The vehicles could potentially in service almost 24/7, limited only by charging and maintenance time. Electric vehicles are incredibly cheap to maintain—electri

The vehicles could potentially in service almost 24/7, limited only by charging and maintenance time. Electric vehicles are incredibly cheap to maintain—electric motors have many fewer moving parts, regen braking means little wear on brake pads, etc. The batteries last a surprisingly long time (the batteries are managed to be kept between 20-80% for longevity). I own a Pacifica PHEV, so I can come up with some numbers there: it has a 32-mile electric range off of roughly 13 kwh of charge. So, at 10¢/kwh, you're at about 4¢/mile for electricity. The vehicle can be charged from empty in two hours (on a level-two charger); so if you assume roughly 30 MPH average speed, the vehicle can be on the road ~1/3 of the time. So, assuming 240 miles per day * 365, you're at 87,600 miles per year. Assuming five years of vehicle life (not a stretch for this vehicle, especially in electric mode), you're at 438k miles out of a $50,000 vehicle; you'll probably need a new battery at 200k miles or so, so throw in $10k for that. So we're at ~14¢/mile for depreciation and battery replacement. Now we're at 24¢/mile—double it to factor in other maintenance (tires, cleaning, suspension, etc.), insurance, and to account for my likely optimistic usage pattern. We're still under 48¢/mile. Keep in mind that this is for a massive seven-seat PHEV minivan. With a smaller, pure-electric vehicle (hybrid really isn't needed for this use-case), you're getting longer range and better mileage. Bump up the charge speed (level 3 charging is much faster than level 2), and you can probably get your run:charge ratio above 1:1.