The Link using my local figures, theoretically, IF the carmakers could improve the range, this car would work for me. The only problem for me personally is the range of 82 miles. I'm just over that right now at 86 miles. But look at the electricity prices. If you use my electric price of 8.6 cents, Then 28.6 kwh(amount needed for 100 miles) X 8.6 = $2.46 per day X 5 days = $12.30 per week. 12.30 X 52 = $639.60 for electricity for 500 miles of driving per week. Now compare that to gas. I will compare this to what I drive now, a Toyota Corolla, 31 mpg. 500 divided by 31 X $3.25 =$52.42 of gas per week X 52 weeks = $2725.00 2725 - 639.60 = 2085.40 I will use their example and say that would have bought a gas Honda Fit. The difference in dollars is $12,210. 12,210 divided by 2085.40 = 5.86 so the break even point is only 5.86 years!!! A few things, I don't see the cost of installing a charging station in your garage, so add more for that. Also, electric rates could easily go up. But what if electric rates stay the same or go down? And of course, the price of gasoline can also change. Can you imagine the break even point if gas goes up to $5.00, which is what some people were predicting for this summer! At current electric rates, the break even point at $5.00 a gallon of gas would be extremely low, and that would be an interesting situation. I think the real lesson I'm learning is that as consumers we need to be flexible, and I think the best way to be flexible in this case is to own a hybrid, and I think they have the tech. to do this. We need a plug in hybrid that is rated closer to this 118 than what we have now. I think a Prius rated at 50 is tempting, but I think it's more of a sure thing if a hybrid could get something more like 70+. 70+ compared to 30, and being a hybrid would be the gold standard imo.
Peak demand is what drives electric utilties capital costs. If you could set up a charging station to draw current only during off-peak hours, maybe you could get electricity a lot cheaper. While natural gas prices remain cheap, that could be a winner for electric utilities, if you have one creative and flexible enough to work with you.
TXU Energy has been running commercials for free electricity at night. Seems like the plan to have for those with plug in cars!
My god orangecat you are the only guy here to use REAL numbers! You're going to scare rex and mop and general etc!! Some thoughts: Some utility areas use real time pricing, some average it out. So even if you charge during peak hours it might not matter, or it might- depends where you live. Gasoline not only is passing $5, it's passing $8 or $9- remember you don't own this car for summer 2012, you own it for another 5-8 years or however long you like owning cars. The payback for some EVs is already 2 years in areas with high gasoline prices and decent power prices. I get reports from some analysts that run your similar numbers- but I really give you props for writing it out on a post. It's nice to see analysis done with thought and data and not blogs and bias. Personally, I'm waiting for a Volt like car made into an SUV so I can haul my kids' stuff around. Volvo is making one that comes out in 2014, and Ford flirts with the idea of a Plug in Escape or Explorer soon. Later, I no doubt will go full electric as the batteries improve- and they definitely are. PM me if you want more info on that.
This was a good thread. I don't understand why you thread **** it McBrett. Really, complementing a guy for using real numbers and then pulling numbers out of your ***?
From the article: The electric Fit has an estimated price tag nearly twice as high as the gasoline-powered version. It would take 11 years before a driver makes up the difference and begins saving on fuel. With gas prices falling, the high sticker price for electric vehicles is becoming more of a barrier for American buyers, even though the vehicles are far more efficient than their gas-powered counterparts. That's hurting sales of electrics. Through May, carmakers sold just over 10,000 electric vehicles, less than 0.2 percent of U.S. car and truck sales. That's because the numbers don't add up for the average consumer. — The electric Fit needs 28.6 kilowatt hours of electricity to go 100 miles. At the national average price of 11.6 cents per kilowatt hour, that costs $3.30. A gas-powered automatic-transmission Fit, which gets 31 miles per gallon, needs to burn 3.2 gallons to travel 100 miles. At the national average price of $3.57 per gallon of gasoline, that's $11.52. — People drive an average of almost 13,500 miles a year, so a typical driver would spend $445 on electricity for an electric Fit over a year, and $1,552 on gasoline for a regular Fit. BTW, I think that is an ugly, ugly car IMO. So far, I am sticking with the B&W diesel 335D, I think. Good gas mileage, longevity, and performance. Thanks for the article. It had a lot of quality info.
Got a question for the group.... When the cost for EVs is set, do they go with certain assumptions about future demand or do they sell that car based on covering variable cost? Are these cars more expensive because they are so few to spread the R&D cost? or is this really the cheapest they can currently produce these cars, even if demand were much higher?
