4 ms·

Study compares electric vehicle charge costs vs. gas and results were surprising

2 points by rmason 5y ago

rmason 5y ago
I've met Patrick Anderson at different meetings around the Lansing area lots of times and always had great discussions. He's opinionated but he can always back up what he's saying with the facts. I'm thinking of buying an electric vehicle and my gut was they are more expensive, now I can back it up.
- cjsplat 5y ago
  Table 5 says that they assume an average of 5 miles to the charging station (so 10 miles round trip) per fueling trip, and then they are effectively billing the costs of that driving time and the recharge time against the EV. In contrast, the local gas station is assumed to be only 1 mile away, and (reasonably) refuel time is assumed to be small. The result in the analysis is that EVs have 5 to 8 hours wasted per month on getting to charging stations and waiting for the charge to finish. You can throw this study out the window if you are low mileage (so almost always can recharge at home), and/or have chargers at work or where you do errands (so you are not deadheading the trip to the charger and tapping your foot waiting for the charge to finish. Also, this study is focused on the cost of fuel and fueling, not vehicle costs. There are interesting studies on depreciation and maintenance that are heavily in the favor of EVs. As the ad says "your mileage may vary".
api 5y ago
Ridiculous. The cost is less than half unless you only charge at overpriced kiosks or live somewhere with exceptionally costly electricity like an island. Where I live 62kWh is under $10 at home and yields about 230 miles of driving. Doing it at kiosks is about twice that cost at most. Gas is almost $4/gallon or almost $40 for similar range on a typical car. Super efficient hybrids do a bit better. So home charging is about 1/4 the price. You also have a tiny fraction of the maintenance and there are far fewer moving parts to break. The Nissan Leaf (mine) has a fixed gear transmission and requires like one maintenance visit a year. No oil changes, no complex transmission to flush or fix, etc. Note that the results may differ if you buy a very expensive high end EV and amortize it’s cost, but that is only a fair comparison if you compare to a very expensive luxury or sports ICE car. Comparing TCO of a Porsche to a Honda Civic is not meaningful.
cjsplat 5y ago
https://www.andersoneconomicgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/EVtransition_FuelingCostStudy_10-21-21.pdf https://www.andersoneconomicgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/202... The actual study.

2 points by rmason 5y ago

I've met Patrick Anderson at different meetings around the Lansing area lots of times and always had great discussions. He's opinionated but he can always back up what he's saying with the facts. I'm thinking of buying an electric vehicle and my gut was they are more expensive, now I can back it up.

cjsplat 5y ago
Table 5 says that they assume an average of 5 miles to the charging station (so 10 miles round trip) per fueling trip, and then they are effectively billing the costs of that driving time and the recharge time against the EV. In contrast, the local gas station is assumed to be only 1 mile away, and (reasonably) refuel time is assumed to be small. The result in the analysis is that EVs have 5 to 8 hours wasted per month on getting to charging stations and waiting for the charge to finish. You can throw this study out the window if you are low mileage (so almost always can recharge at home), and/or have chargers at work or where you do errands (so you are not deadheading the trip to the charger and tapping your foot waiting for the charge to finish. Also, this study is focused on the cost of fuel and fueling, not vehicle costs. There are interesting studies on depreciation and maintenance that are heavily in the favor of EVs. As the ad says "your mileage may vary".

api 5y ago

Ridiculous. The cost is less than half unless you only charge at overpriced kiosks or live somewhere with exceptionally costly electricity like an island. Where I live 62kWh is under $10 at home and yields about 230 miles of driving. Doing it at kiosks is about twice that cost at most. Gas is almost $4/gallon or almost $40 for similar range on a typical car. Super efficient hybrids do a bit better. So home charging is about 1/4 the price. You also have a tiny fraction of the maintenance and there are far fewer moving parts to break. The Nissan Leaf (mine) has a fixed gear transmission and requires like one maintenance visit a year. No oil changes, no complex transmission to flush or fix, etc. Note that the results may differ if you buy a very expensive high end EV and amortize it’s cost, but that is only a fair comparison if you compare to a very expensive luxury or sports ICE car. Comparing TCO of a Porsche to a Honda Civic is not meaningful.

cjsplat 5y ago

https://www.andersoneconomicgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/EVtransition_FuelingCostStudy_10-21-21.pdf https://www.andersoneconomicgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/202... The actual study.