Average price of a new vehicle in the US is $50,000. This is priced appropriately considering total cost of ownership delta against a combustion vehicle. Rivian needs more volume for prices to decline from manufacturing efficiency at scale.
Average price of a new vehicle in the US is $50,000. This is priced appropriately considering total cost of ownership delta against a combustion vehicle. Rivian needs more volume for prices to decline from manufacturing efficiency at scale.
A cursory search of the web shows that TCO for EVs in the US is higher than ICE for all but high mileage commuters. Wish it wasn't the case, but insurance alone is a 30% premium.
Model 3 TCO is very competitive for all sedans. But yes, there are a lot of luxury EVs and EVs with questionable reliability.
https://www.self.inc/info/expensive-cars-to-run/
https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-maintenance/the-cos...
Insurance is a bear for Teslas. They cost a lot to repair.
The Model 3 Highland is super fun to drive. Maybe other EVs have this too. It's a very different experience to a similarly priced ICE car, and worth factoring in to the value proposition.
I specify Highland because the previous version was rattly and noisy enough to seriously detract from the zippy driving experience. Highland is nice.
NYT recently did a fantastic calculator. It isn't simple flat one or the other is cheaper. It takes into account buy vs lease, milage, local energy cost, length of ownership etc
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/upshot/ev-vs-gas-ca...
https://www.atlasevhub.com/weekly-digest/new-2025-update-on-...
Are you sure about that? The cost of repairing even minor collision damage on a Rivian is ridiculous.
Yup, R1S dented rear quarter, $55000 to repair, insurance totaled it out...
https://www.reddit.com/r/Rivian/comments/1r19jxb/vivian_is_o...
There are multiple other people in the comments saying they had quarter panels repaired for $15K. Which is still a lot, but it’s not $55K.
There’s definitely more to that story.
I'd love to see the itemized bill.
How are insurers making any money insuring these things nowadays? 30% higher premiums are being mentioned elsewhere in the comments; that doesn't sound like enough!
People keep repeating this uncritically. There is a car-debt crisis, and wages haven't kept up with house/car costs.
We have one person saying "well in Californian wages..." and another saying essentially that 50K isn't a lot of money when the average SALARY is $66K/year.
I also believe this $50,000 stat is the mean car price which is likely to be pushed up by luxury car sales that cost 2-4x what a typical car costs, whereas a median price would give a better indication of what most people are actually spending. I did a quick Google search and wasn't able to find any data on median price, though.
I wonder how much of this ridiculous car money was previously buy-a-house money. If you don't think you'll ever buy a house, you might as well spend it on a car.
> There is a car-debt crisis
To what degree is this caused by car prices versus Americans' compulsion to keep buying new cars? Anecdotally, the folks I know struggling with car payments are almost exclusively in the latter bucket. But I'm open to having my mind changed with data.
If people didn't buy new cars there would never be used cars.
Tell that to Cuba.
Not entirely true; there are at least the lease, rental, and commercial fleet markets supplying predictable inventory of used cars to the public market.
I have 2014 Tesla S which which I recently had drive unit and battery replaced ($20k total). my friends all think I am nuts, but they all have $1k+ payments (some for 72m) while I haven’t had a car payment since 2017 and won’t have another one till 2036 :)
If your friends dumped $20K into paying off those loans they’d be a lot closer to paid off or maybe paid off completely, though. And that’s on a newer, lower mileage car.
I’m all for maintaining vehicles and keeping them on the road, but I don’t think you’re in a place to criticize your friends with $1K car payments after putting almost 2 years worth of those payments into a car that’s over a decade old.
Who paid the $20k?
What are you thinking about getting next?
How many miles?