Seems like bullshit to me. Recognizing the logical fallacy here, it’s still worth pointing out the firm has a history of working with major auto manufacturers, and is headquartered near Detroit. Their CEO, Patrick L. Anderson, also served under a Republican governor in multiple roles and is a contributor to numerous conservative research institutes.
Yeah, this is bullshit. I charge my car at home by leaving it plugged in overnight. Costs me literally a few bucks a month to keep it charged. I don’t even notice it on my electricity bill.
If I were charging at fee-based charging stations all the time, the story would be different, but who the hell does that?!?
We were looking at getting an EV without being able to charge it at home. Charging it at public chargers here in the UK would’ve cost about the same as petrol. But having to rely on the public charging infrastructure in its current state made us decide against it, at least for now.
Out of curiosity, why couldn’t you charge it at home? Most electric cars can have their chargers plugged into a standard wall outlet. It’s slower, but it works fine.
I live in a hilly suburb, there’s a parking pad at road level which is far from my house and on council land. No way for me to install charging equipment. It’s very common in my country.
Yeah, that sounds like a fully electric vehicle wouldn’t be a good fit, then.
Well not yet. We have to make it a good fit though. Can’t keep burning oil.
I’d love to have one too but I live in the city now instead of the suburbs. My car is parked on a concrete pad in the alley behind my house, a good 80 feet from any electricity. I could probably charge at work though by just parking in the warehouse and plugging in to one of the many extension cords we have around.
I mean, if your employer doesn’t mind, that could be a hell of a cost-effective way to keep it topped up.
I’m the VP so I’d better be able to get away with it lol
Yeah, I’m gonna guess you won’t get in trouble for it then.
I made a similar decision. The only garages available to me are unpowered, not cheap, and not even super close to my apartment door. If I felt I could get my landlord to build the infrastructure for parking lot charging and penalize ice vehicles for parking in charging spaces I probably would’ve gone electric
This is such a major issue. I genuinely wonder if we apartment and non-garage having individuals are going to be just shit out of luck for a long time. People normally don’t care about us at all.
People who live in apartments and basement suites, basically anywhere with no garage. After 2030 or 2035 or whatever the deadline is there will be lots of people who have electric cars and no way to charge them overnight at home, so people will have to charge at public chargers everytime.
It’s not a
logical fallacyconspiracy when they’re really out to get you though.That said, my experience charging an EV in the space of one month cost as much as 14 twelve gallon tanks of gas. There may be something wrong with my electric service but the power company is an evil monopoly that doesn’t care about anything but getting paid so…
Did you charge at home during the night, or during peak hours/at fast chargers?
How many tanks of gas would you have gone through in a comparable vehicle?
I charge a Lightning at home with an 80 amp charger and before that I had a gas f150. The increase to my energy bill was about $30-$40 a month and offset about $400 a month in gas.
That is a clear comparison, and sounds like a fantastic change as well!
But how much more does a lightning cost vs a gas truck? I bought a truck last year and badly wanted the lightning but it would have taken roughly 140000 miles before I broke even and the electric was saving me money. That was also using $5 a gallon for gas as a comparison which I only ever paid to at much for once. I’m all for electric and if you have the money and want one go for it but financially speaking it doesn’t make much sense right now unless you want a bolt or a leaf which are actually comparable in cost to a gas car. Everything else is so widely overpriced.
This is definitely hitting the nail on the head. Until the technology trickles down into the lower-end models, it’s not anywhere near as much a cost savings when you have to buy way up in trim level to get electric as an option.
It’s also worth noting that electric economy is notably worse in cold climates - your internal combustion car generates heat for ~free, the electric heater in your Tesla does draw a fair bit of current.
Here’s my answer for this (with data!): For the month of July, I charged 440.0 kWh. I averaged 94% efficiency while charging, so the chargers actually used 469 kWh. There were 35 charges, for a total of 66 hours spent charging. My total electric cost is 15 cents per kWh (my plan doesn’t have peak/off-peak). I did no charging at superchargers in July.
In that timeframe, I drove 1314 miles. 355kWh were used while driving, giving me an average efficiency of 3.7 miles per kWh. You’ll note that I used 85 fewer kWh driving, that’s because thosed 85 kWh were used to precondition my car, keep the AC running while I’m in the store or on a bike ride, etc. Super wasteful, but it’s so cheap that I can’t help myself).
So to break it down: 15 cents per kwh * 469kWh = $70 to charge, $12.75 of which was just used for climate control while not driving.
My last car was a 2016 Honda Accord Touring V6 which, in my area and with my driving style, averaged about 22mpg (lots of steep hills, 85mph driving, and stop and go traffic. I live 15 miles from town by interstate and town has lots of traffic).
According to AAA, the average cost of gas in PA is $3.87 (I know that price changes, but the math gets harder if I look up the price of gas each time I would have had to fill the tank so I’m just taking the current avg). 1314 miles / 22mpg = 59.7 gallons of gas * $3.87 = $231.
For extra fun math, looking at purely fuel costs, the Accord would cost 17.5 cents per mile to drive (not including the fact that I’d need an oil change every 4 months, transmission fluid every year and a half, etc).
