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Can't afford an EV. Can't afford gas. Guess I don't go into the office.
Small bikes like the Honda Wave get 160 mpg and cost like 1200 new, bigger ones like cb750 hornet get 50 mpg and go for 9k new.
Ah yes, a small bike so I can add medical bills to my already dwindling budget. Great advice.
Small refers to the displacement, its not a minibike. You wouldn't take it on a highway, but it'll carry you around town, and can hold a suprising amount of luggage if you're creative/balanced.
What is this?! A bike for small dogs?! Blue Steel Face
That was el tigre.
You wouldn't take it on a highway
Heh, it's not a bad idea, but sadly it wouldn't be practical for most in the US. Living here, you'd be hard-pressed to find many people who don't need to use a highway to get to work. Maybe in small towns and big cities? At my own job, I can't think of a single coworker that lives in the same town as we work, and almost every person needs to take a major highway to get there. Theoretically we could take back roads, but it would take so much more time vs the highway that leads right into town. Commutes of a half hour or more are common.
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Well Nazi musk didn't help.
People who did want electric didn't want a Tesla.
And other options were less easy to find
But there are still good alternatives.
Like the Rivian
And the Olinia (still being developed in Mexico and inexpensive).
Probably others.
But Rivian seemed pretty popular
If you can charge at home, a used car with 50-100 miles of range is plenty. Much more affordable than buying new, too.
Anyone worried about the price of gas is not buying a $150,000 Rivian.
Yeah so that's the other problem with electric vehicles. Most are way too expensive for the average person.
Definitely too expensive for the lower income people.
less easy to find
Me, looking at every Nissan dealership nationwide for the last 15 years: ...
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I would like to point out that it wasn't until recently that EV charging stations opened up in my town. I checked last year and there were none nearby. Now there's a couple. The infrastructure isn't there yet for middle America.
My last car was an EV. I loved how it drove, I loved charging at home and never having to stop at the gas station, and I told everyone around me, "If you can afford it, you have an ethical obligation to buy a hybrid or an EV." Since Trump 2.0 I've been concerned about some form of collapse that would make me flee my home - natural disaster, violent military occupation, etc. I started to wonder, "What's stopping Elon from limiting access to all these superchargers?" Public chargers are much slower than gas, and they're easily vandalized. The whole thing just seems like a liability at this point. At least in a Mad Max scenario I could barter for a can of guzzoline.
I hate that I'm even considering any of this.
If you have to flee your home like that, odds are millions of others are doing the same and you're not going to be able to find gas anyway.
I feel like having an EV and solar panels is about as prepared as you can get.
Just shoot someone and take their car running on gas, problem solved ez pz.
But seriously if you're in a situation where our power grid has collapsed I don't think the gas pumps are gonna work either. Besides you could still create a mobile charging solution using solar, I don't think it'd be fast or anything but it might even be more viable than trying to get gasoline in a real shit hits the fan world.
Yeah, solar crates way more independence than combustion fuel. Definitely have to pay a price though, since the upfront cost on a sizeable solar array will set most people back a bit.
In a mad Max scenario you have 6 weeks of fuel. Even if there's still some left after that point, it'll start to degrade. You might be able to keep a car running for up to a year if you managed to get hundreds of gallons of gas, and keep it stabilized.
Realistically speaking in a total societal collapse scenario, your best bet is staying close to people you know. If you're thinking you could drive off in to the woods somewhere, A: you and everybody else, B: can you run off in to the woods right now? Today, drop everything and just go live off grid? If so, why haven't you, and if not, what makes you think you'll be able to because the power is out?
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When they moan like this at $5/gal, what will Americans do once it reaches serious numbers?
Drive less. After doing a run on gas stations at any sign of a shortage. We have seen this before. At least twice in my lifetime.
No, busses and trains.
Sorry best I can do is 30% apr on an 84 month loan for a 125,000 dollar car that will lose 90% of it's resale value in 3 years.
That might cover those living in very densely populated areas - and I welcome improving all of it. But those won't really cover people living far from metro areas, or even in the suburbs/exurbs of most metro areas.
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And solar
I want an EV. I also unfortunately drive longer distances than most people on average and also let my car sit for days with no access to a charge. Some EV systems use 1-2% battery per day for BMS, conditioning and telemetry, and that would make it difficult to use an EV in my case and only charge to the 80% mark to ensure battery longevity.
Nobody really makes a car that can do that for an affordable price. Yeah, I guess I’m probably a special use case, but nonetheless the cost and range limitations are prohibitive.
gas is almost $4.00/gal here in Wisconsin, so.. cool.
That's because here in the Midwest we get a lot of our oil for gasoline from Canada. But demand is going to continue to spike and it will not stay that way.
It's amazing again how limited the US is with choices. In the rest of the world including soon Canada, there is a much greater choice of EV's. Take Australia for example: besides Tesla there is BYD, Seekr, Geely, MG, KIA, Polestar, Cherry, Hyundai, Skoda and WV. But because of the unsubstantiated hatred of anything Chinese, the US has only a couple of choices. Funnily enough, the CEO of Ford drives a Xiaomi SU7 and does not want to hand it in. Look up his interview after he visited China. The same applies to mobile phones. There are amazing phone brands in the rest of the world but again the US is limited. Land of the free but as long at it is beneficial to the US corporations. Competition is frowned upon.
I can't justify a new car because I barely drive mine, but I still need it for a few edge cases, but I hate it because I bought it new just before some big features like back-up cameras became popular, but selling it would be a fool’s move because it’s in great shape since I take such good care of it and never drive it but it’s so old they would only offer a pittance.
Eternally torn between selling everything and becoming a hermit who lives in the woods and ramping up my consumerist whore game to get the best new thing.
Being happy with what you have is the zen state here.
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this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2026
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