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.

Comments

Corrects its own headline in the third sentence

[SlaveToTheGrind]

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.

So it's cheapest -- as long as you ignore that pile of money over in the corner that someone else is paying, and one we promise will go away Real Soon Now. Good grief.

Re:Corrects its own headline in the third sentence

[rgbatduke]

Yeah, and I strongly suspect that somebody just can't do arithmetic as well. Perhaps SOME electric cars are less expensive than SOME gasoline cars, but there is a huge range of prices for gas cars, even in a given class. If you compare a high end luxury gas car to the cheapest electric, add in the subsidy, and make negatory assumptions about the probable price of gasoline over the expected lifetime of the car, you can probably fudge it to make it come out a win, but if you compare apples to apples without subsidies, it isn't so clear. Suppose a car goes 12,000 miles in a year. At 20 mpg, that costs 600 gallons of gasoline, or around $1500/year. Over a ten year lifetime, fuel costs are only around $15,000, so if electric cars ran FREE you'd need price points for CHEAP electric cars to match those of CHEAP gasoline cars within around $12,000, allowing for the cost of money. But the cheapest electric cars are easily this much more than the cheapest gasoline cars, and even the study only allows for a 10% difference in maintenance costs, which really remains to be seen as these costs are highly variable by manufacturer. But electricity is NOT free -- even if it is being provided "free" in some places it is really just another subsidy, and costs SOMEBODY somewhere between $0.10 and $0.20 per KWH.

I ran into the same difficulty with our Priuses. The first Prius we bought was $40,000. At the time, we could have easily gotten a similar size/class car for maybe $20,000 to $25,000, one that got around 30 mpg. There is no way we paid off the difference in financing costs over the lifetime of the car with the marginal savings on gasoline at around 50 mpg. New cheap Priuses are better -- close to break even -- but electric cars IMO have a ways to go.

Re:Corrects its own headline in the third sentence

[geekmux]

I think that electric is in our future but issues with the grid, infrastructure, refueling time will be persistent problems.

Much like cell phones, removable battery packs would solve a lot of issues, particularly for the give-it-to-me-NOW generation who can't stand having to wait for anything, even if it's a 15-minute "quick" charge. A 5-minute battery swap that will likely become fully autonomous when you pull up to the "pump" is the future.

What do you do if the power is out for a day to a week with an electric vehicle? Right, you charge it with your gas generator.

The better solution would be to be able to charge it with solar panels, because the small handful of gas stations still operating during an extended no-electric apocalypse will inevitably be overrun due to demand. While you're waiting for a full battery, you can load guns to protect your food from the ill-prepared hordes.

Re:Corrects its own headline in the third sentence

[religionofpeas]

removable battery packs would solve a lot of issues

No, they'd solve one issue, but create a bunch of new ones. Removable battery packs requires a standard size, which will stifle progress in battery tech. Standard sizes don't work very well with different models of car, requiring bigger or smaller packs. Also, making a removable battery removes a lot of design freedom, and forces a suboptimal battery placement and connection. It required bulky and complicated battery replacement robots, and a bulky storage facility for batteries. And you still need a beefy grid connection to recharge them.

Fast charging is a problem that can be solved with better battery technology.

Re:Corrects its own headline in the third sentence

[Rei]

Also, more to the point, new electricity generation in the US (and most of the developed world) is a mix of wind, solar and natural gas. Modern natural gas baseload plants (combined cycle), BTW, are around 60% efficient, not 40%. Coal is dying.

When you add new load to the grid, they're not filling that load with coal; they're filling it with renewables.

Re:Corrects its own headline in the third sentence

[squiggleslash]

Most electricity is generated from fossil fuels, so it would be hit by the same tax.

Kinda. You state the inefficiency of electric cars by only measuring fuel->drivetrain efficiency, but:

1. Ground->Distribution for fuel is much more efficient for electric power plants than for cars: power plants can make use of trains and pipelines, cars have to use a network of fueling stations.
2. Not all electricity is generated from fossil fuels
3. Centralized electricity generation provides fewer points for environmental clean-up, making it both easier and more efficient, thus cutting any (sane) environmental fuel tax significantly
4. ICE engines can't generally turn braking energy into gasoline. While regenerative braking's efficiency is frequently overstated, it's still a factor.

