Electric vehicles cost more to buy than gasoline-powered vehicles, but they supposedly make up for at least part of that cost by lower fuel costs. The Department of Energy estimates that (as of March 20) gasoline cost an average of $2.85 per gallon while the electricity required to produce the same amount of power cost only $1.16 per egallon.
Photo by Mr. Satterly.
Not so fast, says a consulting firm called the Anderson Economic Group, which points out there are other costs that have to be considered with an EV that are built in to the price of gasoline. These include:
- The cost of buying and installing charging devices;
- High registration fees charged by many states to make up for the lack of fuel taxes collected from owners of EVs;
- The time spent refueling; and
- The miles of driving to charging stations, which are less numerous than petroleum fuel stations.
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Electric vehicle charging stations typically cost about $500, and having them installed into a home would be several hundred dollars more. Federal gas taxes are 18 cents per gallon and state gas taxes average 28 cents per gallon; if states add this cost to registration fees it would reduce the difference between EVs and gasoline by 46 cents per egallon. Battery technology may improve, but the 240-volt charging devices that are available for residential users take several hours to charge an electric vehicle. In addition, commercial charging stations will typically ask customers to pay a higher rate for electricity than they pay at home.
Counting all of these costs, the Anderson group estimated that fueling a mid-priced gasoline-powered vehicle costs about 8.6 cents per mile. A mid-priced electric vehicle that mostly relies on commercial charging stations would cost almost 13.0 cents per mile. If the vehicle owner does most charging at home, this might go down to about 12.3 cents per mile.
These numbers assume that commercial charging stations cost 43 cents per kilowatt-hour, which is correct for a company called Electrify America but may be less for other companies. Anderson also assumed residential rates of 17 cents per kilowatt-hour. According to the Department of Energy, this is about right for Michigan, where Anderson is located, but the national average was only 14 cents in July, 2021, ranging from 10 cents in Washington to 23 cents in Massachusetts (and even more in Alaska and Hawaii).
Part of the higher cost is the cost of driving to find a charging station. This will go down as the number of charging stations increase, but it was estimated to be only about a penny per mile.
These numbers don’t include the value of time spent refueling. The Anderson group estimated that the owner of a petroleum-powered vehicle who drives a thousand miles per month spends about an hour a month on refueling, while the owner of an electric vehicle who relies mainly on commercial charging stations spends about seven hours a month on refueling. Less time is needed by people who use home charging systems, but even then it can sometimes be inconvenient to need a vehicle when it isn’t fully charged. There is also the inconvenience of electrical vehicle ranges being generally less than petroleum-powered vehicles.
Anderson’s calculations assume that states will charge owners of electric vehicles $200 more to register their vehicles. For an average vehicle that gets about 22 miles per gallon, that represents less than 10,000 miles of annual driving. Since Anderson assumed 12,000 miles of driving, $200 might be low, especially if states switch to per-mile vehicle fees that will charge similar-sized vehicles the same regardless of energy source.
Battery recharge times might decline and the number of charging stations may increase. But when vehicle fees and taxes, the cost of installing charging stations, and the inconvenience of shorter ranges and charging times are considered, petroleum-powered vehicles still have many advantages over electric vehicles.
Elon musk set to be first “Trillionaire”
He did so all on anempie of subsidies and stock manipulation. Once EV sales crash when subsidies can no longer afford to affect output of resources needed to make it.
Driving to stations, Not really a case, usually Anyone who buys an EV get’s an outlet device to charge from home, EVEN if you cant, you can still plug it in to a typical 110 volt outlet, it’ll charge very slowly……..but it’ll charge. My Cousins spouse has a Nissan Leaf EV, but because she lives in Apartment not a house cant charge it except at stations. On the other hand when she brought it to our house, she plugged it in just fine. 220 volt adapters do exist, these devices consist of two 110 volt plugs that attach to a single box DC inverter like a “Y” shaped cable, the two plugs join one wire to raise voltage.
We can debate whether EV’s are better, there’s several things however not addressed
– Spontaneous battery fires: while gas cars can go up in flames too, often the case is caused when the vehicle is in use. EV cars are suffering a rash of spontaneous discharge fires.
