When I buy a new car, should I get all gas, a plug-in hybrid or all electric?

Get a gas only car. Then you won’t have to worry about a spontaneous electrical fire burning down your house, much less just the car.
I believe that all electric cars will have no resale value when it comes time to trade them in because the (very expensive) batteries may need to be replaced, if that would even be possible.
Also, I think electric cars will lose their attraction as more and more people get trapped in their cars in the course of auto accidents, which could cause an intense electrical fire with the driver (and possibly someone else) being burned alive.

Electric only. With the money saved from the price of gas, oil changes, and all of the other maintenance, you can rent a car for the annual road trip and still come out ahead.

@kritiper Gas cars are about 10x more likely to catch fire than EV’s on a per mile basis. They just don’t make the news.

Hard to say for certain in this forum. The cost of operating your typical EV is about 3 miles/kwh. The cost of your electricity at home can vary wildly depending on your location, the electric company, the time of day, etc. For instance, I just looked at my electric company rates. Peak hours during the summer differ from peak hours in the winter, there are off-peak times and super off-peak times. The range of cost is around 4 cents/kwh up to about 39 cents/kwh. Likewise where you live also impacts the cost of gasoline pretty significantly. From what I can find they range from $2.70/gal up to $4.43/gal (averages of states).

So given you are only going to drive 200–300 miles per week we can start creating cost comparisons. Let’s assume 200 miles per week. If your gasoline engine gets 35 mpg and has a 10 gal tank, you should be able to go all week on a tank of gas and have plenty left over. You are paying anywhere from $15.30 to $25.25 to drive that 200 miles on a gasoline engine. Of course this will vary depending on the fuel mileage you get, if it is in town or freeway, etc.
For the same 200 miles in an EV, you are looking at 66.7 kwh worth of electricity. That means the cost can be anywhere from $2.7 up to $26 to make the trip.

There are other considerations as well. The availability of electric charging stations, how many long trips you would take, maintenance costs, repair costs, etc. There are way too many variables to make an honest answer on this forum.

Get a hybrid, but not a plug in hybrid. I have a hybrid Honda CRV I bought in February, I love it. My insurance cost dropped, my gas costs are a third of what they were. Since it is not a plug in, I was able to take it on a 450 mile trip earlier this year without having to be concerned about charging.

I like @zenvelo‘s reasoning.

@seawulf575 Yes, good info. I’m not planning to use this forum only in making my decision but good points.

@zenvelo What I’m looking at so far the hybrid is only offered as a plug-in. I don’t know why.

FWIW, I’m more concerned with environmental issues than saving money. Also, this will very likely be the last car I buy.

@kritiper I felt the same way 10 years ago. Since then, a decade of evidence is in, and your fears are unjustified.

This is anecdotal, not statistical evidence, but I adore my Prius hybrid. It averages 55 mpg, and I never need to worry recharging (just refilling the gasoline tank, as with any conventional vehicle, but very infrequently).

I like @seawulf575‘s answer a lot. In my case I have solar on my house so ultimately when I change my gas guzzler out that will have a bearing on my decision. Personally, I’m going to wait about 3 years to see what’s on the market. I think we’re at an inflection point.

Also, now is not the time to be looking for vehicles. Supply is low and demand is high.

@Caravanfan Did you not read that I said at some point next year? I know now is not the right time to buy.

@janbb Of course I did. The supply chain isn’t going to be much better next year either. There is a chip shortage that’s not going away anytime soon.

And you can buy a new car next year—it’s just that you’ll have trouble finding one and it will be difficult to get any deals.

^^ Aha! Then I may have to creep along with my 2008 for longer. But I’m almost ready for a new.

We shall see.

@janbb I know this because I just went through it with my daughter. You go to the dealer lots and they are empty. They have no inventory. We ended up buying a used Honda Fit for her and there were only 2 available in the Bay Area. We bought one of them.

I’ll add that there are some good electric cars that are in the wings. Hyundai has one that’s coming out. So does VW. Toyota’s is about 2 years away.

Are you looking at the new Hyundai Tucson? That’s what I’ve been considering.

@janbb go to library and pull out some reviews from Consumer Reports.

Plug-in Hybrid with a gas motor too, they exist.

@Caravanfan Thanks. That must have been frustrating!

@Tropical_Willie That’s what I was looking at online.

@cookieman No, I’m thinking about a Volvo wagon possibly.

@seawulf575 Is correct in that the costs of electricity and gas fluctuate significantly by location, time of day and over the course of months and years. I can give my personal experience with my Model 3. I was driving around 10k miles per year, spending about $250 per month in gas and then I got my EV and spent $0 in gas but my electric bill went up by about $30–40 per month. I’m in Virginia where gas and electricity are pretty affordable relative to many other states.