I have a Leaf. My electricity cost is around $30-35 a month. It is far cheaper to operate than a gasoline car. It does, however, initially cost far more. My car cost $27,000 after the $7,000 rebate from the government (thank you). The batteries are the major reason that the cars are so expensive and the technology really is not quite there yet. My car has a stated range of 100 miles although realistically the range is more like 80 miles. There are now several 220 volt charging stations at various locations in town which is much better than it was 6 months ago. I am pleased with it as a local car. My original plan was to have a Leaf and use my wife's Subaru on days when I needed to go more than 80 miles. She is now my soon to be ex-wife so I keep around a my Acura TL as a spare. I only drive it maybe once a month. I do not think the car is "worth" it unless you can afford to have a second vehicle and only drive maybe 60 miles or less a day (I drive 30-35 miles a day on average). I do like the driving experience and when I figured out the carbon numbers I emit around 1/3 the carbon that a normal car would (because my electricity is 40% nuclear). I still have not decided whether I am going to keep the car when the lease is up (I leased it because I was uncertain whether I wanted to keep it). It is fun to drive and way quicker than you would think.
One of my favorite South Park episodes:The Link PS not meant to be mean. this thread just reminded me of it.
I thought it was funny. On the first day that I drove my Leaf to work, I passed a Prius feeling all superior. This feeling lasted about 30 seconds until I saw a guy riding his bike to work. It is all relative.
Paso great point about the 2 vehicle scenario. Not everybody is in the same boat. We currently have 2 cross-over SUV's....brought mine in 03 and wife's in 10. I am trying to get years on mine before going to another vehicle b/c I think that is a better financial decision than just trading it in right now. But eventually it will need to be traded in when the cost of maintenance gets high and I will be looking hard at an EV that will compliment our 2 car fleet. We will have the SUV when needed and can use the EV around town or to go to work. If gas prices are higher in the coming years they may be a great financial decision for us. And hopefully those technology issues will be improved and prices may be a bit lower for batteries, etc. Sure electric rates will be a little higher but I don't think they will go up significantly in the next 5 years. Offhand I have had my SUV for 9 years and it has about 110k miles on it. I could look this up later and try to get a more accurate average but let's say the price of gas has averaged $2.75 during those 9 years. My SUV gets about 20 MPG. Let's be on the generous side and say got 22 MPG. I have purchased 5,000 gallons of gas over these 9 years and paid $13,750 in gas. Using the math from the OP, if it cost $2.46 per 100 miles then I would have paid $2,706 over those 9 years for electricity. This is not an apples to apples comparison I understand but this would have saved me $11,044 in fuel savings over those 9 years. I guess if you want to break even in 5 years it may not be worth it but most people I know these days keep their cars for much longer than 5 years.
I have never viewed buying a car as a pure economic decision. I think we would all drive Honda Civics if this was the sole consideration. It is nice to drive by gas stations and laugh though. I really hate $50 fill ups.
Ahh, what a great country we live in. One where you can afford to have a vehicle to make you feel better about your contributions to the environment and another to get the job done.
pharm, the reason I was so excited to discover a break even point of 5.86 years is exactly what you are describing. That is, that most people do keep their vehicles longer than five years. Now, imagine you go another couple of years past the 5.86 years paying the relatively low electric rates similar to what we have now, and then all of a sudden you have to fork over $1000 for a battery? or $2000? I haven't done the math on that yet, but I would imagine that if you have a vehicle that is 7.86 years old, and has let's say 150,000 miles on it, and everything else looks to be in good shape, I would think you would want to go ahead and buy the battery, with the intention to drive the vehicle another 4-5 years. (assuming the vehicle only takes the same amount of kwh to run the vehicle as was stated when you bought the vehicle. Could technology improve in those years to make it so the vehicle requires less than what was stated?) In that scenario, depending upon the price of gas, this kind of vehicle still makes sense to own.
paso, do you have a kwh number that your Leaf requires per 100 miles? If you do, is this a number given to you by Nissan that you verified through charging your Leaf?
75 X 5 = 375 miles for a five day week. 375 X 52 weeks = 19,500 miles per year. 19,500 X 7.86 = 153,270 miles This does not include any misc trips in town on weekends. I had no idea a replacement battery was so expensive. If you are correct about that, I agree with you about the decision to not buy another battery.
The battery has an 8 year/100,000 mile warranty. My battery is rated at 24 kWh. It is my understanding that the battery costs around $10,000. It is hard to track exactly how the battery drains because it varies with speed and temperature. You can go 100 miles, but probably need to go about 40 mph. The range is more like 70 miles at 70 mph. There is a chart a guy put together that tells you how the power bars translate and speed and distance which you can download from a Leaf BBS. The car tells you its remaining range but this is sort of a guestimate. I ignore the range and focus on the power bars. I came within maybe five miles of running out of power one time, but truthfully there is a reserve that I never touched. As for keeping a spare car, I drive my gasoline engine car maybe once a month. If this is some big deal, I don't get it. I also don't get the animosity certain cretins have towards electric cars. They are the future one way or the other. They also make a lot of sense as a city car. Your decision to buy a car is not strictly an economic one. My 12 year old wants the Leaf in three or four years when she can drive and I will probably get a Jetta TDI for me.
