Comment by paxy
1 day ago
You can drive a $30K car and have a $10K backup power system.
An $80K-100K car that replaces the two isn't some genius purchase.
Sure you can spend all the money you want on a luxury toy, nothing wrong with it, but it's weird trying to justify it as anything but that.
That $30k car could be an EV, too, and be part of the backup power system.
In Australia, $10k would buy not only a ton of solar panels but also batteries. The US has decided to make solar and batteries at the home super expensive, unnecessarily.
What you've shown is that there is a crossover where a gas car + generator beats an electric car.
That doesn't mean electric cars shouldn't be considered as power backup, or that buying a nice electric car vs a nice gas car doesn't come with the added benefit of "Don't need a 10k generator anymore".
> That doesn't mean electric cars shouldn't be considered as power backup, or that buying a nice electric car vs a nice gas car doesn't come with the added benefit of "Don't need a 10k generator anymore".
From redundancy perspective, a genset + car is hands down a better combo. A functional ICE car is cheaper and goes everywhere without any trip planning around charging stations, which is another plus.
If cost is your only factor yes. But the vast majority of people pick cars they like, and EV's are great. No need to dog on them needlessly. The trip planning thing is super overblown. Now 2 years into my first EV, going to a charger that's not my house _at all_ is quite rare - couple times a year; even when I travel Portland to Seattle, I don't have to stop on the way such that outside Olympia, I don't even know where the charge stations are. And that's the worst it'll ever be.
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ICE cars are barely cheaper, almost never over any span of time due to cost of ownership, and there's no trip planning around charging. It's clear you've never done a road trip in a Tesla. Almost all Tesla owners have had ICE cars first, not sure who you're trying to convince here with your lies.
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I mean presenting one set of tradeoffs just shows that there are tradeoffs.
If you're looking at two $55,000 cars, and one has power interconnect and one does not, it's not like adding a $1000-$10,000 generator on top is somehow immediately better unless you're adding in factors that make it better (like buying a cheaper car). There's 3 or 4 superchargers within a few miles of my house, and every time I've lost power I could easily go charge my car so I never worried about that.
Not everyone lives in that situation or has the same "one or two days without local power but chargers still work" threat model. It just so happens that's been the biggest actual, real, problem that my car could have fixed for me.
Yes, the crossover point is around $5-10k more than an ice vehicle, assuming the electric vehicle powers a house just as well as a gas generator does.
The cybertruck costs roughly $82k, which is about 40-50k more than other pickup trucks.
For the same price, you could install 2 1000-gallon propane tanks and enough gasoline to power your backup generator for a year nonstop.
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An Ioniq 5 is not a $80-100k car, though. The difference in cost between it and an equivalent gas car is less than $10k.
Carmax has used 2025 SEL Ioniq 5's with 10-15k miles for 33k; that's practically new. Other than the ICCU issue, probably the best electric deal rn? 84kwh battery, I've can drive it Portland to Seattle on 2/3 of a charge.
My generator was $1000 and can power my entire house (including server rack). If I bought it used it would’ve been $500. I can trivially store 2 weeks worth of gasoline (and I do, constantly) and as long as somewhere within 700km of my house has gasoline I can get there, refill, and get home. I own 6 gas cars and they total less than $33k. My daily I paid $2500 for and average 6L/100km. (All CAD) If you start taking used cars into account the math goes waaaaaay towards gasoline car + generator.
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The cost of my 2015 Subaru Forester is apparently around 7k. A gas powered generator is 2-3k (and can be refilled with quick trips to the nearest usable gas station) and you can also pair it with a solar-powered one with panels for 3k.
That puts the total setup price to about 10% of a CT-Energy station.
That’s a used car that’s more than halfway through the median lifespan of a vehicle.
We could start comparing used EVs if we want to.
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I have a champion tri-fuel that cost < $1k which runs essentially my whole house. It's plumbed into my natural gas so as long as that is up (it has never gone out), I don't even have to refill it.
I read somewhere that it's a big deal if a natural gas network runs out of gas because then air can get into the system. That can lead to explosions, so they have to systematically purge the entire network.
We have the same. $2K generator, while house transfer switch, natural gas hookup. Guess we'll never have a power failure again, since we just got a new generator.
> An $80K-100K car
See, your problem is assuming that the EV is 80-100K. Or that the ICE car is 30K. This is a contrived comparison. An average new car is well over 30K. And I bought a brand new Lightning for 50K. Being able to use 131kWh of battery for things other than driving is a pleasant bonus, and I prefer it to having a gas generator I have to keep maintained and store fuel for.