@RaffKarva @jcrabapple Every usage statistic I am finding is much bigger than yours. Are you dividing by the numbers of drivers? I don’t think it makes sense to do it to estimate how much a car consume in its lifetime. Are you limiting your analysis to people living in urban areas? Cars are often of very limited utility there and people in cities don’t own or use as many cars.

In any case, the paper was about the US and, particularly in some states, they use cars A LOT. In most cases, public transportation or other alternatives are not possible because they do not live in urban areas with good infrastructures. I think the paper itself recognised the conclusion wasn’t true everywhere so we shouldn’t automatically generalise it to every driver. But it is certainly true there are people using the car enough to make buying an EV car the best option. And they are not rare in the US (or globally).

Personally, I don’t have a car. I usually just use public transportation. It certainly makes no sense for me to buy any car (EV or not). But I also lived in areas where you cannot do anything without a car. And it isn’t about choice, the infrastructures are just not there.

While many people buying a new Tesla may only own it for 2.5 years (cannot find this data either), it is actually common for cars of the category (regardless of the engine). These vehicles are often bought for doing a lot of mileage (like for taxis or business cars) and they often get new lives in the second-hand market. That counts in the total lifetime.