Economics of electric vehicles

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

Back on the study from the OP, I want to call out one important factor (I found this in the study itself, not the article):

We also note that households with access to private charging do not have a need to travel for refueling, unlike households with EVs that must rely on public charging, or households with ICEVs. However, this benefit is considered to be modest, and we do not include in the analysis here.

In other words, their cost analysis uses public charging stations, which are typically much more expensive than a home charger. I would spend much more on charging if I had to do it elsewhere.

42

I wanted to engage on the solar ROI–I just calc’ed it out and we are getting a 10% ROI yearly (in Montana). Can you beat that in the market? Yes, probably, but not year in year out, and it’s tax free. Plus I hate Northwestern Energy–fuckers should NOT have a monopoly and a bought Public Service Commission!

43

What? I’ve not read the article or the study so I don’t know if this is as bad as it sounds. Ignoring the ability to charge at home is (hyperbolic analogy) like ignoring that cars can be driven to gas stations to fill up. “I like the range, but having to fill by walking a gas can to the station, and bringing it to the car 5 gallons at a time is absurd. Liquid fueled cars are a dead end!”

Making EVs accessible to people without home charging is an important obstacle to overcome, and an important consideration for people when weighing the costs of an EV. However, dismissing one of the primary quality of life improvements an EV provides as “modest” suggests none of the authors drive an EV, or if they do, they’re doing it wrong.

44

Charging at home is an immense benefit, I agree. Right now we’re charging on 100% solar, which makes me feel good, but I should probably be charging at midnight so Northworsten doesn’t think they need more coal base capacity.

45

On the subject of keeping one’s well-maintained ICE car going as long as possible: I have a 2014 Subaru econobox that I bought used with 5000 miles on it, and have driven for 8.5 years and put on around 30,000 more miles. So I don’t drive much, but I need a car for my volunteer work twice a week. I have not been very kind to this car, and it has three small dings and needs a new rear bumper. It also gets lousy mileage, around 20 mpg if I’m lucky. For reasons of economy, I am considering selling this car and buying a used hybrid (not plug-in) if I can find one in a size and configuration that I can use. This is not easy, as my size requirements are very specific, so I am still looking. I don’t really know how to find what I want, I wish I had a friend in an auto dealership or used car lot who could give me some help.

On the subject of charging an EV at home: I was standing in line at airport checkin last year and the guy in front of me, talking to his friend, said one should not buy an EV unless one has solar at home, as the cost of home electricity from a utility is too high to make it pay. I suppose that depends on where you live, but I wonder how it is as a general rule.

46

Make sure you look carefully at the mileage numbers. There are quite a few hybrids out there that are barely better than their all-ICE equivalents. A ‘mild’ hybrid doesn’t do all that much for you.

With the amount you drive, you will never make back the investment or the CO2 savings by upgrading to a hybrid. Do it if it’s more reliable, or more fun to drive, or more comfortable, but if you are just worried about the planet or the cost of gas, just keep driving the Subie.

47

As more and more of us age more deeply into retirement, the economics of any vehicle of any type come to be dominated by costs of ownership since we just don’t drive that much any more. And doubly so for a dense urban dweller.

48

Is there a source for real mileage numbers? My car claims 25-30 mpg in the city, but I’ve never gotten close to that. Extended driving exclusively on the freeway can get close to 30, but that’s supposed to be 35-40.

49

The general rule as far as I’ve read is that the ROI for a solar installation is like seven years typically. My Civic got 35 mpg and I drive 11k miles per year. Electric and gas prices are high here. I was told I’d spend 33% in electric compared to gasoline. That doesn’t include savings on oil changes and maintenance

50

Around here it also depends on what time of day you charge. Electricity is expensive between 5-8 pm, but super cheap between midnight-6am. So if you set up your car to charge during the off-peak hours, which is what most people would do, it can be really cheap to charge at home.

51

VERY valid point … I also noticed that … e.g. a hybrid Civic (w/ the same ICE engine as my Fit, gets similar mpg numbers as my Fit - break even is after 860.000 miles :wink:

so, yeah - from a “gas-saving” pov you’d be hard pressed to make a hybrid economically interesting - unless you come from a Tahoe or Suburban or some otherworldly big ass SUV

or… it is one of those that allow you to run 15-20 miles on electric only and you can charge it cheaply at home (which would be my ideal scenario)

52

That would also be affected by electricity prices in your area.

I don’t know what the rates are in California, but when we were out there about 2 years back, gasoline was 1.00 to 1.50 more than it was back home. Dunno how their electrical rates compare with ours.

Going with an estimate of 2.75 for the electricity to go 30 miles, versus 3.50 for the gasoline to go that far, you’re saving .75 per 30 miles. If you drive 300 miles a week, that’s a savings of 7.50 a week, or 390 a year. Or 2,730 in 7 years.