Real world experience seems to support the notion that electric cars are more efficient. People generally run them for pennies (well, dimes - that's a 10c coin for non-Americans out there) a day, as opposed to dollars for ICE engines. If it were somehow more efficient to fuel a diesel VW Golf than a Tesla, then you'd expect that to be reflected in the relative costs of running them. Existing taxes on gasoline and diesel are tiny, and indeed gasoline is frequently subsidized, both by government and by the businesses selling it (the 7-Eleven, not the pump, is where the money's made in an average US gas station) so that doesn't explain why it cost so much more.

That's what's being glossed over in the environmental movement's crusade to eliminate diesel vehicles based solely on emissions.

It's not lost, it was originally a popular argument in the 1980s, before it became clear that diesel was significantly worse with emissions per gallon than gasoline. France even subsidized diesel for a while, leading to massive pollution problems. Burning diesel may result in less CO2 per mile than gasoline, but the health effects are disastrous when the other pollutants are taken into account.

Despite being a tiny minority of vehicles and accounting for a relatively small percentage of total fuel sold, diesel-powered vehicles and equipment account for nearly half of all nitrogen oxides (NOx) and more than two-thirds of all particulate matter (PM) emissions from US transportation sources. Tens of thousands of people die in the US every year due to particulate pollution, this isn't a theoretical problem.

Is it solvable? Sure. If burned at scale, it becomes easy to do "clean diesel" using a mixture of fuel additives and filters and converters of various kinds. At scale in practice means "Anything the size of a Diesel locomotive, or larger, with, like the locomotive, a dedicated team of support staff on hand to change filters and maintain additives, who aren't going to shirk off the job dismissing it as "treehugger bullshit from the lieberals in Washington."

Electric cars make sense. Increased use of diesel would be a massive retrograde step towards dirty air and the kind of issues with mass respiratory syndromes that I saw when I grew up with in the 1970s and 1980s and haven't seen since. Let's not do that.

Re:Corrects its own headline in the third sentence

[hey!]

People pay piles of cash to subsidize ICE vehicles too.

There are in fact two big piles, in fact. The first and larger pile is the non-governmental pile: this is the least visible pile because it's spread out over the population in things like medical bills. Air pollution in the US causes 16,000 premature births, and that alone costs the public 4.3 billion annually.. Overall cost to the US health care economy from ICE air pollution is on the order of $40 billion a year, conservatively. That's not counting the subjective costs of being sick or dying prematurely, it's straight up health spending.

Many of the public costs of ICE nobody so far as I know have even attempted to quantify, like the cost of noise. The noise cost of ICE vehicles is mind-boggling if you think about it: just take the difference in value of a real estate property located on a noisy street vs. a quiet one and multiply that by all the properties which are exposed to high levels of traffic noise. Surprisingly noise pollution has a health cost too, estimated in the billions for heart disease alone.

The second big pile is the government spending pile. This takes some explicit forms, such as the costs of drafting, monitoring and enforcing vehicle pollution regulations. But most of it is squirreled away under other headings. Do you really think that we'd spend a dime in the Middle East on defense if there were no oil there, or if oil were as worthless as sand?

The externalized costs imposed public by internal combustion engine car are staggering. They're just as much public subsidies as any government program, and they're much larger than e-car subsidies. The only difference is that they aren't gathered into a single line item in the budget, which means we don't automatically have to argue for or against the fairness of that subsidy every year. In fact the burden distribution for ICE vehicle external costs is wildly arbitrary and unfair. It's just easy to ignore that.

The whole point of e-vehicle subsidies is to bring down net externalized public costs for vehicles all types in the long term.

Taxes

[kenh]

Let's not forget that in most markets electric cars get a free ride on public roadways. Gasoline taxes are collected to pay for the infrastructure combustion engines drive on, electricity has no such taxes so plug-in electrics pay no taxes based on usage, and hybrids only pay minimal taxes, based on the gasoline they use when the charge runs out.

