Driving on electricity is cheaper than gas in all 50 states | Hacker News Reader

Driving on electricity is cheaper than gas in all 50 states

pluglesspower.com

The numbers used seem skewed in favor of promoting their product rather than a real comparison.

The number used for MPG is 21.4 which is the "Average U.S. light duty vehicle fuel efficiency".

In addition to passenger cars the light duty vehicle class includes SUVs and pickups (including 1/2 ton models such as the Silverado, F-150). At this time I don't believe there are any electric vehicles that would compete with a 1/2 ton pickup in terms of payload or towing.

It would seem the Passenger Car fuel economy would be the most accurate number to use; which is 36.4 MPG.

They do acknowledge this number at the end of the post:

>The average EPA fuel economy of passenger cars (not counting trucks) was 36.4 miles per gallon in 2014. Using that number puts gas and electric cars on a more even playing field.

Though doing so makes electricity only cheaper in 43/50 states and the savings is not nearly as compelling as the figures from the 21.4 MPG comparison.

TL;DR: this is is more of a clickbait product promotion article than a real comparison

We have a Nissan LEAF and a Honda CR-V as our two family cars. We do about 4K miles/yr on the LEAF and 5K miles/yr on the CR-V. Because both cars are used for fairly short average trip lengths, mostly in the city, the LEAF gets a little over 4 miles/kWh and the CR-V about 22 miles per gallon. That makes for about $0.05/mile for the LEAF (at MA's insane electric rates) and $0.10/mile for the CR-V, for fuel/power only.

Electric cars are quite good (as compared to ICE) on the city drive cycle. The CR-V as a modestly sized, Civic-chassis/SUV-body is quite comparable to the LEAF. After incentives, the LEAF is cheaper than a new CR-V (though we bought our CR-V very well used).

Most SUVs and pickups get a lot of use for things like commuting where a passenger car would suffice, because it's often still cheaper than buying another car for the commute. Comparing against the light duty vehicle efficiency number is probably going a little too far since many trucks do actually get significant use as trucks, but the passenger car efficiency number definitely understates how much fuel is burned for things like commuting.

Electric cars can conceivably replace passenger cars though, whereas people commuting in a pickup are very probably quite unlikely to replace that pickup with an electric vehicle of any kind. (Are electric trucks even a thing?)

In light of that, it seems entirely reasonable to compare electric car efficiency to gasoline passenger car efficiency.

"Are electric trucks even a thing?"

Yes. http://www.viamotors.com/vehicles/electric-truck/

They make quite a bit of sense, in a niche. Trucks are often fleet vehicles, which are often well suited for electrification: predictable, regular, short distances. Trucks handle the weight of batteries well. And Via turns the original motor into a generator, which is useful for an electric vehicle and is also useful on a job site.

I think this would be useful for niche applications but wouldn't appeal to contractors or anyone that didn't have very regimented tasks to perform.

The biggest problem is the payload is only 1,000 lbs in comparison to 1800-2000 for most 1500's. Many contractors opt for 3/4 ton (2500, f-250) or larger models for more payload/towing.

My brother is a contractor and has a GMC 2500 HD crew cab. It was $38k; gets ~15mpg and he drives around 35k miles a year.

Fuel for the Via truck at that milage is 30mpg, so using $3/gal would be $3500 + electricity cost versus $7,000 for gas alone.

Over 6 years the total cost difference for fuel would be $21,000 and put the gas truck cost around $60k which is comparable to the Via's $65k.

The gas truck is a better choice in this case because it has a payload of 4,000+ lbs and towing 14k+ lbs in comparison to 1000 lbs and 4000 lbs for the Via. A 1500 with a small engine would have nearly double the payload and towing of the Via and be less expensive with a higher mpg than the 2500.

The generator is cool but kind of gimmicky because the truck has to stay on site and stationary. A <$1000 generator would provide similar power and is less of a hassle than having to park your truck close enough or runs cords for power.

Driving a pickup for reasons of vanity doesn't make its costs any less real, even if that same vanity means you're unwilling to consider an electric car.

I understand that, but I don't understand at all why it's relevant to this article.

Running the numbers. I live in Massachusetts and sure enough, that is one of the bottom 10 states. My Honda CRZ hybrid gets about 40 mpg average over the year. The price of gas, price per kWh and the number of miles are about right.

