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Electric Cars Are Already Cheaper To Own and Run Than Petrol Or Diesel, Says Study (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Electric cars are already cheaper to own and run than petrol or diesel cars in the UK, US and Japan, new research shows. The lower cost is a key factor driving the rapid rise in electric car sales now underway, say the researchers. At the moment the cost is partly because of government support, but electric cars are expected to become the cheapest option without subsidies in a few years. The researchers analyzed the total cost of ownership of cars over four years, including the purchase price and depreciation, fuel, insurance, taxation and maintenance. They were surprised to find that pure electric cars came out cheapest in all the markets they examined: UK, Japan, Texas and California.
Pure electric cars have much lower fuel costs -- electricity is cheaper than petrol or diesel -- and maintenance costs, as the engines are simpler and help brake the car, saving on brake pads. In the UK, the annual cost was about 10% lower than for petrol or diesel cars in 2015, the latest year analyzed. Hybrid cars which cannot be plugged in and attract lower subsidies, were usually a little more expensive than petrol or diesel cars. Plug-in hybrids were found to be significantly more expensive -- buyers are effectively paying for two engines in one car, the researchers said. The exception in this case was Japan, where plug-in hybrids receive higher subsidies. The study has been published in the journal Applied Energy.
Pure electric cars have much lower fuel costs -- electricity is cheaper than petrol or diesel -- and maintenance costs, as the engines are simpler and help brake the car, saving on brake pads. In the UK, the annual cost was about 10% lower than for petrol or diesel cars in 2015, the latest year analyzed. Hybrid cars which cannot be plugged in and attract lower subsidies, were usually a little more expensive than petrol or diesel cars. Plug-in hybrids were found to be significantly more expensive -- buyers are effectively paying for two engines in one car, the researchers said. The exception in this case was Japan, where plug-in hybrids receive higher subsidies. The study has been published in the journal Applied Energy.
In a few years, EVs will be cheaper anyway, even without any subsidies. The price of battery storage (in $/kwh) has been declining steadily at about 15%/yr for the last couple of decades. By 2022~23 there will be several EVs on the market for around $20k, simply because the batteries will be that cheap by then.
At that point, it's getting close to 'game over' territory for the ICE vehicle market. If EVs are cheaper all around, they will win. (Not to mention that they also tend to be far more reliable, because they only have a few dozen moving parts, rather than thousands.)
A Stanford lecturer, Tony Seba, wrote a book about this upcoming market shift, called "Clean Disruption." He also does a lecture on the topic, which you can find on YouTube. Pretty interesting stuff.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
eGolf lease deposit - $4000
Lease monthly payment - $50
Price to drive to work 12000 miles at 4m/kWh and $0.11 per kWh - $330
Total cost of ownership over 3 years - $6740
Golf lease deposit - $3000
Golf lease monthly price - $170
Price to drive 12000 miles at 36mpg and $2.60 per gal - $867
Price for yearly service - $300
Total cost of ownership over 3 years - $12451.
To support AC's point:
http://www.dollarsandsense.org...
https://www.energyandcapital.c...
https://www.huffingtonpost.com...
From the first one, discussing the US defense-related costs as just one aspect: "Put all these numbers in perspective: The price of a barrel of oil consumed in the United States would have to increase by $23.40 to offset military resources expended to secure oil. That translates to an additional 56 cents for a gallon of gas, or three times the federal gas tax that funds road construction. If $166 billion were spent on other priorities, the Boston public transportation system, the âoeT,â could have its operating expenses covered, with commuters riding for free. And there would still be money left over for another 100 public transport systems across the United States. Or, we could build and install nearly 50,000 wind turbines. Take your pick."
But there are many other external costs to fossil fuels like health care costs (the legacy of leaded gas is still taking a tremendous toll on our society, but air pollution in general is a killer). For example:
https://thinkprogress.org/here...
"The average cost of a gallon of gasoline in the U.S. right now is $2.47. If that cost took into account the environmental and human health costs of burning the gasoline, however, it would more than double, according to a new study. The study, published this week in the journal Climatic Change, created models for the âoesocial cost of atmospheric release,â a method of determining the costs of emissions beyond their market value. According to the study, accounting for the social costs of burning gasoline would add an average of $3.80 per gallon to the pump price, raising the price to $6.27. Diesel has an even higher social cost of $4.80 per gallon. The study also measured the social costs of other fossil fuels not used at the pump. Coal, for example, would jump from 10 cents per kilowatt hour to 42 cents per kilowatt hour, the study found. And natural gas, which has emerged in recent years as a cheap source of fuel, would see its price rise from 7 cents per kWh to 17 cents per kWh."
