Even if you get an electric car or hybrid with a loan, wouldn't the pay off point be cumulative because you're still using an electric car or hybrid? Sure you might not get there with that specific car, but over time and cumulatively you'll get there?
McTraveller has a point with climate change in that you may be aware of someplace flooding halfway around the world, but you wouldn't know precisely how it affects you, until it does affect you.
9 years later, I linked an article about it. And that didn't include any math for several other issues:
- opportunity cost on the extra $7700 up-front (interest payments or investment interest)
- depreciation on the car etc
- higher insurance premiums
So you're looking at a true pay-off point around 10-12 years I'm guessing. On top of that, the people in the market for a new car at
any point are disproportionately the people who buy cars
more often, so they are the ones who won't benefit from a saving 12 years from now.
Also, banking on break-even point 12 years later is economically risky behaviour (what if that model is superceded or obselete and you can't get parts). That needs to come down to less than 5 years so that people who are risk-adverse can reasonably decide to get one.
Your point about "cumulative payoff point" isn't a coherent point. The point is, that if you have choice of Car A or Car B then it needs to have a pay-off point
before the point where you are going to replace
that car. Depreciation also needs to be factored in, to guess at how much trade-in value it will have. Then you can treat ownership of the car as a single, combined choice over
product lifespan for e.g. the car you buy in 2017.
However, when you go to decide again on a new car in 2025, there's no such thing as "cumulative" benefit of having merely owned an electric car previously. There is only whether you saved money, or you did not. And if you sold your electric car and got a new one
before the break-even point, you lost money on the deal
by definition. That's what "break even point" means.