In the version you saw I had electricity set a 8 cents per kWh. Figuring that most people would charge with off-peak electricity and that TOU billing is coming to most people as meters get smart.

Using 0.35kWh/mile and $0.08/kWh I got…

“Including the Federal $7,500 subsidy the Leaf is $9,083 less expensive to drive than a Toyota Prius.”

Using 0.29kWh/mile and $0.12/kWh I get…

Including the Federal $7,500 subsidy the Leaf is $7,925 less expensive to drive than a Toyota Prius.

I guesstimated insurance based on sales price. Don’t know how accurate that might be.

The number I estimated was a Leaf would save you about $17,000 per 100K miles driven vs an average 23MPG car, including typical regular maintenance costs and energy costs. I used a guesstimate of an average per gallon cost of gasoline for the 5 years or so it would take to get to 100K miles at 20K per year. For electricity I used the US average of 12 cents/kWh for the entire thing.

And that was with the initial version of the Leaf which is rated by the EPA at 340Wh/mile – the 2013 is rated at 290Wh/mile which is 15% better, so that would add about ($816-696=120×5=) $600 savings; totaling $17,600 per 100K miles.

Neil

Also, your ‘oil and filters’ number doesn’t include other regular maintenance cost. My Toyota dealer has a set charge for a 5K mile minor service of about $75, and a 15K intermediate service of about $250 and a 30K major service of about $450. These include all other fluids including coolant, cabin and engine air filters, injector cleaning, etc.

Thanks for sharing!

Neil

I’ll share mine. What I found is that over a 12 year ownership –

The Nissan Leaf (without subsidies) is $6,247 more expensive to drive than a Nissan Versa.

The Nissan Leaf (without subsidies) is $292 more expensive to drive than a Toyota Prius.

Including the Federal $7,500 subsidy the Leaf is $3,128 less expensive to drive than a Nissan Versa.

Including the Federal $7,500 subsidy the Leaf is $9,083 less expensive to drive than a Toyota Prius.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Akc8l3C_MXzwdFBjNXNVU0F5SVJTQnFXMDZmUmIwTHc#gid=0

(There could be errors in my spreadsheet. I sometimes play around with the numbers and then forget to correct.)

So if I understand it right, the cost of a gasoline car together with its gasoline use is going up slowly, while the cost of manufacturing EVs including batteries and recharging them goes down slowly?

I wonder, looking at this, is there any kind of comparison available among different car types based on average (energy) use of gasoline versus electricity (or both), some kind of break even figure?
That would help people while making a decision when it’s time to buy a new car, for example…

Neil

Tesla started smart. They started with products for deep pockets. There’s a higher profit margin and that let them build a company. They couldn’t afford to lose/not make money off their cars for multiple years as established car companies do.

They also established themselves as a premium brand.

Their first product was a $100k+ roadster, the Roadster. Then they brought out the S which, in its lower range version, sells for around $60k. I think they have one more model in the pipes which is supposed to be followed by an EV ‘for the rest of us’.

As time passes, oil is harder and harder to get – deep water drilling is very difficult and it takes a lot of energy, and fracking for oil and getting thick sour crude out of the ground requires millions and millions of very hot water (heated with natural gas – and a little solar heat, too!) be pumped down underground to loosen the oil up to then be able to pump it up – which as Peder notes is a very intensive use of electricity. And tar sands bitumen is worse, yet. To even pump it through a pipeline, it has to be dissolved with cheap gasoline – and that gasoline has to come from somewhere!

They generate electricity at refineries but this still “counts” toward the energy overhead. At every stage along the way from extraction until the gasoline is made, it gets pumped and transported, using more electricity. Super tankers burn a lot of fuel, and tanker trucks burn a lot of diesel – and those each have to be refined… Even the very last stage – pumping the gas into your tank uses some electricity.

And that’s just the electricity – there is a LOT of natural gas used along the way. ALL of that carbon and all the electricity used to get the natural gas has to be added to the total. AND a lot of water is used for fracking (some places have to stop fracking when they deplete the water supply!) and guess what? Electricity is used to pump water out of the ground and to move it to the fracking site. Tar sands also uses a lot of water and a lot of natural gas…

The “long tailpipe” argument made against EV’s just goes up in smoke!

Neil

If gas prices climb much, it will shorten the payback time – you save about 12-16 cents per mile and more as gas prices climb, and it depends on the fuel economy your ICE car. I think a high performance 5 seat car is going to be on the high end of that.

If an ICE car costs as much as $3,400 for 90K miles that is ~3.8 cents/mile. And taking your number of $700/12.5K mile equals 5.6 cents/mile. The difference is 1.8 cents/mile, which reduces the savings on energy cost down to about 14 cents/mile.

In 100K miles that’s $14,000 savings.

If you use some of that to put a down payment on a solar PV system About $2,500 is what a typical lease contract is here in Massachusetts. My brother and his wife, who each drive EV’s are getting a 6.4kW system, and their electric bill is currently $80-170/month (including both EV’s and A/C in the summer). They will pay a flat monthly rate of $58; saving about $800/year.

So, if you have a solar PV system, you “regain” the 2 of the 3 cents/mile you were paying for electricity; increasing the per mile savings up to 16 cents/mile, which is $16,000 in 100K miles. PLUS your savings on electricity of 5 years (@20K miles / year) is another $4,000 – making the total savings over 100K miles of $20,000.

Drive the gorgeous and high performance Tesla Model S for 200K miles and save about $40,000 overall. And virtually no carbon into the atmosphere.

Neil

Not that it matters. Tesla is not yet about cost but about the experience.

On a Leaf or an i MiEV, the only regular maintenance costs are tires, wiper blades and the cabin air filter – all of which are also on ICE’s.

Neil

It takes about 7.5kWh of electricity per gallon of gasoline; which would let you drive a Nissan Leaf about 26 miles – and you would save all the carbon embedded in the gasoline.

Neil

Not sure what “o.O” means. I simply can’t see myself willingly renting a car for a road trip. And I don’t own a second car. And I have no friends or family I’d willingly swap my Tesla with. In fact there is no way I’d do a road trip unless I could take my Tesla. And I wouldn’t be doing a 55mph limp about with the climate control off. The Tesla is for pure and simple enjoyment. I’d plan my road trip very carefully around the superchargers.

But you’ve got to follow the plan.

If you need to control your speed in order to make it to the next charger, then you need to control your speed.

If you need to get a 90%/100% charge before leaving the charger, then you need to finish charging.

And, ideally, you need to find a place to plug in on cold nights. That is not impossible. Some hotels already have EV charge outlets.

#2 o.O