Gas: 12282 miles @ $2.14/g and 40 mpg is $657. Electric: 12282 miles @ $0.191/kWh and Tesla P85 85kWh 285 mile range is 3.35 miles/kWh for $700.

Basically a wash in a state ranked as 47th with a decently high mpg car. Price difference on the car is substantial though. $66,000 vs $23,000.

So is owning a house outright instead of paying a mortgage every month. But you gotta cough up the cash up-front. Clearly not everyone can swing that.

Sure but costs are rapidly dropping for EVs while house prices continue to climb.

I think we're going to see some really interesting things over the next 5-7 years as initial prices come down and operating costs stay low. It's going to squeeze the ICE market from both ends which could put them in a really tough position.

I'm reminded of the HDTV market about ~10 years ago when it seems that prices were astronomical. Now you can get a 4k TV for under $300.

> I'm reminded of the HDTV market about ~10 years ago when it seems that prices were astronomical. Now you can get a 4k TV for under $300.

I'll bite. Cars aren't 90% electronics, but TVs are. If you bought a BMW with everything but the drivetrain, it'd still cost a whole pile of money. Same with a Tesla. Sure the drivetrain might cost 20%-30% of the car's retail price, but even if you bring that to $0 you absolutely haven't made the car 90% cheaper for 5x the product.

Just because electronics have a _huge_ NRE (non-recurring engineering) cost and fairly trivial per-unit costs (like software) doesn't mean that the whole world works that way. Metal still costs real money because it takes energy to make/recycle, form, etc.

Out of curiosity, what 4k TV model is this? (under 300)

Seiki 4ks have been sub 300 for a while, at least when they're on sale. (e.g. I've been using https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00RBA9MOC/ref=psdc_6459737011_t3_... for over a year as a monitor after applying a beta firmware patch to get rid of the terrible latency. I got it for $298.)

Walmart does carry a few of them

https://www.walmart.com/browse/electronics/4k-ultra-hdtvs/39...

Not saying you should buy from them though.

Pedantic: That's actually not true if you consider the time value of money and current prime mortgage rates.

That's absolutely fair, but a Tesla is $80k and the note payment on $80k is at least $1k/mo. A reasonable note payment on a gasoline car is $300/mo and you can buy _a lot_ of gasoline or diesel for $700/mo, before you put a single electron into your Tesla.

Sure there are ostensibly other EVs out there. But it's basically a fun car to drive (Tesla) or a total bummer (Leaf or Volt). I've got something in between (turbo 4cyl) for half the cost of a Tesla per month, fuel included.

Perhaps once the Tesla is paid off it gets super cheap to drive, but about that time you'll need a new battery pack I'd suspect. So in a way a Tesla is a $60k car with a $20k prepaid fuel card. It's cool, don't get me wrong. But unless you're willing to bury your head in the economic sand in a pretty serious way, it's not somehow more affordable than a car based on a traditional ICE.

Shouldn't one also factor in the cost of purchasing comparably classed vehicles? For example - the base Nissan Leaf costs 29k versus a comparable Nissan Versa costing 14k. 15k difference in vehicle is equivalent to just over 6000 gallons of gas (or around 186 thousand miles).

> Shouldn't one also factor in the cost of purchasing comparably classed vehicles?

Certainly, but in the US, the gov't is offering a $7,500 tax rebate. Additionally, many states are offering rebates, as well.

Here is one such illustration of cost breakdowns in the state of Colorado:

http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2016/10/04/so-i-bought-an-ele...

Depending on your income, at least in the US, it's closer to 21.5k with the federal 7500 tax rebate. In addition, a few states offer rebates on top of that.

This is a great point, and indeed the article is overly simplistic.

I think though that what really matters beyond the base cost in this point is the depreciation cost over time. This is of course much harder to estimate.

Can we factor in used vehicle sales as well?

A certified used 2012 or 2013 Nissan Leaf can be had for about $9K - $14k. A used 2012 or 2013 Nissan Versa seem to sell for about $8K to $13K. (Both numbers pulled from current autotrader.com listings in the Midwest US).

If your willing to buy a certified used vehicle, the price difference drops down to only about $1k-$2k.

