PHEVs/BEVs and the Environment

I have commonly tracked ICE maintenance costs for tax reasons and it's disappointing how little I'm left to write off.

I did 212K miles on a GMC Canyon and spent $1800 over it's entire lifetime in maintenance costs. One could assume less if the motor runs less of the time in a Hybrid application and with regenerative braking.

Modern ICE engines are very cheap and reliable, they also often have 100K warranties. Many of my Tesla buddies have eaten 4 digit repair bills outside of warranty.

Ya know Kia offers the Kia Niro in a Hybrid, a PHEV & an EV version.
The base Hybrid costs $27,915 rated at 53 mpg.
The base PHEV costs $35,165.
The base EV costs $40,875.

The cost difference between the Hybrid and EV pays for 206K miles of gasoline where I live. Which is longer than the average life span of a vehicle.

It takes me 15 years to put 206K miles on a car these days so I'd also eat $3K in additional EV registration here in TX. Then there is the extreme EV depreciation...

The EV would use $5,538 in electricity (I used my local electricty and gasoline rates here in TX, both are low) during that same $206K miles.

It would take > 300K miles just to break even on the intial purchase price difference. Of course if you took that saved money initially and sent it to your home loan for example where it saves you interest, well there is no mileage where the EV could catch up on fueling costs, ever.

 

While Kia/Hyuundai offers 10 year/100,000 warranties, they are the exception.

Plus the 10 year warranty doesn't cover all of the external parts like crankcase sensors, EGR valve and so on. These are covered under a 5 year or 8 year emission warranty, depending on whether the car is manufactured to California emission standards or not.

Every time one of these parts goes out, you are stranded and left with a repair bill of $500 or more if not covered under the emissions warranty. There are a lot of external parts on a ICE engine, all waiting to fail and leave you stranded.

Talk about range anxiety, I have to worry constantly about how far I can travel in my Sonata PHEV before one of these external parts fails and leaves me stranded. As such, I try to keep my range under 30 miles as much as possible.

 

Does your Kia PHEV incl rebate and tax incentives? Remember that with a short term lease, you can still get the $7500 tax credit in the US.

Hope you stick around, knowing that most of the people here are strong EV evangelists. I like to hear arguments from both sides. Helps to separate out some of the questionable and selective arguments from each side. I appreciate your straightforward and logical answers.

 

I did not add in any of the Federal rebates, which are obviously a cost consideration assuming you qualify. My understanding is that only PHEVs and EV's are eligible.

However, I did look the rebate up for the Toyota Prius and I saw up to $4,750. It probably has foreign cells and has to be a lease/ purchase program to get that money.