– Environment: Electric cars ain’t proliferating anytime soon. As had been shown repeatedly, this is just a drop in the bucket. The growth of ICE cars around the world is going to outstrip EV manufacturing capability for years to come. Once subsidies become too high for taxpayers to accept, EV sales will crash. EV cars measure just 0.167% of global auto fleet, One out of every 600 cars, Auto industry Spent Tens/billions outfitting factories to make cars that only saturate 1% of all new auto sales. Environmentalists whine it takes 30,000 lbs (15 tons) of raw material to make a 3000 lb car. It takes Over 4000+ tons of rock/ore to make ONE EV car, ICE engines made with iron/aluminum come from melting down cans and scrap. EV’s require fresh resources of cobalt, lithium, copper, etc. You have to start an industrial revolution over again but instead of coal/iron; you’re now digging up HALF the periodic table all of which is dug, mined, processed, manufactured, and shipped using fossil fuels. Under the guise of technology which is supposedly gonna “Rid us” of fossil fuels. Driving is only a small portion of a cars energy embodiment/life cycle, there’s heavy energy investment in the beginning and late stages of it’s life, namely manufacturing and recycling.
EV’s manufactured in 2020: Few hundred thousand Global production of ICE motor vehicles: 78 MILLION
EV auto fleet: 7.2 Million (took 25 years)
Global motor vehicle fleet: 1.4 Billion cars, not including moped, scooters, motorcycles
Batteries may improve, but physics limits the maximum theoretical threshold of energy density of a substance. “Solid state” batteries may be the next “Big thing” but should they have the Same materials they’re dictated to behave as such.
The Biggest challenge to EV cars is not charging them, right now, there simply aren’t enough EV’s on the road to warrant any concerns for charging infrastructure everywhere. The real challenge is Replacing the automotive fleet with EV’s….Which would destroy the grid.
Once again the Antiplanner doesn’t take into regard energy physics. Only 13% of global energy demand is electric, because converting to electric is expensive and not very efficient but it’s safe for running casual devices. 72% of the worlds energy is thermal based because it’s efficient to convert thermal energy into work without having to convert it to electricity. You convert to electricity you lose half to 2/3rds of the energy as waste heat. The carbon emissions from changing electric sources wont matter much since 75% of all GHG emissions come from non electric sources. The transition to renewables; means replacing thermal, chemical and mechanical power with several added steps, electric generation, electric voltage, transmission, and plug in. ALL these stages result in thermodynamic losses.
In 2020, Americans used about 123 billion gallons of motor gasoline—or about 337 million gallons per day. With an energy density of 122.5 Megajoules per gallon, US used roughly 40 Petajoules per day moving cars (not counting gas powered mowers, lawn machinery, tractors). Typical modern gasoline engines have a thermal efficiency of around 30-40%. That means that 30-40% of the energy created when its fuel is burned gets turned into motion so in reality they use 16 Petajoules per day and waste 24 as waste heat. An electric motor runs at an efficiency of 80+ percent. While impressive it’s source of electricity in terms of thermodynamic efficiency; coal is around 35-45% on generation. Windmills average below 25%, solar panels average 11%. Natural gas, 66%. Nuclear because it uses the same turbine tech as coal 33-35%. Even after generation, as much as 30-60% of electricity sent thru the grid is lost as parasitic or heat, usually about 10% lost every 100 miles. While the electric motor enjoys greater application of power, it’s sourced energy doesn’t. Thermodynamic power losses amount considerably. Fossil fuels are so much simpler
Fossil energy cycle: Chemical energy — Thermal energy — Mechanical energy — Work
Renewable energy cycle: External mechanical energy (Weather permitting) — mechanical energy transition (Generator) — electrical energy — Voltage step up — electric transmission to switchyard — electric transmission to destination (thermodynamic losses in route) — voltage step down (transformer) — transmission to consumer — consumer utilization (electric motor) — mechanical energy — work
An electric transportation infrastructure requires a 10-20 fold increase in grid construction. Because to replace transportation energy consumption is no easy task. US energy consumption in 2019 was over 100 Quad or 100 Quadrillion BTU’s/29.307 Trillion Kilowatt hours or 105 Exajoules. Transportation consumes 28% of tat. OF which 91% is met with petroleum; Gasoline, diesel, aviation fuel, marine oil fuel, etc works to about 96 Exajoules or 26.6 Trillion kilowatt hours a year. That’s 288.86 Petajoules per day (80.238 Billion kilowatt hours). Daily US electric consumption is 10.4 Billion kilowatt hours; Though the venerable electric motor is 2-3 times as efficient as an engine, you still need 5x more electricity than current to replace the transportation energy network.