Quite a few UK homes were fitted with electric storage heaters because electricity was cheap in the evenings.

Now they are extremely expensive, massively more expensive than normal gas (the other kind) central heating.

Is the price of US domestic electricity going to stay at the present price?

It kind of depends. I live in Illinois, and I pay about 12 cents per KWH. A huge proportion of the baseload is generated by nuclear power in Illinois, which is incredibly inexpensive. Peaking power is provided with fossil fuels, such as natural gas, which is much, much more expensive. It takes a long time to ramp up or down nuclear plants, but the utility is pretty good at matching demand, so electricity remains inexpensive as a whole.

The question of whether our power will continue to be inexpensive is brought up often. The nuclear plants are slowly being decommissioned, and there are vocal factions against all of the replacement options. The barriers to constructing a new nuclear plant are substantial, but people are also opposed to the construction of coal plants as well. There is a strong movement for renewable power generation. Illinois is a great area to generate wind energy, but wind is more expensive than nuclear and also requires a greater amount of peaking plants because of the variable nature of the wind, etc. All those extra peaking plants cost a lot of money, even if they sit idle 99% of the time.

Illinois is way too flat for hydroelectric, but we have a few pumped hydro storage facilities. They aren't very large, and a few of the pumped hydro facilities are only designed to consume power to use up extra baseload power when the supply is expected to outstrip demand.

> Illinois is a great area to generate wind energy, but wind is more expensive than nuclear and also requires a greater amount of peaking plants because of the variable nature of the wind, etc.

While wind power in Illinois does require natural gas to back it (which will eventually be pushed out by more renewables and utility scale battery storage), it is so much cheaper than nuclear its the reason Exelon is closing two nuclear generators in the state earlier than expected (Illinois legislature would not provide them a bailout).

The root cause is that there isn't enough utility scale battery storage yet, which should've been incentivized with a higher tax credit than renewable generation.

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20130620/NEWS11/13061...

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20160602/NEWS11/16060...

Disclaimer: ComEd customer in Northern Illinois

and a few of the pumped hydro facilities are only designed to consume power to use up extra baseload power when the supply is expected to outstrip demand.

That doesn't seem right - if you want to temporarily curb the output of a thermal power station (eg. nuclear or coal) without actually shutting down units, you can just bypass some steam around the turbines.

Why do that when you can store the energy cheaply though?

I may have misunderstood but I thought the parent was saying that some of the facilities weren't being used for storage but just for power dumping.

Our "pumped hydro" is an old quarry that they let fill with water from a nearby river, and then pump the water back out. The pumps exist because the quarry is used for water retention, but they are also used to just waste energy. I don't know the specifics, but I know they do that when electricity prices go negative.

I didn't know turbine bypass was a thing though. Why does the utility purchase load if they can bypass the turbines? Do transformers need a certain amount of load on them?

The pumped hydro facility in Ludington, MI is kind of close by, but I suspect it might be a little too far away to provide peaking power for Chicago.

I think his point is that those Hydro plants become less valuable if the baseload plant (nuclear) were to be phased out.

Things went the other way in Australia - a large number of homes in the south-east connected to reticulated natural gas for hot water and central heating because it was significantly cheaper than electricity, but now that LNG export terminals have come online the gas price has risen closer to the international market price. It's now significantly cheaper to run reverse-cycle electric heating, especially overnight with time-of-use electricity charging.

So, it does nothing to take into account the fact that if every car tomorrow switched to electric, we'd literally have no way to power the cars. The price of electricity would skyrocket to reflect the complete and utter lack of generation capabilities.

It's great to talk about how electricity is cheaper at rates that are unsustainable, but unless we're willing to adopt nuclear, we're a LONG way from having enough energy and enough of it in a clean format to power our energy needs.

I know, I know - solar and wind (which will help but not solve the whole issue). That being said, I still have questions about how pulling that much energy and heat from the earth will affect our larger ecosystem. I don't think we REALLY have a grasp on the macro effects of "renewable" energy.

A single 250 Watt solar panel can produce about 1 KWh per day in the US (a little more or a little less depending upon the part of the country and the aim). 20 of them would produce about 20 KWh. That ends up being between 60-80 miles of daily electric range for ~30 years. The panels themselves cost about $125 each, with a total panel cost of $2500. Unfortunately, installed costs will likely get you closer to $16,500 for this whole setup. Over the lifetime of the panels, you would expect over 600,000 miles worth of production.

