> Would I like an electric car? Probably, but the economics don’t work for us. 15 years ago I estimated gas would need to be above $5/gallon for years to justif

> Would I like an electric car? Probably, but the economics don’t work for us. 15 years ago I estimated gas would need to be above $5/gallon for years to justify the cost of a hybrid, let alone a full EV. We got close to that in the last year, but now fuel is back around $3.50 and once again the economics don’t work. How much is electricity there? A few months ago I did the math [1] for all US states and DC comparing a Chevy Bolt charged at home via a normal residential circuit at 8 A to a Kia Forte driven on the highway (39 mpg). My result was that the Bolt would cost less per mile in electricity than a Forte would in gas if G/E > 9.4, where G is the cost of gas in dollars/gallon and E is the cost of electricity in dollars/kWh. If gas is $3/gallon, the Bolt would win if electricity is less than $0.319/kWh. If gas gets down to $2/gallon, Bolt wins in places where electricity is less than $21.3/kWh. Going the other way, here's a table of how low gas has to be for the Forte to win for a given cost of electricity: E Max G for Forte to win $0.15 $1.41 $0.20 $1.88 $0.25 $2.35 $0.30 $2.82 $0.35 $3.29 $0.40 $3.76 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36978950 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36978950