I would agree that 150k miles in 8 years is probably unrealistic for most. It is the most extreme commuter who works 5 days a week and uses the car quite a bit on the weekend. But I don't think you need to have that extreme mileage to make this cost effective as technology improves and prices comes down. When I bought my flat screen LCD TV in 2006 it cost me 4k. 3-4 years that TV had been surpassed a bit with newer models and those newer models were selling for quite a bit less. I bought same size TV but 240Hz LED TV for 2k. Now they are even less than that. I think right now this is an attractive buy financially for a 2 vehicle family that already has a larger gas vehicle (SUV or truck perhaps) that they can use on more extended trips and for certain uses. Right now the math doesn't show this to be a great financial move in other situations unless you keep the car for a long period of time...at least 8-10 years and are a moderate to heavy mileage user. But the price will come down and technology will get better. Interesting to see that it can be a good economic decision now though, at least if you are in 2 vehicle situation.
Probably, pharmD. Personally, I'm not an early adopter of technology. But, there are plenty of people who are. Battery technology will probably be a major drawback to EVs for the next decade. After that, I think there is a good chance that the technology will work. Personally, I think the better option at this point is a diesel which gets 30% better gas mileage than gasoline powered cars and last about 1.5X longer. But, to each their own. I don't get too upset with Prius' unless they pass me on my bike and then I have to brake to wait on them.
Uninformed, this is a good question. I do not know the answer although I suspect that the car uses very little energy while idling. The range is further in city driving because speed is what really drains the battery (I guess drag makes it less efficient). There is no instant meter to tell you how much power you are using or at least there is not one that I am aware of. It has satellite navigation built in, but because of its range and where I live, I never use it (so it is possible there is something in this computer that might be able to tell this). The car is really quiet and even emits a little noise below 30 mph so you don't hit people walking or on bikes. A couple of interesting tidbits about the car. It is amazing what instant full torque means for acceleration. An electric engine has full torque immediately whereas my Acura TL has full torque at something like 6,500 rpm. From 0-40, my car is very quick (not as fast as my TL, but then the TL has 270 hp). It can spin the tires. It is not very fast above 40 although I have driven 80 on the freeway and the maximum speed is 90. It also has a very good air conditioner. The heater is not very good but this is fine for where I live.
fwiw I got the car in October and have around 7,500 miles on it I put around 900 miles a month on it.
here is another success story on the obama hybrid. as with everything else he pushes it is a coat hanger abortion economically. Obviously, no one at GM (Government Motors) is smarter than a fifth grader when doing math. This is why Obama saved GM-who by the way still hasn't repaid taxpayers. Remember the Obama administration has more academics as Czars and staffers than any other three Presidents combined. Maybe some real life business experience should be in order. The Cost to operate a Chevy Volt Eric Bolling (Fox Business Channel's Follow the Money) test drove the Chevy Volt at the invitation of General Motors. For four days in a row, the fully charged battery lasted only 25 miles before the Volt switched to the reserve gasoline engine. Eric calculated the car got 30 mpg including the 25 miles it ran on the battery.So, the range including the 9 gallon gas tank and the 16 kwh battery is approximately 270 miles. It would take you 4 1/2 hours to drive 270 miles at 60 mph. Then add 10 hours to charge the battery and you have a total trip time of 14.5 hours. Note, during the Tour de France riders would cycle this distance in 9-10 hours including 7-10 degree mountain climbs. In a typical road trip your average speed (including charging time) would be 20 mph. Again, on the Tour, cyclists average 22-28mph depending on the grade as they travel over the Alps and Pirennes. According to General Motors, the Volt battery holds 16 kwh of electricity. It takes a full 10 hours to charge a drained battery. The cost for the electricity to charge the Volt is never mentioned so I looked up what I pay for electricity (YMMV). I pay approximately (it varies with amount used and the seasons) $1.16 per kwh. 16 kwh x $1.16 per kwh = $18.56 to charge the battery. $18.56 per charge divided by 25 miles = $0.74 per mile to operate the Volt using the battery. Compare this to a similar size car with a gasoline engine only that gets 32 mpg. $3.19 per gallon divided by 32 mpg = $0.10 per mile. The gasoline powered car cost about $15,000-$20,000 while the Volt costs $46,000......... So Obama wants us to pay 2.5 to 3 times as much, for a car that costs more that 7 times as much to run, and takes 3 times longer to drive across country..... REALLY ?????
