Regarding 3, depending on where you are it might not take any time for an EV to pay for itself. The average Australian petrol car driver spends $124 per week on fuel. The cheapest EV here costs $24,000, or $83 per week on a 7 year loan.
Recharging costs are only around $1 per day but even if it was $5 per day it’s still cheaper to drive a loaned EV than to put petrol in a combustion car.
EV parts are extremely expensive IF you can manage to find them, EVs are designed not to be serviceable
[citation needed]
install an external 240-volt outlet just to charge the thing fast enough for me to use it daily
Assuming you’re in the US,120V mains outlet charging adds about 5-8 km or 3-5 miles of range per hour. If you’re really driving so far every day that an overnight charge won’t cover it, an EV surely would be very appealing due to the immense savings on fuel costs.
It would take decades of ownership for mine to pay itself off
Using Australian figures because that’s where I am and what I know - the average petrol car driver here goes 30km per day and spends $124 per week [1] in fuel. To get a 7-year car loan to buy the cheapest EV ($24,000) costs $83 per week[2] (without any trade in considered, which would lower it further) and charging costs are practically negligible (charging off mains power for that 30km per day is only around $1 of electricity).
In other words, it’s literally cheaper to buy an EV on a loan and drive that than to fill up the tank in the petrol car you already have. People think it takes “decades” to break even without doing the maths, but when you actually work it out buying an EV will save money immediately.
Edit to add notes:
[1] According to the Automobile Association affordability dashboard, the average Australian driver paid $93.81 for fuel every week in Q4 2025, when prices were $1.82 per litre. Scaling up for the x1.32 price increase since then, that’s $123.71 per week on petrol for the average driver.
In Australia the least expensive car to buy new is a $21,000 fossil fuel car but the least expensive EV is AU$24,000. Only costs 14% more to get an EV.
PS: Also, the average petrol car driver in Australia spends $124 per week on fuel, so the price difference will be made up in about 24 weeks.
PPS: Also we have 3 hours of free electricity around midday because there is so much solar energy we don’t have capacity to store it all.
PPPS: AU $24,000 is about US $17,000 at current exchange rate.