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Should You Buy an EV? A calculator to figure it out

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Re: Should You Buy an EV? A calculator to figure it out

#71

Post by adhesive_wombat »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #63
adhesive_wombat wrote: post #38

The "best" figures for a petrol car is 39mpg, which seems a bit low. My (diesel) car will do over 50, and it's over 10 years old and isn't famously economical.

Petrol is not diesel, so not sure how your datapoint relates. Which petrol cars get more than 39mpg? Also, were diesel cars only getting those high mpg due to cheating the emissions limits? I never saw them in the US.

My car gets over 50 mpg and that's from odometer and fuel volume, not from a spec sheet.

Diesel goes a bit further than petrol on a volume basis but not that much. Maybe it's just due to smaller US gallons and a cruisy commute.

A colleague of mine gets 65 mpg, fwiw, and it's not a hybrid.

Also the emissions thing wasn't about fuel economy, but about NOx emissions.

Re: Should You Buy an EV? A calculator to figure it out

#72

Post by prmoustache »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #63
adhesive_wombat wrote: post #38

The "best" figures for a petrol car is 39mpg, which seems a bit low. My (diesel) car will do over 50, and it's over 10 years old and isn't famously economical.

Petrol is not diesel, so not sure how your datapoint relates. Which petrol cars get more than 39mpg? Also, were diesel cars only getting those high mpg due to cheating the emissions limits? I never saw them in the US.

> Also, were diesel cars only getting those high mpg due to cheating the emissions limits? I never saw them in the US.

Because you guys like huge heavy cars full of unnecessary toys inside.

Re: Should You Buy an EV? A calculator to figure it out

#74

Post by shagie »

nulbyte wrote: post #34
cronokirby wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One big difference is the density of the fuel. You can fill a car with gas in under a minute. While fast-charging (like Tesla's super charging) has growing deployment, that's still at least 15 minutes or so, which is a significant difference. And, the density of that is just not there yet, so for the near future having charging at home makes daily driving much more convenient.

The difference is: You're not standing around waiting for my car to charge. Your parked to do something else. Depending on where there is, there may well be enough density. Here, we have 129 stations, and half of them are free. It goes up to over 300 if you include the rest of the metro. We're not that large a city, either.

Imagine the road trip with an EV.

We're driving from Chicago to Memphis (about 600 miles or two full charges of a Tesla).

First question is "is there sufficient charging in the 200 - 300 mile distance? If you run out of charge, its a bit more difficult than "call AAA to bring you a gallon of gas" ( https://tiremeetsroad.com/2022/05/28/aaa-members-will-tow-tr... ). I'm sure that tow trucks will get to the point where they also have a charger, but we're in new territory here.

The next issue is the time to fuel. With a road trip, this isn't a "park in the EV vehicle spot at Fry's while you go shopping". With a gas station, I'm in and out in about 3 minutes tops. A Tesla super charger station takes 15-30 minutes - 5x to 10x longer than regular combustion. Aside from the "you're there for 5x longer", this means that to get the same throughput of vehicles served at the station it needs 5x to 10x more space than the gas station. This is where its going to be real interesting.

The image at https://electrek.co/2022/05/19/tesla-building-new-worlds-lar... claims it will be 100 stalls (There are about 30 in the picture, so 3x larger than the picture). That's 200-400 cars per hour. That's a 20 pump station - here's a 28 pump station ( https://www.google.com/maps/@43.5755315,-89.7774477,3a,75y,2... )

EVs are great if you are returning home each night or are in an area where there are EV stations while daily errands are run. I have difficulty seeing them useful for distance travel and the situations where one charges midway each day.

One such road trip / distance travel experience - https://www.wsj.com/articles/i-rented-an-electric-car-for-a-...

Re: Should You Buy an EV? A calculator to figure it out

#75

Post by pornel »

rpmw wrote: post #73

Cost of battery maintenance seems to be a huge thing I never see mentioned here. I imagine EVs will depreciate much faster in that arena. My 15 year old Ford Focus still gets 30 mpg and still goes just as far on a full tank.

Teslas are now old enough that there's large-scale long-term battery degradation data available. They lose roughly 1%-2% of capacity per year (that's a linear approximation, actual degradation is steeper in the early years, tapers off later). So after 15 years you'd expect 70%-85% of the range left.

Modern EVs have battery management systems that keep their temperature and other factors within the range that's gentle for the battery. EVs also have some spare "inaccessible" battery capacity that prevents them being (dis)charged to extremes that would shorten their life. 15-year-old EVs will be fine. EV batteries aren't your cellphone batteries.

