portion of the vehicle’s value is the battery. Right now the resale is quite good on EVs, but I don’t know if that’s attributable to the novelty of EVs or some other factor that won’t last ten years. Perhaps someone who knows more than I do could weigh in?

Tesla Model 3 has 100k miles warranty for battery with guarantee that battery will have at least 70% capacity remaining. Actual numbers indicate that degradation usually is significantly less - closer to 90% battery capacity at 100k miles: https://electrek.co/2020/06/06/tesla-battery-degradation-rep...

I suspect the fall off is non-linear. I would be curious to know how they fair in the next 100k miles.

I have never bought a car with less than 100k miles on it and I drive pretty nice cars. There are a whole lot of ice cars on the road with more than 100k miles because the last decade has produced very reliable ice vehicles with very replaceable parts.

I suspect that tesla modified the drop by giving you a battery which has a higher capacity than advertised and then borrowing from that extra capacity as the battery degrades. This works until it doesn’t and you run out of extra to borrow from. I wish the mechanics of how the battery is managed long term was more open.

The same article I linked discusses model X that had battery replaced under warranty at more than 300k km. The reason for the replacement was not battery degradation. Here's another article showing graph for up to 200k miles. Looks like Teslas holding capacity quite well even beyond 100k:

https://insideevs.com/news/429818/tesla-model-s-x-battery-ca...

We need third party data, Tesla has incentive to fudge those numbers.

>Perhaps someone who knows more than I do could weigh in?

I'm pretty sure that's me, but take everything I say with a grain of salt.

>Right now the resale is quite good on EVs, but I don’t know if that’s attributable to the novelty of EVs or some other factor that won’t last ten years.

IMO it's because 1) the majority of EVs were produced recently (not surprising when the scale of production is increasing exponentially), plus 2) there's generally a lack of cheap ICE-comparable EV options to suck demand away from the used EV market.

Predicting the prices of used cars in 2030 is inherently a little political, so excuse me if I step on toes here.

EVs will be at price-parity with ICE cars by 2024 and will utterly crush them by 2030. As ICE cars are replaced by EVs, things could go one of two main ways:

1) the massive existing supply of ICE cars, plus the massive drop in petrol usage due to EV replacing ICE cars, will mean that second-hand ICE cars and petrol drop massively in price for a while. This causes people to reconsider their EV purchases and a stalling of EV adoption until the ICE-car surplus drains away. This keeps the ICE car infrastructure around for longer than otherwise.

2) (the political bit) ICE cars currently have a certain political protection due to their ubiquity - politicians are often unwilling to raise taxes on cars or petrol, even if it's warranted due to e.g. air pollution or climate destabilisation. A high enough popularity of EVs (e.g. once 30% of cars on the road are EVs) could change the political scene, resulting in a surge in support for getting rid of ICE cars entirely - people are encouraged to have their ICE cars junked in exchange for whatever incentives, and petrol doesn't drop enough to be a complete bargain. ICE cars are relatively rare and people aren't confident in their future, so they keep dropping. The faster they drop, the less political resistance to simply banning them outright. Eventually ICE cars are dead, or as good as.

That said, there are a TON of different factors that are hard to predict the impact of. For example:

* Regardless of scenario, the drop in ICE cars will reduce the revenue of petrol stations, resulting in more of them closing. Fewer petrol stations will exacerbate the switch to EVs, just like the rollout of superchargers and workplace/on-street chargers. It's entirely possible that once we hit e.g. 50% EVs, there's simply no money in petrol stations and several stations have to shut down, causing a feedback loop of fuel stations being less convenient and more expensive, encouraging more EV adoption.

* If petrol stations start closing then there might be a switch to buying fuel deliveries online, which will (IMO) likely result in 'boutique fuels' and customisation. I have no idea what effects that will have, honestly. Either way, the main reason I think this is viable is because this isn't new; when cars were first invented, petrol stations didn't exist and people bought their fuel at the local chemist in cans/bottles.

* It's unclear how far hydrogen will go, but if hydrogen vehicles are common then they may keep petrol stations around for longer than otherwise, as hydrogen stations will likely also be petrol stations. AFAICT Hydrogen vehicles will primarily be trucks, as basically nobody else needs the range that hydrogen offers and hydrogen requires far more up-front infrastructure investment, which requires scale.

* If EVs truly require less maintenance, then we might see a lot of mechanics out of jobs, and as a result we could see lower maintenance costs, making ICE cars comparably more appealing after the initial EV boom but before the surplus mechanics retrain and move into different sectors.

* There may be short-term resource squeezes on EV production - for instance, IIRC lithium mining takes ~7 years to set up a new mine (likely far less to scale up existing mines, mind you) and when you're scaling up exponentially, a small underestimation today will result in a large shortage in 7 years. A stalling of battery production could result in a spike of EV prices, which would encourage a second wind for ICE cars.

* Places that import a ton of energy, like Japan and Korea, might be sticking to fuel cars for a while longer than places with cheaper electricity. In particular, if Japan ever imports a ton of hydrogen, then directly fueling hydrogen cars would make far more sense than Battery EVs charged from a hydrogen-powered grid. If they adopt Hydrogen EVs, then that keeps the R&D ticking along to keep hydrogen in the game elsewhere.