My current car at current electric rates costs 5.3 cents per mile to drive.
Additionally, i’m planning on getting solar in a year or two, which should bring my cost down to effectively zero. AND, we can charge for free at my wife’s work when she’s in the office (as well as at the park I bike at), but she wasn’t in the office at all in July; we both worked from home full time last month.
TL;DR: my Model 3 Long Range costs about a third as much per mile to drive as my similarly sized Honda Accord did before I sold it
Only ever overnight, and maybe 5 tanks tops.
Assuming gas is $3.75/gal where you live, that is $630. If you spent $630 on charging your car in one month then you either drive 3000 miles a month or have a problem with your electric meter. Assuming you live in the state with the highest electricity prices that isn’t Hawaii (because then we couldn’t assume $3.75/gal for your gas), your rate is $0.34/kWh. That means you 1853kWh.
Assuming you drive the least efficient EV, the Hummer, which goes 329 miles on 213kWh, you would have to drive 2862 miles in one month to spend $630. So for the worst case electrical price, with the worst case EV mileage, with average gas prices, you are driving a lot more than most people to spend 14 twelve gallon tanks of gas worth. For reference, switching that Hummer to a Bolt would only cost $278 to drive 2862 miles.
It’s worse than that, it’s a hybrid that can only go maybe 30 miles before the battery is drained. So that doesn’t even account for 1000 miles. Super wasteful, but whatever’s going on isn’t the norm so I’m getting hit on multiple fronts.
There’s definitely a lot of nuance involved. For instance my service provider charges more for electricity than the public charge stations do (seriously fuck PG&E and every other monopolistic service provider), so I actually save money by not charging at home. It’s still absolutely cheaper than filling up on gas though, especially when I can find a spot where I don’t have to pay (like my work.)
Thanks for doing the work.
Consideration for readers. Remember not everyone lives where you do and has the same access and infrastructure that you do.
Some US states are pushing for EV but do not have the power production needed to support it at scale. Maybe another 10 or 20 years when everyone has a nuclear reactor in their backyard.
I’m all for EV for those that it makes sense. For many, especially the impoverished, it’s just another barrier to overcome.
I don’t see how working with major manufacturers or being near Detroit makes it likely that this group wants to push an ICE narrative. Ford and GM have some of the most advanced electric vehicle systems in the world and are shipping more EV units than competitors.
The whole article and the report, nowhere is it explained how they get their numbers. What fuel prices or electricity prices have they used, what mileage for the cars. It’s kind of crucial info, and not really difficult to calculate either.
Yeah because the article is absolute bullshit. The bias was immediately evident.
Then why’d you post it? 😅
It’s provocative. It gets the people going.
Is this your first day on social media? People post 1 + 1 = 3 and get a ton of angry corrections.
I think thats a little simple to say that it’s only posted because it provocative. Cultural opinions shape policy and the future of public transport is important.
The report gives a quick summary of what they include, but not any details or math.
The cost of underlying energy (gas, diesel, electric)
State excise taxes charged for road maintenance
The cost to operate a pump or charger
The cost to drive to a fueling station (deadhead miles)Elsewhere it says it assumes 12k miles in a year and is focused on the midwest and Michigan in particular. As it so happens, Michigan charges for registration based on the car value. EVs cost more than ICE vehicles in the same market segment most of the time. This would fall under excise taxes that they include.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they also tacked on the cost to install a L2 charger once as “cost to operate a pump or charger” — intentionally ignoring that it’s a one-time fee to support EVs at a home.
The people making the report clearly picked criteria that sounds reasonable but also intentionally misleads people. Not a surprise.
I could give an easy estimate for the costs with napkin math. A quick gooble search says that a long-range EV might require up to 100 kWh of power to charge (high estimate) and where I live the electricity cost is about $0.11/kWh. That’s $11 for a “fill up” of a long-range EV.
A tank of gas that could get me 300 miles is closer to $40.
$11 < $40.
I’ve got real world math that basically backs this up (you can find my other comment in this thread if you want all the juicy details): My honda accord got 22mpg and had a 17 gallon tank, and gas here is $3.87. $66 to fill up and drive 374 miles = 17.6 cents per mile. My Model 3 Long Range has 77kWh usable and gets about 3.7 miles per kwh, my electricity is 15 cents per kwh (until i get solar next year), so $11.55 to fill up and drive 285 miles (so 4 cents per mile).
Yes the accord got about 90 miles more range, but cost 3 times as much to fuel and that range only matters (to me) on road trips, and my range has yet to be an issue in my model 3.
In fact I’m going on a 6 hour drive next week and according to ABRP I’ll only have to make one 10 minute stop halfway to charge in order to get to my hotel (where I can charge up for free)
Research firm is bullshitting. It costs like $1-$2 for me to fill up my car with electricity at home.
Agreed. I have spent $8 in the past month, and I have a 60 mile round trip commute to the office 2 days a week.