And on the legacy of leaded gas (and how it has contributed to the USA's huge prison populations): http://www.motherjones.com/env...
A related essay I wrote in 2009 on "Why luxury safer electric cars should be free-to-the-user":
https://groups.google.com/foru...
"This essay explain why luxury safer electric (or plug-in hybrid) cars should be free-to-the-user at the point of sale in the USA, and why this will reduce US taxes overall. Essentially, unsafe gasoline-powered automobiles in the USA pose a high cost on society (accidents, injuries, pollution, defense), and the costs of making better cars would pay for themselves and then some. This essay is an example of using post-scarcity ideology to understand the scarcity-oriented ideological assumptions in our society and how those outdated scarcity assumptions are costing our society in terms of creating and maintaining artificial scarcity."
But the real answer (if maybe not politically acceptable) is not to subsidize electric cars. It is to tax *all* the externalizes of fossil fuel use at the point of purchase, bringing the cost of gas to, perhaps, US$10 a gallon or more. The tax could be redistributed as a basic income to everyone.
Perhaps the deepest irony about all this (mentioned in the above essay) is mentioned here by B
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Most electricity is generated from fossil fuels
Most electricity from fossil fuels does not pump massive amounts of NOx in the very centre of densely populated spaces. This isn't a CO2 emissions argument, he directly called out healthcare, something spectacularly bad about diesel emissions made even worse by the location of those emissions.
But thanks for playing.
Most electricity is generated from fossil fuels, so it would be hit by the same tax.
Why? Powerstations, even coal fired ones, don't dump huge amounts of very nasty particulates into the air at ground level right in the middle of densely populated cities.
Do note that EVs are not more efficient than ICE vehicles. Take the ~40% efficiency of an electricity-generating coal plant, multiply it by 90% transmission losses, by the 75% battery charging efficiency, and approx 85% electric motor efficiency, and you get (0.4)*(0.9)*(0.75)*(0.85) = 0.2295. Or 23% energy efficiency for EVs.
So basically, you get much better pollution control without any loss in efficiency? Sounds like a huge win to me.
Except...
That's if you have an old coal plant. If you have a combined cycle plant you'll hit 62% thermal efficiency on the front end, never mind if you use nuclear or renewables.
Your figures for charging are pessimistic. Charging is more like 80-90% efficient.
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/doc...
Distribution losses are more like 6.5% in the US not 10% that you quoted. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
And even some random low power cheapo electric motor easily beats 85% efficiency:
https://www.acdcdrives.co.uk/t...
And larger motors are almost always more efficient.
And even if we take your incredibly pessimistic numbers, you still have the advantage of electric braking. But more realistically, the efficiency is more like 42% plant to wheel (47% taking the more optimistic end of the range).
So penalizing technologies solely based on pollution emissions is equivalent to penalizing higher energy efficiency. Higher efficiency and higher pollution come as a package deal with combustion processes.
Which is a phenomenally good argument for electric cars. If you want the efficiency, you want to put the relatively dirty place a long way from people and all in one place so you can have effective scrubbers on the output.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Meanwhile, here's what its actually like to have an EV in a natural disaster.
Pinkypants -- my favorite!
No, we've just gone through this in the UK. Diesels were given a tax break (less tax on fuel) for decades because of the lower CO2 emissions, and now we've got dangerously high NO2 levels everywhere and lots of health problems attributed to particulates from diesel soot.
And that's all with Euro spec diesel and diesel engines. With the bunker fuel they sell as diesel on your side of the pond and lax environmental regulations, it's a health hazard to be anywhere near a diesel powered vehicle.
The cost of the eGolf lease is dependent on the $7500 Federal EV tax credit, and probably the $2500 California credit as well. Add that $10k to the eGolf's lease price and you get a very different picture. Which was GP's point.
Also, I'm curious where you were able to find it for a $50/mo lease payment. When I almost leased one a couple years back, the lowest price I could find was $79/mo.
How? Wind and solar are dirt cheap nowadays, but you have to have some sort of peaking or storage with them, which ups the price.
It's not cheap in Canada. The break-even cost for wind and solar are between $0.28kWh to $0.93kWh according to the governments own numbers.
