So the The U.S. Department of Energy has just released an online tool that allows you to see what the amount of electricity necessary to drive an average electric car as far as a gallon of gasoline would cost where you live. They call this the ‘eGallon’, and the U.S. average is $1.14. It goes as low as $0.83 in North-Dakota and as high as $3.69 in Hawaii where electricity is most expensive.
You can see the tool HERE.
But wait a minute. That can’t POSSIBLY be correct. I’m a big fan of EVs, but that site is a flat-out lie.
Let’s look at some numbers:
It takes 10 hours to charge a Chevy Volt (16.5 kWh). Using the California rate from the above site, that means that it’s going to cost $24.91 to fully charge a Volt (16.5kWh x $1.51 = $24.915)
A Chevy Volt can go 38 miles on battery power.
$24.91 / 38 miles = $0.65 per mile to drive a Chevy Volt.
A similarly-sized vehicle – Honda Civic – gets 35 MPG. With gas at $3.79/gallon, here’s the math:
$3.79 / 35 = $0.10 per mile to drive a Honda Civic.
The cost of a Chevy Volt is right around $39K, or about $43K out the door.
The cost of a Honda Civic is (fully loaded) $28K, or about $31K out the door.
So the Chevy Volt will end up costing $12K MORE to purchase, and $0.55 per mile MORE to drive.
Using the Monroney window sticker average of 15,000 miles per year, the cost to drive the Volt (15,000 miles per year x $0.65) for five years is $48,750. The cost to drive the Civic? $7,500.
Not calculating the residual value of the vehicle after 5 years, here’s how the costs break down:
Cost of Chevy Volt: $91,750.00
Cost of Honda Civic: $38,500.00
That’s a difference of $53,250.00
…not including costs to the planet (the HUGE footprint and destruction JUST from the battery pack), the costs to upgrade the power to the neighborhood where an electric vehicle lives (adding an EV is like adding a HOUSE to the neighborhood grid; you have to contact Southern California Edison so they can upgrade the transformer for your area, you can’t ‘just’ buy an EV and plug it in).
I want electric vehicles to succeed more than anyone else on the planet. I want every house to be self-sustaining. I want to take the power (no pun intended) away from the Southern California Edisons and the crazy whack-a-moles in the middle east, and remove oil from the discussion as a political power pawn to be given or taken away subject to the whims of our administration or some foreign government.
But that’s not going to happen by lying to the people with websites like the one above.
Can I change the world? Yep. i know how. I can make electricity work.