When doing the math, don’t forget the savings in maintenance. EV’s still need tires, windshield wipers, brake fluid, but they don’t need timing belts, transmission fluid, spark plugs, oil changes, fuel filters, mufflers, ignition stuff, starter motors, and about a hundred other things. Mechanically EVs are pretty simple, which is why I think they’re a much better choice than hybrids, which have all of the stuff that can go wrong on a gas car plus the batteries, which are much smaller than a full EV would have. This means those hybrid batteries are being worked much harder and will degrade significantly faster than what you would see in an EV.

EV battery degradation is both simple and complicated. The simple idea is that the batteries used in EVs like to remain in the middle of their capacity, so charge to 80% don’t drop it down too low and they can last many hundreds of thousands of miles with only modest degradation (maybe 10% less max range after 200k miles). In practice, if you plug in every night, charge to 80% then you should never have to worry about your batteries. In fact, you get so used to it that if you ever need to fill up at a gas station, it feels really weird. On the flip side, if you’re charging to 100% and draining down to close to 0% very frequently, then you will degrade your batteries. This is the problem that hybrid owners have to deal with, because their batteries are so tiny and are constantly getting drained to 0%.

I also agree that there may be a wider variety of EVs in the near future. For many years, Tesla was the only company really taking EVs seriously. It seems that the trend is finally starting to change.

This would be a good question for Lucky Guy to answer since he used to work in the auto industry.

You may save money on an electric car, but the savings will catch up to you when you trade it in and find out you lost an extra $15,000 because the car you trade in needs new batteries.

@gorillapaws I would rather be in a gas powered car fire than a battery fire because you’ll have more time to get out. Those electric fires are intense (and unpredictable, since the car needn’t be in an accident to ignite!) and they don’t go out easily! And they are immediate! And once there are more electric cars on the road, the more electrical caused fires we will hear about. And the horror stories of the people who were burned alive.
BTW, most fires in gasoline powered cars are caused because the battery wasn’t properly secured in the engine compartment.

I’m curious, @kritiper. Do you still use the Yellow Pages?

@Hawaii_Jake I sure do! I get results and I’m the only business in there that does what I do.

@kritiper: Does it upset you when the paper boy carelessly tosses your yellow pages onto your sun dial and the ice delivery guy has to retrieve it?

pst pst @kritiper batteries don’t cost anywhere near that, if they did new hybrid would $55,000 not $42,000 !

Maybe $1,000 to $6,000 . . . . https://www.dependablecarcare.com/blog/how-much-does-a-hybrid-car-battery-cost-to-replace

For what it’s worth, @janbb, this info is six years old. When I was researching a new car, in 2015, one of my big concerns was environmental impact. At the time, the car tech wasn’t the same, and after some considerable researching and phone calling, I found that our electric grid here was almost all powered by petroleum. The hybrids I looked at were plug ins, so I figured it was kind of a six-of-one deal.

Now the design and efficiency of electric vehicles is much better, I will have confidence buying one next time.

I pondered this question a few months ago when I needed a car.

I landed on @zenvelo‘s platform – a hybrid because it was eco but I could drive it on trips to rural America without range anxiety.

But used car prices were wacky in July, making my preference way too expensive. For half the price of what I really wanted, I bought a subcompact gas-engined car (Ford Fiesta).

37 mpg, it’s fun to drive (5 speed manual) and I feel like I lucked into it. I expect to keep it a few years and switch to electric.

@cookieman The phone book (Yellow Pages) aren’t delivered anymore. You have to pick one up at the news stand.
@Tropical_Willie First I heard of it a few years ago, estimates of a new battery were $10,000. Now consider inflation. They might be $1000 to $6000 in your estimates, but there are probably multiple batteries like that in a single application. Of course, there is still the issue of spontaneous fires, not jut the ones that occur in a accident.

Clarification on application needs to be addressed here.
@Tropical_Willie Is talking about batteries that are small and not easily replaced in the car. Therefore, the car will only have a limited range of, say, 250 miles, before the car must be parked overnight at a location where the battery(ies) can be fully recharged. These batteries, when due to be replaced, may cost the amount he quoted, not including installation labor costs. If travelling a long distance it might take days to get there.
The type of battery I was referring to is easily replaced so that after driving a certain distance, say, 250 miles, the battery is easily removed (as it was designed) at a service station, (similar in time to refueling a gas tank) then the car could be driven another 250 miles IN THE SAME DAY (which would be practical) and so on. These are the types of batteries that I mentioned that might cost around $15,000 each.

@kritiper “The type of battery I was referring to is easily replaced so that after driving a certain distance, say, 250 miles, the battery is easily removed (as it was designed) at a service station, (similar in time to refueling a gas tank) then the car could be driven another 250 miles IN THE SAME DAY (which would be practical) and so on. These are the types of batteries that I mentioned that might cost around $15,000 each.”

. . .sources please and who is running the battery network ??