Ive driven 5000 miles since I bought the car as a panic purchase at the start of lockdown.

So according to that article it’d take 13.5 years of driving an electric car to pay it back.

You let me know an electric car that lasts 13.5 years and I’ll head on down to the dealership.

Otherwise I will wait out the remaining 8.5 years as best I can

Depends on where you are, but I think you have the wrong stats, unless you are in a place where all your electricity is from coal (pretty rare). Otherwise, for an average US mix, you only have to go another 3k miles or so to breakeven.

I think we are comparing different things here - I am talking about KEEPING a petrol car vs BUYING an electric car.

The stats from that article are about buying vs buying.

The cost of making a car are huge - something like 20 tonnes of c02. Vs my running cost of about 250kg per year.

If I BUY a new car it will of course be electric. But hopefully dumb. And definitely not a Volvo.

Oh, I see. Your 5000 mile car is petrol. FWIW I think the math still works to get a new EV, because it isn't like you are going to toss away the current car, but sell it to someone used. I think. It's tricky to work through.

Plus, I'm pretty sure EVs will easily last 13+ years, although we have few examples, but EVs are way less complex so they should generally last longer. Even batteries seem to be doing great at 10+ years.

If you don't agree it's apples and oranges, go buy a 13 year old Leaf for ~$3000. Unless you have a narrow definition of 'lasts' it checks everything you need.

Unfortunately I have a narrow definition of a car that’s big enough for a family of four, and the leaf is not!

> You let me know an electric car that lasts 13.5 years and I’ll head on down to the dealership.

What electric car won't? There are still 2010 Nissan Leafs on the road, and v1 Nissan Leafs had horrible battery lifetimes, lasting less than 100,000 miles. OTOH there are several Tesla's that have gone >500,000 miles on a single battery.