Re: Corrects its own headline in the third sentenc

[Anonymous Coward]

Given the tax bill the republicans just passed, ahahahahHhahahhahahahahahahahahahaha

EVs are great, but they don't solve everything.

[NimbleSquirrel]

I notice that the projection in ownership costs is only for four years. I do have to wonder if they chose that time frame because of the five year warranty some Electric Vehicle manufacturers have on the battery pack. If you factor in a battery pack replacement to those costs for the longer term running of an electric vehicle, then those figures don't look so rosy for EVs.

I also wonder if they have factored in the cost of installing high output charging outlets in homes to accommodate electric vehicles. When charging from a standard 110V outlet EVs, such as the Tesla, will only get about 5 miles of range charge per hour. It would take a couple of days to fully charge most EVs at that rate. Faster charging is done by installing higher output outlets (using twin chargers, or 240V lines, or three phase). EV advertising typically show people plugging their cars in when they get home, so that is clearly an intended use case. However, upgrading a residential switchboard to handle a high output EV charger is a significant expense, and one that reasonably needs to be factored into the total cost of owning an EV.

The other issue is that the electricity has to come from somewhere. While some countries have the benefit of renewable energy, other countries still rely heavily on coal and fossil fuels for power generation (for instance in the US 70% of electricity comes from coal & fossil fuels). With the use of EVs predicted to dramatically increase, the demands on electrical grids is also going to dramatically increase. While hydroelectric powerstations are cheaper than coal / fossil fuel plants, they can only be built in limited places. Both wind and solar are very expensive, and again can only be built in limited places. That leaves coal/fossil fuel and nuclear as practical generation alternatives. With nobody investing in new nuclear, that just leaves coal/fossil fuel plants. Burning coal is far worse for the environment than refined fuels (such as gasoline and diesel). Burning bulk natural gas and liquid petroleum is not much better. It seems to me that while EVs are directly free of emissions, they are just moving the Greenhouse Emissions issue further up the chain. In the US, more Greenhouse Emissions come from electricity generation than from transport.

I really do think EVs are great, but they aren't perfect (yet) and they don't solve everything.

Re:EVs are great, but they don't solve everything.

[jerry33]

"However, upgrading a residential switchboard to handle a high output EV charger is a significant expense, and one that reasonably needs to be factored into the total cost of owning an EV. " Installing a 240V outlet is not expensive. To put a NEMA 14-50 on to an existing 200 AMP service is typically between $200 to $400. This is enough to charge any EV overnight (e.g. 6-8 hours). Because most EV owners charge at night, when their other demands are lower, there's no issue. In addition the urban environment becomes cleaner, asthma rates lower, and healthcare costs are reduced. It's far easier to clean up a power plant than it is to clean up millions of 20% efficient vehicles. And only 39% of the U.S. electricity is generated by coal, so the "OMG it's from coal" is a mainly bogus claim, as is the Solar and wind are more expensive--that was true at one time, but not any longer in most cases (there are always exceptions). And driving an EV is a much better experience than driving any gas car and far better than any diesel car. Most of the arguments against EVs are of the "it will put the blacksmiths and horse traders out of business" type. Having driven one for over 100K miles, there is no way I would go back to an internal combustion car.

Re: Corrects its own headline in the third sentenc

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're going to factor in the production and transmission efficiencies of electrical power, you need to do the same for gasoline or you are comparing apples to oranges.

Re:Inconvienence

[drinkypoo]

The thing that makes it uneven (and even unfair) is the fact that the public is paying for your use of that vehicle in terms of road maintenance costs you aren't contributing to and subsidies you are getting.

If you find that upsetting, consider that virtually all road damage caused by vehicles is done by heavy trucks, but they hardly pay more to offset that. Those costs should be paid by transportation companies and wind up baked into the cost of goods, which would permit purchasing decisions which reflect the true state of the world. Instead, everyone has to pay those costs, even people who don't buy goods which are transported long distances.

Sigh

[FWMiller]

This story is disingenuous. If they had said the cars are competetive costwise without the subsidies, the title would have been justified. The way it is, its propoganda for the liberal agenda.