The equivalent amount of gasoline (assuming 36.5 mpg and 2.50/gallon) would be 41,000.

Feel free to check my match, and Of course, I'm handwaving around some problems (the time value of money for one), but I think it is pretty easy to see that there are viable options for vastly increasing the amount of power production available and to do so largely in lockstep with the increase in demand for power from electric vehicles.

I think it is also pretty easy to see how a Tesla salesman might frame a sales pitch for solar panels.

The biggest problem with Tesla + solar panels is that most people charge their Tesla at night. So you need to add a battery to that equation to really drive on sunlight.

That was another part of what I was getting at when I said that I was handwaving around some issues. :) In much of the US, net metering is currently available, so it isn't really a problem for the consumer in those places.

On average, a US home consumes ~30KWh per day. A single Tesla P100D has a 100KWh battery. It isn't hard to imagine ways to shift the charging profile towards the day for a lot of people.

And that is why Tesla came up with Powerwall. Now Musk Inc. can sell not just a Tesla + solar panels, he can sell you Powerwall too.

If we could magically switch every car to electric overnight, I think we could also switch our gas infrastructure to electricity production overnight. Neither is physically possible, so it's a silly thing to be worried about.

And here's the thing: even if all the extra electricity would be produced by coal plants, electric cars would still be cleaner than gasoline powered cars, because internal combustion engines are just that awfully inefficient. So moving to electric cars is good even if it temporarily increases the need for dirty electricity.

Of course we should still continue moving energy production to cleaner sources. And:

> I still have questions about how pulling that much energy and heat from the earth will affect our larger ecosystem. I don't think we REALLY have a grasp on the macro effects of "renewable" energy.

Solar and wind don't "pull" energy and heat from the earth. They just don't add more to it that wasn't there before. Ultimately, all energy is turned to heat. The problem with fossil fuels is that it adds heat from energy that had been chemically locked away and not part of Earth's heat system for billions of years (same goes for nuclear), and makes the Earth absorb more heat from the sun (not an issue with nuclear). (And to keep things in perspective, the second effect is far bigger than the first.)

At least we have a pretty clear idea of how to reach a future where all electricity is sustainable. We don't really know how to do that with gasoline.

I don't think the effects of removing that energy are significant. The amount of energy we use is utterly negligible compared to what the sun shines upon the Earth. Climate change is a problem because the impact of CO2 is orders of magnitude greater than the energy released in generating it.

> At least we have a pretty clear idea of how to reach a future where all electricity is sustainable. We don't really know how to do that with gasoline.

Sure we do (ish). Look at Brazil, they pump more renewable bio-ethanol into their flex-fuel cars than they do gasoline.

They use sugar cane to produce their ethanol, which is far more efficient than corn ethanol in the US (which, might I add, is in no way sustainable). Are you suggesting we attempt to grow sugar cane, in the midwest, in the enormous quantities required to replace millions of barrels a day of petroleum consumption?

Electricity will be the clear winner; we're simply awash in sunlight and wind.

I mean, there are some things you can't run on electricity, like commercial jetliners. If we run out of cheap oil, we could use biofuels in those applications.

For any application where electricity works I'm sure it will win too.

Does that scale up to supply the fuel needs of the planet without starving a bunch of people to death? Renewable energy and storage does, it's "just" a matter of cost.

> if every car tomorrow switched to electric, we'd literally have no way to power the cars. The price of electricity would skyrocket to reflect the complete and utter lack of generation capabilities.

I think you might be overestimating how much electricity is needed.

I own an electric car, and drive about 450 miles per month on electricity. My car charger uses just 12 amps. That's not a trivial amount of power -- but it is less than half of the amps any average appliance uses individually (like an electric dryer or electric stove or central AC). And my electricity bill reflects this, my car charger uses far less electricity (in total KWH) than my home central AC uses during summer months.

The electrical grid handles all those other appliances (often simultaneously) in millions of homes today. I'm not sure why an extra 12 amps per adult is some nightmare scenario.

this dovetails nicely with our existing problem of excess heat on the earth :)

This article seems disingenuous. What matters is total cost of ownership. Which is unfortunately, because there are several compelling cases now where owning an EV is cheaper than a comparable ICE.

