So they’re even more out of reach from the people who are struggling most, good to know.
Everything is like this, unfortunately.
The true cost is your yearly cost. If you have to account for depreciation, you can’t afford to switch cars for no reason so keep it until it dies. Yearly cost is all that matters.
No one does the 5 year, 10 year cost of ownership, factoring in devaluation.
A CAD$60,000 EV is worth $25000 or less on trade in after 3 years. So no one saved money.
I would have to be driving a gas guzzler to come out ahead.
I drive an economy car and burn 1300-1500L/year at less than $1.50CAD/L. Upgrading to an electric car would net cost $30,000. So gas would need to go up ~20x before it would be cheaper to drive electric.
edit: Wow you guys must think gas costs the same everywhere. God damn humanity is cooked.
You’re comparing the purchase price of a new vehicle to the price of consumption in a vehicle that you already own.
Try to make the calculation ten years ahead, including the purchases of however many cars you want in that duration. Add in the consumption and taxes etc. for those vehicles too.
Yeah but in Australia a liter of sunshine is cheaper than a liter of petrol.
I wonder how much energy is in a liter of sunshine.
Photovoltaic panels capture energy from the photons that hit it, at a finite speed of light.
At Earth’s distance from the sun, solar radiation is about 1450 W/m^2 . Each watt is 1 joule/second. And a liter, which is 1000 cubic centimeters, would basically represent a volume that is the 0.1cm of space above a 1 square meter panel (100 cm x 100 cm x 0.1 cm = 1000 cubic centimeters).
So how much energy hits a 1 square meter panel in the time it takes for light to travel 0.1 cm? Light travels at 3.0 x 10^8 m/s, or 3.0 x 10^10 cm/s, so we’re talking about the light that hits a panel over the course of about 3.3 x 10^-12 s. At 1450 joules per second, times 3.3 x 10^-12 s, we get 4.83 x 10^-9 joules.
4.8 nanojoules in a liter of sunshine. That’s way less than a liter of gasoline/petrol!
Then again, using a solar panel you’re able to capture a column of light 3.0 x 10^8 meters tall using that 1 square meter panel. So you’re catching 3.0 x 10^11 liters per second worth of sunlight, which makes the relative low energy per liter still add up to a lot.
This is just an article stating what most people already know. If you’re already in the market for a new car, it makes sense to buy electric. Also, used electric is proving to be far more viable than people thought as battery health has not really degraded as much as people expected.
It doesn’t make sense to replace a perfectly good gas car with electric for the same common sense reason you pointed out.
Which EV are you looking at that costs 30k? And how many km per year are you accounting for?
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How would that change your calculation?
Simplifying the math, and $2 per litre gas (like in Vancouver), the electric car upgrade will nearly pay for itself in 10 years from how much you’re not buying in gas, which a modern car battery can last about that long even with regular usage.
Don’t forget you don’t need oil changes, you can charge at home so you don’t need to go out to get gas, you won’t need tune ups as often either because the parts are less complex.
It can pay for itself within a week if you get out a loan for the car because it’s cheaper to pay the interest on the loan than to pay for fuel. I did some calculations above using Australian data - short version is that a week of petrol is $124, vs a loan repayment of $98 per week plus around $10 on charging cost.
A week of petrol for me is <$50 CAD. I drive an economy car that I don’t own outright.
Also charging infrastructure isn’t ideal where I am. Can’t charge where I park at night.
Yeah no worries, I can only make assumptions about your situation when I make my estimate, without knowing everything about stuff like where you live, and to keep the math easy for myself. And I don’t think everyone could or should obligate themselves as consumers to go out and buy a new car immediately. When you’re in the market to replace (ideally before you desperately need a car when your current one gives up the ghost), that’s when you can see a used EV as a better value proposition than a ICE equivalent, or a new EV vs. a new gas car or hybrid.
https://carcosts.caa.ca/ could give you a more representative value of the cost per year of BEV ownership in your province, and compare it to your own records of car expenses.
Is fuel cheap in Canada? I’ve done some calculations using Australian data, and it’s cheaper to pay off a loan to buy an electric car than to keep paying for petrol.
The cost of petrol is $2.40 per litre. According to the Automobile Association affordability dashboard, the average Australian driver paid $93.81 for fuel every week in Q4 2025, when prices were $1.82 per litre. Scaling up for the x1.32 price increase since last quarter, that’s $123.71 per week on petrol for the average driver.
The cheapest EVs here are $25,000. According to the RACV EV loan calculator, borrowing $25,000 for an EV (at current rates for a 7 year loan) means a minimum payment of $196/fortnight, or $98 per week. This could be less if you were doing a novated/salary-sacrificed lease with the tax benefits. The cost of recharging is relatively insignificant (the average 30km commute cost of $1.68 per day, or $11.76 if doing that every day of the week).
It was <$1.50/L CAD in Canada before this bs.
Meanwhile the cheapest new EV you’ll get is ~50,000CAD.
Meanwhile the cheapest new EV you’ll get is ~50,000CAD.
Before taxes and finance fees.
…to get a new car and break even in one year? That isn’t very realistic.
Hey guy stick to the balloon animals, math isn’t your strong suit
lol wut? jfc looking at your post history I don’t need to be good at math to know I’m happier than you mate.
And now to never hear/see/think about you again. AKA most people’s experience with you I’m sure.
What in my post history suggests I’m unhappy?