* The politics for ICE cars are heavily tied to the climate - if there's any major political seachange for climate action, well, the reality on that is that ICE cars have zero future and need to be gotten rid of ASAP. So unified demand for a step-change on climate = ICE cars are flat-out dead by 2030.

Great insights.

I also expect that used ICE cars in developed world would be exported more (especially not well aged cars) to developing world.

Yes, absolutely. Unless there's a law against it, of course.

Gas cars don't need a lot of maintenance. The oil is $40 every few months. Everything else is 100,000 miles if you even bother, or is the same with electric. Cars have improved a lot.

Note that there are a lot of myths drving up costs for no reason. A 3000 mile oil change isn't a treat for your engine. In some tests the least engine wear was 8000 miles on the oil. Changing the oil early lets a bit of dust in so is not a good thing if the oil is good. (Synthetic oil is a treat, but the car will be fine without)

That’s really only true for new cars. As an ICE car ages, the standard deviation for maintenance costs starts to go up quite quickly. Some cars will only need oil and gasoline until they fail, but some will suffer extremely expensive failures.

Get a used toyota corolla. It'll last for hundreds of thousands of miles with minimal issues if you maintain it (oil change, brakes, etc.) At the cost you'll pay, even if it does break down, it'll still be far, far less than the cheapest electric vehicles.

A brand new car might not but after 5 years or 100k miles the maintenance compounds significantly.

Are suggesting that people shouldn't keep cars beyond 5 years or 100k miles?

My car is currently 8 years and 150k miles with no issues. There was some leaks to fix, but nothing significant, only $300 for the entire work. I have a truck that is now 22 years old and also 150k miles, but it is a diesel and so you will probably say it doesn't count. My last car (sold only because my job let me take the bus) was at 260k miles and no issues (though I did change the timing belt on schedule).

Modern cars will generally last at least 300k miles today with few problems. When the finally die it is because the body is shot - something that has nothing to do with the power train. (I live in an area where winter means a lot of salt on the roads, my friends in warmer areas report cars lasting even longer).

Of course I probably shouldn't say this. People like you who trade in their almost new cars all the time because they are afraid they are a money pit keep people like me in nice cars for not much money.

> Modern cars will generally last at least 300k miles today with few problems.

That's not been my experience. I was a Honda loyalist and my first 4 cars were all Hondas and the reliability steadily decreased over the years. My first car, an 88, only ever needed regular maintenance and an alternator at 250k miles. My last Honda, an 07, was costing $2500 a year in maintenance when I got rid of it with 127k miles in 2015.

The three most reliable automobile manufacturers according to Consumer Reports Reliability Indexes, by a large margin, are Toyota, Honda, and Subaru.

How does a Tesla hold up after 300k miles? I'd bet money that a Toyota Corolla has more maintainability than a Tesla.

A more fair comparison would be a higher end Camry, Avalon, or L Series Lexus.

The Corolla is a very simple car in every respect and inexpensive. Reliability goes down when systems get more complicated and expensive. That's why the Acura and Lexus equivalents of there Honda and Toyota counterparts are much less reliable.

Lexus was the most reliable automaker according to consumer reports for awhile. Mazda I think recently dethroned them but they are I think still above regular Toyota. Not sure what your source on this claim about Lexus being less reliable than Toyota...

My source is Consumer Reports. CR lists Lexus as a brand of the Toyota Motor Company, and yes Toyota is the most reliable automaker. But if you look at Brands, Toyota, Honda, and Subaru beat Lexus.

Mazda was never in the running. Mitsubishi has better ratings than them.

Has anyone ever factored in battery replacement cost? All of the things you mention (pumps, etc.) Break only after long usage (60-80-100k?)

Oil changes and filters are reasonably cheap, i guess $50 every 5-10k miles?

I would really want to see long term cost of ownership of ev once you include replacement battery.

Edit: of course the repairs add up as the car gets older for ic (because of things you mention), but i wonder how does that stack against battery itself.

Batteries typically degrade slowly over the life of the car. Not a ton of hard data since there aren't a lot of Teslas out there with 200-500k miles. The ones that have made it that far seem to retain about 90% capacity after 150k miles.

90% after 150k miles sounds amazing. I find it unbelievably amazing.

Besides better battery technology. A bigger battery means the discharge rate is lower. The amount of damage discharging does decreases as the discharge rate drops. I think there is a knee around C4-5. And of course the same amount loss in absolute terms is lower as a percentage with a bigger battery. Meaning losing 5kwh on a 30kwh battery is 0.83% vs 5 kwh on a 60kwh battery is only 92%.

Proper way to think of battery life is depreciation per mile. If a battery costs $8000 and lasts 200,000 miles, that's 4 cents a mile. If it only last 150,000 miles that's still only 5.3 cents/mile.

I was in the market recently for an EV but ended up buying ICE instead because of the price difference. The EV cost around 27k Euros, the ICE equivalent cost 17k Euros (both new). I really wanted the EV but even with maintenance costs and gas it would take many years to justify it.