The current use cases for electric vehicles (not including golf carts) are lightly used with charging at home and high-use commercial and private vehicles that return to base (home in the case of cars and terminal for commercial — think UPS).
Note that while diesel is a major vehicle fuel (in the US — I have no recent experience elsewhere) it is not generally available in your neighborhood Gas-N-Go.
It will be some years before time needed to charge a vehicle is about the same as time needed to gas-up and buy a pack of cigs and a lottery ticket. It will happen.
But, will we have enough electrical energy to replace that currently supplied by burning hydrocarbons?
My vehicle has a 420 mile range on a 3 minute charge.
They’ve been working on it for well over 100 years:
Overview of early electric cars (1895-1925)
prk166,
Is your vehicle an ebike? If it is an automobile, I want one. What kind is it?
“These numbers assume that commercial charging stations cost 43 cents per kilowatt-hour”
I’ve read reports that electricity from charging stations costs two to three times typical residential rates, and that’s more than three times the national average of .14/kwH. Most people here in Texas probably pay less than .14.
Anyone who does not have a private garage is going to need to use a charging station. That includes nearly everyone who lives in an apartment. I usually get an apartment with a garage, but the garages are never equipped with a 240 volt outlet, so charging would be on a 120-volt outlet which usually supports only 1 kw of power delivery.
There’s also the risk of battery fires with all Electric Vehicles currently. GM just recalled most of its Bolts and this recall cost $1.4 billion; working out to a recall cost of about $14,000 per vehicle. Ouch! There is also a report of a Tesla parked in a Washington DC home catching fire and burning down the house. There is also little recognition at this point of the disposal costs of the EV batteries which can become pretty toxic if not properly disposed. It’s a pipedream to think that all electric EVs will be the bulk of vehicles on the road in some states by the year 2035. More likely, Plug-in Hybrids which qualify for the EV subsidies will become more prevalent, and fueled mostly by gasoline as folks generally are too pre-occupied to tend to charging an EV for several hours. GM advises attending to your EV while charging it, and parking it at least 50 feet away from vulnerable structures.
My 17-year-old minivan also has a 430 mile range and three minute recharge. Recharged with gasoline.
Ran across this interesting PDF last year:
Electrifying the UK and the Want of Engineering
A snippet:
If we replace all of the UK vehicle fleet with EVs, and assuming they use the most resource-frugal next-generation batteries, we would need the following materials:
• 207,900 tonnes of cobalt – just under twice the annual global production;
• 264,600 tonnes of lithium carbonate – three quarters of the world’s production;
• at least 7,200 tonnes of neodymium and dysprosium –nearly the entire world production of neodymium;
• 2,362,500 tonnes of copper – more than half the world’s production in 2018.
And this is just for the UK.
Michael Kelly is the Emeritus Prince Philip Professor of Technology at the University of Cambridge. He was a Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK Department for Communities and Local Government. He is a fellow of the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering, and is a trustee of the Global Warming Policy Foundation.
”
prk166,
Is your vehicle an ebike? If it is an automobile, I want one. What kind is it?
”
It’s a Ford. I use unleaded. 🙂
A better title: “EVs Possibly Not Cheap to Fuel for Some”. Right now, in late 2021, electric cars aren’t going to work out for a lot of folks. No argument there! On the other hand… I bought used, cheap, coming off lease. 17¢/kw-h? I pay 8.1. Okay, I own my hovel & I have a garage. Cost of a home charging station? I plug it into my existing dryer outlet. Seven hours a month charging? About 30 seconds to plug it in when I get home, about 30 seconds to unplug it when I leave. Driving around looking for charging? (BTW, there’s an app for that.) A hand full of trips a year that are beyond range, and I preplan principle and alternate charging stops. Oh, and my state doesn’t charge more for EV registration. Hey, not a universal answer, but it’s working out for me.