Which car to buy? Electric of gasoline fueled?

We have two cars in our family and both are nearing the time when we need to replace them. They have started to reach the point when various parts start to break and fixing those parts start to cost more than the value loss of a new car.

Especially if we take in account the lack of reliability - we really don't want our cars to break down while driving to work - and the time lost for taking the car to the garage.

We can ask a separate question if we even need two cars and I might address that issue separately, but for now let's assume we do need the cars.

The main question to me is the electricity vs. gasoline fueled cars or something in between.

My wife is eyeing a hybrid car that tries to run on its batteries, but when it cannot or when the batteries are getting empty then switches to use the gasoline engine to power the car and to fill the batteries. (Actually I think the movement of the car is what fills the batteries and now the gasoline engine directly.)

This sound way better - more environment friendly - than just having a gasoline powered engine as we have now.

I wonder however, isn't it time to buy fully electric vehicles?

The problem with that is that we live in a multi-story building and I don't know how will it be possible to install an electric car charger at the parking level that uses our electric wires. However I just passed by a parking lot of our grocery stores where I saw two charging stations. I guess these are public charging stations that work with some identification system and allow anyone with the right plug to charge their car. Then billing them accordingly.

I need to take a look at that to understand it better.

Beyond the fueling locally in our regular parking space, we also need to be able to fill the electric car in other parts of the country. So I need to understand how easy it is to find places to charge the car.

Another point of consideration is the market for second-hand vehicles? How easy or how hard is it going to be to sell the used car. This I believe is pointing more and more in favor of electric vehicles.

If we are going to really get to the point where companies stop selling petrol fueled vehicles then the infrastructure for those cars (meaning the number an frequency of petrol stations) will decline and thus the value of the use petrol-fueled cars will decline.

Electric car market share

I tried to figure out what is the market-share of electric cars.

Types of electric vehicles:

  • EV - Electric Vehicle (generic term)
  • BEV. Battery Electric Vehicles, or BEVs. These are cars that are powered only from an electric battery.
  • PHEV. Plugin Hybrid Electric Vehicles, or PHEVs. These are cars that have both an electric battery and a combustion engine. Can be charged from wall.
  • HEV or Hybrid. Hybrid cars have an electric battery and a combustion engine.
  • ...
  • Combustion engine only (We are here now)

See also: Types of Electric Vehicles.

Electric car use by country shows that Norway, Iceland, and Sweden lead in terms of percentage in the sales of electric vehicles. Of course there are relatively few people living in those countries, especially in Iceland, are some of the wealthiest countries. They can also have plenty of green energy using all the waterfalls and they are rather isolated so there aren't many tourists coming in by car. Meaning they won't need to keep the gasoline petrol-station infrastructure for the tourists.

Norwegian EV policy - they have decided that by 2025, that's in 4 years all new cars sold should be zero (battery electric or hydrogen) emission vehicles. Impressive.

Israel

I read a few articles about Electric Cars in Israel. The message is mixed. In some places they say 2.5% of the new car sales are EV, in other sources the figure is 5%.

Electric cars in Israel (Hebrew)

The country is small and we live in the center. The northern border is 220 km away. Eilat, the south-most place is 320 km. I think most EVs can do either of those distances without refueling and for most of our daily driving needs they don't need to fuel either. The big question will be if the car can be charged at our regular parking space?

I went to the grocery store where I saw the EV charging station. It belongs to a company called EV Edge (Hebrew). They also provide private charging stations for multi-story buildings and they have a map of public stations.

There seem to be another company called EV Meter but I could not find their map.

Afcon EV (Hebrew) is another company with a map. They also included the price of installing a station. 5,238 NIS (~ 1600 USD) for a buidling. If I am not mistaken they sell Tesla.

EVM (Hebrew) is the magazine for electric cars with its own map.

Plugged In (Hebrew) is another website about Electric Vehicles in Israel. It links to several maps.