Electric vehicles can be more expensive than comparable gas cars up front. The differences in monthly car payments is fixed and easy to understand. … For gas car buyers, fuel costs are familiar and expected. But how does electricity pricing compare to gas costs? It’s less intuitive to figure out for most of us.

Hardly disingenuous, they hit that in the 2nd paragraph and explain this article is about the differences in operating costs.

Operating costs.

That’s $60 per month saved on fuel alone — not including lower maintenance costs, fewer or no oil changes, and time saved in states that allow EV drivers to use the carpool lane.

My Leaf replaced a high maintenance out of warranty Mercedes.

Can confirm, Tesla Owner.

I guess living in Texas as well, which has dirt cheap/free electricity. Yes, I have a plan that I pay $0.00/KwH between 8pm and 5am. I charge it during those hours.

Have you run the math to see if a PowerWall would make sense if you can charge for free at night?

Even if you can charge for free the batteries only have a limited number of charge cycles so you have to pay for the wear and tear on the batteries. Last I heard the economics were pretty close to neutral for the US:

From http://www.catalyticengineering.com/top-ten-facts-about-tesl...

"So revenue is $1.66 x 183 days x 10 years = $3,000. You’ll just about recoup the cost of the product, but you won’t profit because of two factors – the cost of inverter and installation, and the time value of money. We’re in a low-interest environment, but setting aside $7,000 today to make back $3,000 over 10 years still leaves you down $4,000 – not a very good deal."

Energy storage is eligible for the 30% tax credit the same as a solar panel install on your roof. So knock 30% off the total install cost ($4500 total - 30% = $3150).

Not yet. I haven't even bothered as the current gen powerwall is pretty much not for sale... not many people actually got them. And also they are announcing PowerWall 2.0 this month. So we'll see what new features it'll bring and when I'd be able to actually buy buy.

Solar Panels are pretty much a no go for me because I have a flat roof top patio across almost the entirety of my roof. Which is dedicated to a kitchen, seating, hot tub and a putting green ;)

Also, realistically, electricity is so cheap here, the difference wouldn't make up for it, although I'd get it because it's "cool" haha. I think the flat rate 24 month contract, you can get $0.75/kWh now. Pretty crazy.

As I am eagerly awaiting delivery of a 2017 Prius Prime plug-in hybrid in their #1 state Oregon, this is all good news. However, as I'm switching from an old diesel VW, I also can't help but notice these numbers are very literally electric vs. gas, and look like they wouldn't pencil out against a diesel sedan. That said, the contrast there is between belching soot out vs. clean air, so hard to argue on that front.

How is the electricity in Oregon generated? I wonder what the carbon footprint of running an electric vehicle on coal is, especially when you include mining Lithium etc.

Mostly Hydro, Nat gas and renewable. Almost no coal.

This says different: https://www.oregon.gov/energy/pages/oregons_electric_power_m...

33.65% is coal.

Disclaimer: I understand this is a US focused article.

My story? Everyone drew lots and I lost: I drive a Prius Plugin Hybrid for the next 2.x years as a company car because no one wanted it.

My biggest beef: It's too expensive. The list price is around 50k EUR - and that's what the state of Germany uses to tax me for that car. For comparison: I drove an A3 Quattro Sportback with ~everything~ before that and that's the same price.

The second problem is actually very relevant to this article: There aren't any 'free' recharging stations even remotely close to my place (a 'major city' in Germany, you'd know Bochum if you'd be from this country). This crappy car has a 22km reach when fully charged. That is far too low and even if I find a charging station .. I probably end up being at 50% if I get back home.

But! The article claims that it is actually cheaper to charge your car than to refuel it. And here's another problem: The 'your company car needs fuel' problem is solved. I have two different cards that I can use to either refuel at Routex (think BP et all, big list of participants) or Shell. So, I can fuel up for free almost all the time. There's no proven way (and nothing in place for me) to pay for electricity.

Ignoring the fact that it would be a logistical nightmare to plug the car in at my flat and ignoring that the 22km are really nothing but a joke and utterly useless for .. anything I do: I'd pay for that out of my own pocket vs. 'free' fuel.

