Our gas prices are climbing to the $5 mark. Many of us are thinking of buying an electric car. Electric car drivers can tell us they laugh at rising gas prices, but there are a few sides to that story!
The average electric car price has reached over $60,000 (and range into the hundreds of thousands!) and it's possible to buy a new gas fueled car for under $20,000. Brian Day of the Lewisville Autoplex has crunched the numbers. "The break even point on various models and their equivalents fuel will have to get to about $10 a gallon before electric cars will start to gain a benefit of overall cost!"
Unplugged: Electric Cars Raise New Environment Concerns
Day says there's everything from maintenance - which can be hard to even find - to higher insurance prices. And then there's the save the planet part about not burning gas that Day says has some holes in it. There's a pollution feature when the battery comes to the end of its life and its cells release problematic toxins, including heavy metals. "You can't dispose them! You can't treat them like a gas/diesel engine. They are harmful to the environment when you can't put them into the ground. There's a field of them just sitting above the ground just leaking into the ground itself. So - the GO GREEN movement is not exactly what they advertise it to be!"
He also says Tesla is also suffering a lot of after-sale customer service problems.
photo:GettyImages
electric cars - are they worth the cost?Photo: Getty Images