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by theshrike79 1695 days ago
I think people are doing the math on car TCO finally.

If nothing goes wrong, the first two-three years are practically free for an EV. Home charging costs pennies and if you're really stingy you can use free public chargers.

Then you might need a new set of tires maybe a quick maintenance at the dealership and you're good for a few years again.

2 comments

A family friend just got an increase from their electricity provider to 0.44€/kWh due to increased costs of gas and coal. Assuming 18kW/100km (including charging losses) that's 8€/100km. Not very far from gas prices at the moment.
With Electricity prices topping $0.30/kWh in many places, this is no longer true...

Unless you also have solar panels at home and want to have the hassles of making sure your EV only charges on sunny days, you're going to be paying rates for electricity close to rates for dinosaur-fuel, especially if you're comparing to a modern 60 mpg gas car.

The supermarket 5 minutes from my apartment just opened their chargers at 0.20€/kWh for 22kW charging and 0.25€/kWh for fast charging (50kW+).

Still a hell of a lot cheaper than gas over here (coming up to 2€/litre in some places). Even diesel is over 1.8€/litre.

At 15kWh/100km consumption it'd cost me under 4€ to drive 100km on my EV. My old Prius did around 5l/100km, which would be closer to 10€/100km.

But even at those electricity prices, the cost per mile is still cheaper than with an ICE car. And fuel prices are going to raise further with higher carbon taxing.
Most charging takes place at night. At least where I am it’s a lot cheaper.
Which cars are 60 mpg?
Most cars in Europe where fuel is much more expensive, and therefore manufacturers put a lot of effort into energy efficiency.
60mpg (us) is 72mpg (uk), or 4l/100km. A Vauxhall Corsa may claim that[0], but I've got one at the moment as a rental and don't get anywhere near that, more like 45-50mpg (uk) - so about 40mpg (us).

[0] https://www.parkers.co.uk/best-cars/most-economical-cars/

That's 56mpg (American gallons are smaller). It's also a claimed number, real numbers tend to be about 70% of that, which would make it about 40mpg (US).

https://www.honestjohn.co.uk/realmpg/renault/clio-2013