Om, nomnomnom...
Think of it as another way to subsidize new technology that may improve our future lives. Currently, there's not enough drivers using the free charging stations to create a taxing imbalance. When tax revenue is ultimately an issue for highway maintenance, one thing you can count on your local, state, and federal governors to do is figure out a way to tax electric vehicle usage.
Nope. Because this has already been subsidized, this is people getting a free ride because of environmental feelgoodism. The same way that same policy drove electrical prices through the roof in Ontario from 0.08kWh@peak to 0.185kWh@peak in less then a decade. The money from building those charging stations(between $20m-80m at current estimates) could mean dozens of new MRI machines, massive improvements in healthcare, shorter wait-times for healthcare, cheaper forms of power like more hydroelectric or natural gas, and on and on and on. Or short term more programs for people in dire need to pay for heating in the winter. The tax imbalance is already here. The costs for the consumer are already breaking people. It's so bad here that Ontario had to ban electrical disconnection in the winter this year because so many customers are facing disconnection. AKA they're afraid people are going to freeze to death. It gets damn cold here. -35C(-31F) is common for weeks on end as far south as London, Ontario.
Tax revenue is already an issue in Canada. Very much so in Ontario, where the province "offloaded" roads directly to towns and cities which caused a large bump in property taxes. On top of this, in north america we have no real "national grid" the countries are too large. Rather they're split into specific regional grids.
As it stands now, it takes more energy and more waste to throw up windmills and solar panels, then it does to flood km's of land and build a hydroelectric dam in north america. On top of that, in Ontario ~60% of our electricity is generated by nuclear, around 10% by wind/solar but that 10% is the primary driver of the "consumer cost." Green energy has been a gigantic mess. So much so that it will likely take 2 generations to fix it. Unlike other parts of the world, Ontario has zero reason to dive into expensive technologies like wind and solar. If anything, the policies and actions of the governments in Canada, especially at the provincial level have put people against green energy, electric vehicles and so on.
Om, nomnomnom...
That's actually a problem with how the U.S. measures fuel efficiency. MPG is actually the inverse of fuel efficiency. So the bigger the MPG number, the less fuel you're saving. The rest of the world uses liters per 100 km to avoid this problem. e.g. Suppose you needed to drive 100 miles. How much fuel would you need to use?
6.25 MPG tractor trailer = 16 gallons
12.5 MPG full-size SUV = 8 gallons
25 MPG sedan = 4 gallons
50 MPG Prius = 2 gallons
100 MPG supercar = 1 gallon
Notice how every time MPG doubles, the fuel saved over the previous step is halved? Economy cars like the Prius are the worst place to put a hybrid engine. It's already a very fuel-efficient vehicle without a hybrid motor. Adding a hybrid motor and batteries doesn't save you very much fuel. Say a non-hybrid Prius got 33 MPG (3 gallons per 100 miles). Converting it to a hybrid only reduces its fuel consumption to 2 gallons per 100 miles. That +17 MPG may look big, but it's only saving you 1 gallon per 100 miles.
The best place to put a hybrid motor is in the gas guzzlers - tractor trailers and SUVs. Precisely the vehicles the environmentalists scoffed at hybridizing. If you can improve a 12.5 MPG SUV's mileage to 14.3 MPG (+1.8 MPG), that will save 1 gallon per 100 miles. Exactly as much as putting a hybrid in a Prius-type vehicle. The +1.8 MPG and +17 MPG represent the same fuel savings. (Yes you can save more by switching from the SUV to the econobox, but that has nothing to do with hybrids nor is it a viable option for people who might need the SUV.)
Likewise if you can improve a tractor trailer's 6.25 MPG to 6.67 MPG (+0.42 MPG), that also saves 1 gallon per 100 miles. This is why Elon Musk was so insistent on developing an electric tractor trailer. He understands that MPG is the inverse of fuel efficiency, and that the best way for the country to reduce it's fuel consumption is to improve the efficiency of low MPG vehicles.
And that's all with Euro spec diesel and diesel engines.
Guess what? That's inferior to US spec, where you wind up having to have a catalyst and inject DEF — thereby eliminating almost all NOx emissions. Meanwhile, direct-injected gasoline engines can produce NOx just like diesels...
With the bunker fuel they sell as diesel on your side of the pond and lax environmental regulations, it's a health hazard to be anywhere near a diesel powered vehicle.
On our side of the pond, most of the diesel is now ULSD.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"