God, I wish. We unfortunately do about 1200 miles per month and our electricity is cheap (15cents per kWh) so we pay about $70/mo to charge our car. Much cheaper than the roughly $200 I would’ve been paying in gas had I kept my Accord though, and if we were better about charging at my wife’s work where it’s free, we’d save a ton more. But she’s only in the office once a week and it’s hard to line up our driving habits such that it’s low enough to charge then
Where i live its literally 5 times cheaper. I call bullshit.
Not in my experience. Perhaps if you were charging at a location which charges an inflated rate. At my current electrical costs in Canada, electric is cheaper per kilometre.
There are definitely situations where it’s more expensive, like if you exclusively use DCFCs. My electricity is 15 cents per kWh at home (so that’s where i do all my charging), but the local ElectrifyAmerica station charges 48 cents per kWh, which would make my Model 3 cost 13 cents per mile, which is damn near what my Honda Accord costs me in gas (gas is $3.87 per gallon right now. at $3.25 it would be cheaper).
I feel for people who don’t have the option to charge at home and I hope that problem gets solved quickly
Notes: Costs are calculated for vehicles driving 12,000 purposeful miles per year. Uses energy prices, gas taxes, and EV registration fees in the Midwest or State of Michigan. Representative models within segments were selected on the basis of sales volume and to include a variety of manufacturers. Entry, mid, and luxury segments are defined based on typical purchase price. …
As in the first edition, AEG calculated all four categories of costs involved in fueling both EVs and ICE vehicles across benchmark use cases that reflect real-world driving conditions for U.S. households. The costs included:
- The cost of the underlying energy (gasoline or diesel fuel, or electricity)
- State excise taxes charged on fuel and EVs for road maintenance
- The cost of operating a pump or charger
- The cost of driving to and from fueling stations (deadhead miles)
This seems like the Anderson Economic Group is playing with statistics to make gas cars seem more attractive.
- the cost of energy in Michigan is above the national average.
- EV registration costs in Michigan are among the highest in the country
- 80% of EV owners will charge their cars at home, making including costs driving to and from public outlets and the higher rate charged there yield (intentionally?) misleading results.
- There is a marked loss of performance and an increase of energy-per-mile when using EVs in cold climates, like the kind Michigan has
If you look at this map of savings with EVs vs. gas cars, you’ll find that most states have much larger savings with electric vehicles over gas vehicles, and there’s still savings when driving in Michigan by their accounting!
So if I was to be really generous, this study shows, at best, that it’s cheaper to own a ICE car if your living in an apartment without charging capabilities in Michigan?
If you have a Rivian R1T or GMC Hummer, the cost to charge at home isn’t much different; it’s about $17.70 per 100 miles.
Assuming the manufacturers claims are accurate (which is a big assumtion I know) that R1T, at the current US average electricity price of $16.14 per kWh, is $7.26/100mi.
Well this article just isn’t right at all
I drive an entry level EV (Hyundai Kona) that advertises 4mi/kWh, which is roughly accurate (2-3 in the winter, 5-7 in the summer). That’s 25 kWh for 100 miles.
Average cost of electricity in the US is, according to a quick Google, somewhere between $.15 and $.25 per kWh; where I live it’s a steeper $.33.
Therefore, depending on where I charge, I’m paying anywhere between $3.75 and $8.25 to drive 100 miles–$1.50 short of the article’s published $9.78 even with my expensive power.
In reality, though, I pay nothing–my office offers free charging. Show me an office with free gas.
Cost to fill up is not cost of ownership.
Given that oil changes don’t cost that much, electric cars almost universally cost significantly more than the same ICE car, and insurance rates are tied heavily to the value of the car, ICE/Hybrids still have a pretty good advantage on non-fillup costs. If/When electric cars cost the same as an ICE car to buy, that math with change considerably.
Price of gas is not the cost of gas.
It should include a way of getting the gases back into non-gas form and to reverse/mitigate any damages caused in the process. And the same for all of the supply chains (for gas and electricity, and any product really), can’t produce that much waste on a finite planet & just forget about it if there are no (complete, non-bs) recycling processes, natural or man-made.
Thats why plastic very much isn’t cost-efficient, it’s just cheap bcs legislators allow it to be.
…how? Like, it cost $30 (10 gal) to fill my petrol car in the states. Even if I was using 150kwh in electricity, at my power rate in Wisconsin ($.13/kWh), it’s $19.95. I live in Vietnam now, and pay 2500 VND per kWh, and petrol is about 23500vnd/litre. I have an electric moped that goes 110km/charge, and has a usable capacity of about 0.7kwh. I rarely empty the battery, but even if I did it daily, it would be .08USD/day.
I’d like to see the math crunched on this.
I’m not reading further down the line to see but did anyone notice the pic used in this post to show someone not understanding where their fuel door is? Back out and back in correctly and pump gas like a normal human being.
This sounds like BS. Years ago I calculated the cost of electricity is 1/5 of gas. Unless electricity jacked up (has had started roughly the same) this doesn’t make sense.
If we are talking just filling up - I went from $200/month with gasoline to $15-20/ month with my ev and charging at home. Obviously YMMV
Does not include the cost of environmental impact of burning fossil fuels… Which we are all starting to pay.