Id want to see some figures there - it does depend on how long a battery pack lasts (and the recycling costs of disposing of dead battery packs) - you can swap out a ICE engine relatively easily and you can DIY it on your own driveway.

You should also consider lifespan. I'm a broken record on this but automotive gasoline engine is basically toast after 5000 to 8000 hours. That more than anything else defines the lifespan of a car.

Electric motors and fixed gears can go 25,000 to 50,000 hours before they need a rebuild. And they can be rebuilt multiple times. And the industry is talking about EV batteries that will last a million miles.

Factor that into the capital cost of owning an EV and it changes everything.

Now consider that the usual finance term for car is about a third it's expected life. Typical car lasts 15 years, typical finance is 5 years. If an EV's expected life is 30 years, vs 15 above. Then the reasonable finance term can double to 10 years.

Plus dual motor electric cars (most Teslas) can run on one motor. So in the unlikely event one of your motors fails you can still limp home without worry about blowing your head gaskets.

If you’re talking specifically about the drive train, that’s one thing. But the reliability of electrical components will likely not come close to approaching 30 years. That’s especially relevant in cars that combine everything into a single display and everything is electrically controlled. The old school vice grip solution to roll down windows won’t work with most new cars :-)

There are anecdotes of displays costing $7k, and designed for planned obsolescence after 5-7 years. Ironically, this is the same timeframe where the car depreciation makes a stronger case for buying a new vehicle rather than paying that kind of money on fixing an older one. Point being, I don’t think we can plan on a 30 year EV life anymore than we can count on using the same personal computer for decades.

> designed for planned obsolescence after 5-7 years

The big three tried that in the 1970's.

I have a thoery why it doesn't work. It's because resale value matters. Price out how much people are willing to pay for a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter. Now look at the price of a used sprinter with a 150k miles on it vs a random Ford or Dodge van. It's about $20k vs under $10k

Companies that play the planned obsolesce game with EV's are going to find themselves in a quality vs price corner coffin. Because customers rightly perceive the companies cars as shoddy. The company can't charge enough to build quality cars. They get stuck just the way GM did 40 years ago. And is still stuck today.

So I didn’t want to give the company name because it’s just an anecdote, but it’s from a company that is usually in the top off people’s minds when asked about car manufacturers who are synonymous with quality.

I don’t think the Sprinter vs Transit example is a very illustrative one. Personally, I’d rather have a used Ford or Dodge simply because the life cycle cost of a Sprinter is insane where I live due to maintenance costs. They have similar base prices new but with any features the Sprinter quickly outpaces (ha) a similar American van in initial cost as well. I don’t think they are apples to apples.

It didn’t work for the Big Three because at the time, Japanese were trying to differentiate themselves and they did it on the quality front. I tend to think it was more about complacency than planned obsolescence.

I think people generally look at mechanical and electronics very differently. People often look at simplicity in mechanical designs as a feature, where I think the opposite is true in electronics. I’m skeptical that people will be buying EVs expecting to drive the same one for 30 years, but we’ll see.

> So I didn’t want to give the company name because it’s just an anecdote, but it’s from a company that is usually in the top off people’s minds when asked about car manufacturers who are synonymous with quality.

I'll take this as a non answer then.

I’m sorry, I don’t think you asked an actual question. I know speculation is a hobby on forums but I don’t think the precise name adds much to the discussion in this case

You the one dismissing that a drive train that lasts two to three times longer than a conventional gasoline one will have no effect on cars lifespan. And thus no effect on capital expenses.

That seems to go against what I know about basic accounting.

You’re extrapolating a bit here. I do think it will have an effect of life cycle costs just not to the extent that cars will last that long or people will suddenly start keeping cars for 30 years. That goes against basic reliability theory as well as human behavior.

You have parts in an ICE vehicle that can last 30 years or longer. But the reliability of your vehicle is the totality of the overall reliability. The drivetrain is a major constituent so obviously iimproving reliability will increase the overall design life. But it won’t bring the other components up to the same. For example, my last car was replaced because the suspension was rotting from harsh winters. The drivetrain was still perfect, but it didn’t make sense to maintain/keep it considering the depreciated value of the car.

Besides that, many people look at cars as a status symbol rather than strictly on utilitarian means. I doubt many people will keep their EVs long, just like most don’t keep their perfectly working cell phones for a decade. The current stock price of TSLA seems to indicate most don’t think the market will shrink this much

I think our difference of opinion is based on, you have no experience owning cars older then 10 years. And I have experience with cars older than 20 years. So you aren't familiar with that breaks on older cars and what doesn't. Nor do you know how much it costs to fix the various things that break.

So for me imagining going from 20 year year old cars to 30 year old ones is not a stretch. Where for you it's going from 5 years to 30.

After some quick mental accounting, 9 of my last 11 vehicles (cars/trucks/vans/motorcycles) were over 10 years old when I bought them. One of the remaining was 7 years old at purchase. My current vehicles are 7 and 26 years old. I also realize yours and my car preferences are not representative of the general public.

I’ve worked as a controls engineer at an automotive assembly plant side-by-side with quality engineers. I’ve also worked as a reliability engineer.

Methinks you make too many assumptions :-)