The increased cost of purchase (I think someone said 4,000 and of course that will vary) means it’s 10 years before you’ve gotten payback. Then you add in higher road use fees (my state charges an annual registration that is higher if you’ve got an EV or hybrid), and it’s even longer.

There’s a real concern over the power grid being able to support the boom in EV usage. Conflicting reports are out there (NY Times, CNBC, and Wall Street Journal are worried; Forbes and US News are not). Will new generating plants be required? Money for those must come from somewhere.

All that said, I’d still happily get an EV when there is one available that meets our needs. In the meantime, we are among those who keep cars as long as we possibly can; our most recent purchase was because its predecessor, nearly 22 years old, wanted about 2,500 dollars in repairs when the car itself was worth less than 500. Our older car is 17 years old and has about 180K miles on it.

Our newer car, which is a hybrid, does get better mileage than our older one - both are Honda CRVs; the newer one is slightly larger. I think the best we’ve ever gotten on the older one is about 28-29 MPG on the highway; the newer one usually gets 34+ on average (note: rather less than the sticker suggested). I want to say we spent about 4-5K more to get that one versus an ICE version. With those figures, a thousand miles of driving takes 5 more gallons of gas in the old car versus the new one; at 3.50 a gallon that’s 17.50. Our new car has 30K miles on it now, so we’ve saved 30 x 17.50. Or about 525 dollars. Welp, I guess we aren’t saving much there!!

Net advice from me, right now: Get the smallest, most efficient vehicle of whatever type meets your needs (in our case, replacing the dying Civic with another Civic would not have done so), and keep it going as long as you possibly can.

53

We have pretty cheap electricity, but my car is not terribly efficient. I calculated the cost of my “fuel” at $0.04/mile. That’s $1.20 for 30 miles. I’m not disagreeing, just adding another data point.

ETA: You’re right about higher registration fees. I understand we’re not paying highway gas tax, so I’m okay with it. Perhaps is should be pro rata based on miles driven, though.

54

I was based on @Fear_Itself saying the electricity cost was 2.80 for the equivalent of a callon of gas. Which would be more like 9.3 cents per mile.

Using your estimate of 1.20 for the 30 miles versus 3.50 - or a savings of 2.30 per gallon-equivalent. At 300 miles a week, that’s 23 dollars a week in savings, or just under 1200 a year, or about 8300 in 7 years.

Are there currently tax incentives for purchasing an EV? I know the incentives for hybrids are long gone. That also improves the break-even, if so.

So, a bit closer in terms of payback, assuming the various maintenance requirements are a wash (I’ve heard that EVs have less maintenance, but we’ll ignore that for the moment since that’s a “they say” thing).

Higher registration fees chip away at that difference; assuming it’s 100/year, subtract 700 from that 8300 to get a net savings of 7600. If the EV costs less than 7600 more than an ICE, then you’ve got break-even right there.

55

In Washington, it’s higher than that. $150 or so. Plus some other infrastructure charge on top of that. As I said, I don’t mind. I love my car and didn’t buy it to save money. But I know many people are trying to figure out if it will cost them more or less over the life of the car. That’s certainly a fair exercise (and the subject of this thread).

We have had our two EVs 5 years and 4 years now. Other than rotating the tires, we have had zero maintenance cost. Just a data point. It did cost $20,000 to fix my car when I hit a deer at low speed, but it was covered by my insurance.

56

That seems in line with what “they say” (word of mouth from a friend who owned one for a while; she got an ICE after a bit because it no longer met her requirements). I guess no oil changes, limited things like belts and antifreeze, etc.

57

try:

https://www.fuelly.com/car

What numbers do you get?

And concerning Biden’s plan to install thousands of charging stations:

or unpaywalled:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/news/biden-promised-to-install-thousands-of-ev-charging-stations-only-7-have-been-built/ar-BB1kI8y7

58

Compared to our Subaru Forester which our new EV replaced, it takes roughly $0.83 ($0.033/mile) to replace a gallon of gas.

Yes, that seems crazy to not even factor in the much lower cost of home charging, along with the benefit of never having to visit a gas station.

We are at $0.10/ kWh. As I said above, it is cheap to run our EV when we charge at home. And we’ve found it is still less expensive when using a supercharger than the equivalent gas for our Subaru.

59

interesting … here in Chile, there are no (tax) benefits for EVs (makes sense, b/c EVs at $50k would means the government sending $5k government money towards the rich instead of towards the poor) …

BUT you are exempt of registration fees (IIRC for the first 2 years)

I am ok with that modus operandi

60

question:

don’t you have mandatory maintainance intervals to keep the warrantee alive? … even if they were completely BS’ish … just b/c the marque can fleece you? could you speak to that for EVs?

just an anecdotical data-point:
your avg. ICE has a “Service Intervall” of 10,000km here … but a friend told me that the Nissan importer “upped” the S-I to 5,000km (b/c they were obv. very worried about their client’s health&safety - A$$holes) and if you will keep your 6yrs/100,000km warrantee alive you need to donate blood every few months …