Re: Should You Buy an EV? A calculator to figure it out

#76

Post by sokoloff »

chrisandchris wrote: post #68
kbos87 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to pile on but I’ll second some of the other commenters who have said that not being able to charge at home isn’t that big of a deal. I live in a condo in a major US city and don’t have the option to charge at home. From a convenience perspective, it’s truly turned out to be a non-issue. We’re at the point where I live that there are enough chargers around that I simply plug in once or twice a week while I’m runn…

> From a cost perspective, it probably would be cheaper for me to charge at home, but it would be small and would take years to pay off the cost difference of having a charger installed. I spend so little on charging that I don’t really pay attention to it as an expense. May I ask what you spend? I think here charging at home vs. at public chargers is a difference of up to 100% more expensive (~0.30 cents at home vs…

In eastern MA, I find level 2 charging is rarely marked up (and is not infrequently free). DC fast charging is 50-100% marked up, which feels pretty fair to me to be honest.

The thing I find pleasing is office park level 2 charging often charges the retail electricity rate, but they have a large solar installation and if they sell me electricity at full retail (including distribution charges), they make a lot more than selling it to the utility. That’s good for me (I get a charge at the same cost it would be at home) and good for them.

Re: Should You Buy an EV? A calculator to figure it out

#77

Post by piceas »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #31
Faaak wrote: post #2

This doesn't take into account maintenance, which makes a huge difference ! My EV car (hyundai ioniq 2016) has now 100'000 km (62'000 mi) and I never once went to the garage for a service (except for tyres of course). Brake pads are still new, no oil change needed, etc.. Can't imagine how much it would've cost on a gas car

At 62k miles and 6 years, that would have probably been 6 to 10 oil and air filter changes, at $50 each would be $500. Brake pads would be $500. Miscellaneous other might be $500. Easily less than $1,500 for most decent brand cars. Excluding the common cost of tires, of course. How much extra did the Ioniq cost in 2016 over a Sonata or Acccord or Corolla or whatever the equivalent gas car would have been?

And how does it compare in 2022?

Re: Should You Buy an EV? A calculator to figure it out

#79

Post by sokoloff »

Yizahi wrote: post #42
lotsofpulp wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where does getting an oil filter changed by a non dealer void the warranty? Oil/air filters and brakes are $50 and $500 at most. Everything else is pretty reliable for a couple hundred thousand miles assuming a decent brand car like Toyota or Honda. At US gas prices, I have yet to see an EV be shown to be a better value than a car/minivan/SUV/pickup truck, especially if driving 10k miles or less per year. The upfront…

I need to do yearly maintenance at the dealer (or if I exceed some fixed mileage before that), they do the oil change in the course of that. If I would skip yearly maintenance the warranty is voided. PS: that's for Mazda car.

That’s definitely not the case in the US (see Magnuson-Moss 1975) and many other countries have similar laws.

Re: Should You Buy an EV? A calculator to figure it out

#80

Post by taylodl »

Should I buy an EV? Hmmmm...let me think about that. I'm currently driving a 2015 Honda Civic that I paid $12,500 for when it was three years old and it gets 35 MPG. I have a Suzuki motorcycle I paid $2500 for (also bought used) that gets 70 MPG. The combined cost for both vehicles is $15,000. I drive my car about twice as often as I ride my bike I'll put my combined MPG at 47 MPG.

I drive/ride about 10,000 miles per year, it's actually been less since I've been WFH and now permanently WFH, but we'll go with 10,000 miles. At 47 MPG I'm consuming 213 gallons of fuel per year. I know the gas price spike is subsiding, but for argument's sake let's suppose $5/gallon is going to be the reality within 5 years. That's $1,065 in fuel cost per year - and again that's calculating at $5/gallon for gas.

Cost-wise then I have $15,000 to purchase my car and bike and I have $1,065 in worst-case annual fuel costs. I do my own maintenance on my bike and my car has been costing $250/year so far in annual maintenance costs. Since I haven't had any serious maintenance yet I'll be happy to put my annual operating costs at $1,500. That gives me roughly $1,000 in fuel and roughly $500 in annual maintenance.

How do the EVs stack up? The cheapest used EV I can find in my area is $43,000. Off the bat I would have to spend $28,000 more in up-front costs just to purchase the EV. I can't buy that in cash so there are going to be loan costs too, but we'll ignore that for now.

How long does it take for the operating costs of car and motorcycle to exceed the difference in purchasing cost of an EV? 18.6 years! Since I've been ignoring the loan costs of the EV and I've been ignoring some maintenance you have to do on an EV then I'm going to go with roughly 20 years for the EV to start saving me money.

Remember, this was a used EV and it already had 60,000 miles on it. At 10,000 miles per year the EV would only have 260,000 miles on it - so it should still be in good shape for another 4-9 years afterward, but - I'm not putting 20 years in for a payback, especially when over the next 5-10 years we should be seeing some significantly cheaper EVs hitting the market that completely changes this payback calculation.

Bottom line - for me an EV still makes no sense.

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