Not terribly convincing arguments, but we have a 2013 Prius and a 2005 Mercedes C240. We are soon selling the latter and really want an EV, or at the least, another hybrid.
My wife made the comment that she dislikes the sound and the smell of starting our Mercedes in the garage. I agree. I enjoy driving our Prius more, much for that reason. All things being equal, the electric car is a better driving experience. If the price and range are comparable, it's a no-brainer.
ok... so here's my take. I'm rounding the corner on a three year lease of a Nissan Leaf. I have loved the car. It has worked particularly well for us because it is ONLY my commuter car. We have a van for road trips and anything long distance. Range anxiety is a real thing - but disappears after a few months. I regularly get 90-100 miles out of a charge, but rarely wear it all the way out like that. In the winter, with heaters blowing, and all freeway (the worst mileage for EVs) I rolled 78 miles with still 8 or 9% left in the battery. The new Leaf has an even larger battery option (30kWh up from 24kWh). When I originally leased the thing, gas was pushing $4/gallon, so it was even more sexy. Now that fuel is sub $2, it's a little less so. The Leaf is expensive to insure. Even though federal and state incentives bring the purchase price down... insurance companies still zing you for the whole amount. And I think they're more nervous about new tech than you are. And charging stations? They're actually nowhere in Denver. There are a few, but they are often in disrepair or blocked in. I wish establishments that install them would stop putting them up close. I'd rather have to walk a few extra yards and have a high probability of being able to use them. Just plan on installing one at home, and ask your employer if you can access a plug somewhere at work (or if they're really cool - they probably get a tax incentive to install a station). I won't do another EV this time around... but that's less about the cars and more about my personal home situation (kid getting a license soon - he'll be expensive enough on a beatdown old corolla). I hope Tesla gets it right. 200miles in a $30k EV will be a game changer.
I'm curious as to your reasoning. They're about to have a shit-ton of batteries via the gigafactory, absolutely no one is holding them to any kind of build quality standards (I've yet to hear anyone say anything nice about the X) and aside from the batteries, an electric car is basically a car with all the expensive shit taken away. Chevy has to sell the Bolt for $37k because they need to make money on it. Tesla has proven time and time again that they can sell cars at a loss and Wall Street throws roses at them. Presume the Model 3 costs Tesla $50k to build and they sell it for $33k. At $17k lost per car, their valuation is still $153k per car sold.
My reasoning is multi-factorial, but it mainly rests on exactly this: Tesla has more in common with a Ponzi scheme at this point than with an auto manufacturer. Combine this stratospheric unit loss with the fact that their CapEx is coming in hundreds of millions, if not billions, below their own estimates of what it needs to be to reach their build targets, and you have a recipe for non-delivery. The say themselves that they want to deliver 400,000 units by 2018, but it's really difficult to imagine how that could possible take place when they're so far behind on tooling the plants and everything else that capex was slated for. No matter how long a leash Wall Street gives them, the house of cards can't stand forever. Building cars is hard.Chevy has to sell the Bolt for $37k because they need to make money on it. Tesla has proven time and time again that they can sell cars at a loss and Wall Street throws roses at them. Presume the Model 3 costs Tesla $50k to build and they sell it for $33k. At $17k lost per car, their valuation is still $153k per car sold.
So basically our point of contention is how many vehicles Tesla will deliver before the bloom is off the rose. I think they might just shine it on. Remember, the Dodge brothers nearly sued Ford out of business... until he turned around to his dealers and said "fuck you you stock parts now" and shipped them the factory floor's worth of spares FOB.
In the US sometimes people lease cars instead of buying them. If they want to drive a new or almost new car and know that in just a few years they will want a different new car, leasing is often a better option than buying and then reselling, I think due mostly to tax reasons and not taking the risk for most repairs. I don't know more details because I always drive old junky cars.
So people rent cars in the US much like they rent apartments. That's an interesting world we live in. Nothing like that happens (yet?) in Russia, where people would rather take a credit or buy from the previous owner. How much does an average new prestige car (something a medium-time businessman would buy to seem respectful) cost? In Russia, it's between 1.5 and 2.5 million rubles ($25k to $42k). When I was in school, guys from it would buy shitty old Russian cars from hands for a couple of thousand rubles (about $30) and drive around, not afraid to ruin it. I think you can still do so in the single-house poorer neighbourhoods (which is where a lot of my classmates came from or hanged around at).
$25-$42k will get you a nice car. It's hard here to find a car for less than $500 that will even turn on though. My sweet spot is $3-$4k. There are tons of cars at that price that will keep going another 50,000 to 100,000 miles without any major components breaking, and can be resold for $1k or a few hundred.
Leases allow dealers and automakers to arbitrage the price difference between what you get for a used car and what they get for a used car. If the dealer thinks the resale value will be great at the time of the lease, they'll lease you the car and then sell it for more than they would have gotten for the MSRP minus the lease payments. There are ways where a lease makes more sense than a purchase, but it's still a tricky proposition. Nissan was offering me a Versa lease, unsolicited, for $79 a month, $1000 down, two years. That's basically $3k out of my pocket to have a car for two years. 2016 Versa is MSRP $12k right now, figure prolly $11k out the door (cheap cars have less wriggle room). 2014 Versa at the used car lots right now is about $8k; trade-in is prolly $5500. Makes sense to me to lease the versa rather than buy it. Nissan, on the other hand, can call that a "factory certified pre-owned" Versa and sell it for $9k to the right schmuck. The dealer has a chance to make $12k on the car anyway, and the accounting rules for recurring revenue (like lease payments) mean they get to show it as forward revenue, rather than past revenue. Not only that, but they get that much more of an opportunity to up-sell their customers; we bought a 2009 Fit and I would say we average 2 flyers a month from Honda dealers offering to buy it back in exchange for a new one because (A) Fits sell really well at dealerships (B) if they can convince us to take their shitty trade-in they get to sell us yet another car.
All it'll take is a governor with a green itch to scratch. Two years ago Fiat was leasing electric 500s for $79 a month with $2000 down, and pocketing all the incentives California was slinging about. Then California ended some of those incentives. Now Fiat leases 500s for $99 a month. That's a $32k car.
I really hope it's true. This past weekend I went on a run to the top of a hill on the edge of LA county. At the peak of a trail they had a display board with a panorama of all the surrounding mountains and peaks, labelling each of them. You couldn't actually see any of them through the smog, though. Imagine how much improved the smog situation would be if a majority of the commuting vehicles were zero-emission.
I think it depends on where they are getting the electricity from. If solar and wind keep rising, I can imagine that the turnover could accelerate a net-decrease in emissions. No doubt, if every home that had an EV had a solar roof, it would be a very good thing.