8th
#ElectricCar — Secret Message: Like Really Cheap Gas
Psst. Hey. Yeah, you.
Mile-for-mile, a 100% electric car is just plain cheap to drive.
This is the secret message hiding behind auto makers’ marketing hoopla and ultra green sloganeering of electric vehicles (EV).
Using one oft-cited example, the EPA rated the all-electric Nissan Leaf as having the e-equivalent of 99 miles per gallon.
This statistic is both provocative and misleading.
Provocative because the number seems insanely high compared to anything car buyers are familiar with. Misleading because for EV owners of the Leaf, the Mitsubishi iMiEV, and the Ford Focus Electric, it’s actually a much better deal than that.
Instead, I propose a statistic that hits closer to home: the pocketbook.
How about, “like buying gasoline for 67 cents per gallon.” This is what it costs me at prevailing United States east coast electricity rates on an antiquated electric meter. It gets even cheaper (much cheaper) if you’re willing to charge your car at night and you have a new-fangled “smart” electric meter.
The EPA arrives at its 99 miles per gallon figure for the Leaf using a measure of the amount of energy in a gallon of gasoline. We usually measure car fuel efficiency by stating it in miles driven per gallon (mpg). We accept the reality that internal combustion engines are relatively inefficient in converting potential energy sloshing around in gasoline into kinetic energy moving the car. Consider all the wasted heat, noise, unspent fuel (i.e., tailpipe emissions) and moving parts unrelated to forward locomotion.
Electric cars measure fuel efficiency as miles driven per kilowatt hour (m/kwH). Despite the density drawbacks of lithium ion batteries, converting potential energy in those batteries into kinetic energy in moving the car is many times more efficient than gas-powered cars.
But maybe this is all still too wonky. Too facts-and-figurey.
Try this modern day fable.
The Devil offers you a deal: he’ll sell you your very own gasoline pump and all its accessories for $1,000 installed. Further, he will sell you as much gasoline as you can use at the rate of 33 cents a gallon for as long as you own the car. The only restrictions are:
- you can only fill up at night;
- you can’t resell the gas—only for your own use; and
- you only get one (1) of these magic gas pumps, and it’s at home.
Would you take the offer?
At the current cost of gasoline at about $3.50 per gallon in the United States, you should take this deal if you drive more than 4,000 miles a year, and nearly all of us do. And that’s just the first year. After that, it’s all savings. The Devil’s deal, as I’ve proposed it, is available to many potential electric vehicle owners today.
This is the real economic opportunity posed to electric car buyers, but the auto industry doesn’t say it this way.
They should. The cheapskate market remains untapped.
It does take a bit of tricky math to make an apples-to-apples comparison between the gas car and the electric car. But for most passenger car owners, it’s dramatically cheaper to run electric. Just consider the green cred a welcome fringe benefit.
There are many, many online calculators to help you do the math (e.g., DTE, Project ReadySetGo, Consumers Energy). Based on my habits, I stand to save about $4,500 in annual fuel costs driving my new Nissan Leaf over my recently sold, and otherwise fabulous Subaru Forester.
I just need to remember I made a deal with the Devil.
This is the seventh in a series on the state of electric vehicles in 2012.
« Part 1 of the Electric Car Series: “On the Bleeding Edge”
« Part 2 of the Electric Car Series: “A Recent History”
« Part 3 of the Electric Car Series: “Nissan Leaf Test Drive”
« Part 4 of the Electric Car Series: “Charged Up”
« Part 5 of the Electric Car Series: “Mindfulness”
« Part 6 of the Electric Car Series: “Difficult Conversations”
Part 8 of the Electric Car Series: “Getting Legislative” »
