I hear you though. A more apt comparison would be the compact or midsize SUV class since that's what most EVs are. The Model 3 is the only Cruze sized vehicle on the market and you pay the Tesla tax for it.
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Misc General Banter Thread
- Thread starter Rain Cold
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I hear you though. A more apt comparison would be the compact or midsize SUV class since that's what most EVs are. The Model 3 is the only Cruze sized vehicle on the market and you pay the Tesla tax for it.
I knew a guy who had near 400k on a Chevy 1500 before he finally had to the change the transmission. I'll wait until that becomes the norm and I'll definitely look at the them then.
But right now my 2011 HHR that I bought in 2020 for $4k has 140k miles and doesn't burn a drop of oil between changes.
With Alabama power rates, I'd never get close to making the difference up.
What's your price per kWh out of curiosity? For us here in SC on Santee Cooper we pay $.079 per kWh off peak which is 21 hours out of the day. Technically the same price on peak 3-6pm in summer and 6-9am in winter but there's an $8 per kW charge that hits on the day your usage is highest. It's not as bad as it sounds but we avoid charging both EVs and using the dryer during that time.
There's a neat time of use plan that knocks that down to $.042 per kWh 11pm-5am with the super off peak rate. Compared to the CRV this replaced that got 35mpg it cost around $11 to travel 100 miles and the EV is around $2 for that same 100 miles. Multiply that over a year and it's like having gas be $.25 per gallon again. It feels like cheating.
This is our combined use for a household with two EVs so it's a little funky. Multiply those numbers on the right by .079 and that's our combined cost to commute every day. Wife has around a 44 mile round trip not including extracurriculars for the kids and I'm about 100 miles round trip. So yesterday for example it cost $3.41 to charge both cars back up to 80% state of charge. The heavier usage is for full charges for one reason or another. $3.41 wouldn't even get me one way to work in my old CRV.
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The best way I've found to explain how shockingly cheap it is to run EVs is to compare how much "fuel" they use. My Equinox for example has around an 85kWh usable battery. The EPA says 1 gallon of gas is around 33kWh of energy. So the car "holds" the same amount of energy in the battery as about 2.5 gallons of gas. Now that's not exactly a 1 to 1 comparison but it's the efficiency calculation used by the EPA to help people compare by thinking in MPG for gas cars and MPGe for electrics. So in theory each "gallon" of equivalent energy I put into the battery costs me around $2.50. BUT I only need about 3 of those equivalent "gallons" to go 300+ miles because the power conversion and electric motors are so much more efficient than combustion of fuel. 3 gallons of gas will get you about 60 miles in a pickup truck or about 90 miles in the CRV I replaced.
The cost of electricity has to go way up (about the cost per kWh of those high power interstate highway DC chargers) before it's no longer cost effective. People looking at buying used cars in the $15k-$35k range have some compelling options, but I haven't yet seen anything in the EV world get much cheaper than $15k and still be a desirable car.
That doesn't even begin to factory in near zero routine maintenance costs compare to gas cars.
The cost of electricity has to go way up (about the cost per kWh of those high power interstate highway DC chargers) before it's no longer cost effective. People looking at buying used cars in the $15k-$35k range have some compelling options, but I haven't yet seen anything in the EV world get much cheaper than $15k and still be a desirable car.
That doesn't even begin to factory in near zero routine maintenance costs compare to gas cars.
It's not even May 1 yet and I'm already tired of the heat.
I think ours is between $0.11 and $0.17 a KWH based on what I've calculated in the past.
Georgia offers a Super Off-Peak "Overnight Advantage" pricing for EV owners -- we currently pay $0.022 between 11pm and 7am somewhere between $3-5 (depending on highway vs local driving) for ~300 miles of range.