So I think this country over here needs to adjust quite a bit more before electrical vehicles become a decent option. Companies need to adjust their policies (why do they even give me a plugin hybrid?). More recharging stations are required. And honestly .. if your car cannot do at least 150-200km on a charge.. Then it's not an electric car, it's an electric bike with a roof on top (those can already do 60+km easily for the basic starter models).

The article talks just about prices, not about who's paying for it. If your company pays for gas, but you pay for electricity, then for you obviously gas is cheaper. But that's a very specific case.

Also, a Prius is a hybrid, and not meant to be used as a fully electric vehicle (or it would have a bigger battery).

I ran the numbers for my father a few months ago and it was basically even for him:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12379662

"On average it is $60 cheaper per month to drive on electricity than gasoline."

So far in 2016 I've spent less than $87/month on fuel. In February I spent less than $60, while some long road trips in July pushed me up to $144. I've taught my son to drive this year, so that's a bit extra, but it's hard to imagine this working out for me.

If I'm reading the chart right, Texas comes in at #18, with $810 in savings. So far I've spent $869.59 on fuel this year. Admittedly, the year is not over, but I suspect it might take more than $59.59 for me to charge an electric car.

I mean, if my parking space weren't such a very long way from my apartment, that is. For now, I'm planning to buy a Prius, but not the plug-in model.

You're probably not an average car user, then. The article talks about averages. Nobody is really average. Electric cars are more efficient for people who drive a lot (see the point they make about Missouri).

It all depends on how many miles you put on your car. In Austin, I'm paying about $30/1000 miles for my Leaf or about $30/month for the amount of miles I drive.

The statement comes from "pluglesspower.com".

Is that a credible source? I kind of follow the tech scene, I never heard of them. Did anyone?

So. It is just a company blogger tasked to promote whatever they are doing.

So... no comment.

As someone who has an electric car, this completely disregards the fact that by having an electric car, it nearly automatically puts you into a higher electricity cost tier. In my case, it's $0.10/kWh for the normal, and $0.18/kWh for the higher tier. They're using the "average" cost of electricity which should be lower than the actual cost of electricity. I ended up getting solar panels, so that dropped me back down to using very little electricity from the local municipal electricity company and saving at least $100/month when taking into account the cost of the solar panels.

I haven't heard of this. Whenever I see discussion of EV charging rates from owners, it's in the context of taking advantage of extra-cheap overnight rates. I'm sure what you say is the case in some places, but are you sure this is common?

It would be difficult for me to take that into account as noone in my part of the country seems to have that kind of rate structure. I think it is mainly a west coast thing?

There are some places around here that have a demand charge for certain hours, but they also tend to have the cheapest rates in the region as well.

That is highly dependent on where you live. I live in Austin and pay a constant rate of about $0.12/kWh no matter the time of day.

Those nice and low ¢/kWh figures seem very subsidized; not market rate figures.

Whereas gasoline is not subsidized; in fact taxed quite a bit.

Gasoline is subsidized. The taxes exist to pay for road construction and maintenance, but they're not high enough even to cover that, let alone the costs imposed by the pollution released when burning the stuff.

You're not describing subsidies in the sense that the government chips to cover some of the cost of gas so that poor people can drive. That's how residential electricity is subsidized: it costs pennies per kWh so that poor people can have it.

You're describing fantasy subsidies consisting of insufficient taxation in gasoline to cover infrastructure costs and the impact of driving.

We could argue that food is subsidized because terrorists eat, yet the food industry doesn't pay for the harm they cause.

Does it matter if the subsidy comes in the form of direct cash payments or allowing people to impose costs on others without their consent? The effect is the same.

Imagine if the local garbage company was allowed to dump their trash on your yard without paying you. I'd call that a subsidy.

Yes. People imposing costs through pollution or whatever without paying for that matters. (It also matters that they may be doing irreversible damage, irreparable at any cost.)

It's just not called a subsidy and is irrelevant to the point that putting electricity in your car versus gas looks good from a pure "cost to my monthly bottom line" point of view partly because of residential rate subsidies that allow poor people to turn the lights on.

You're not getting gasoline from Big Oil Co below what it costs to produce.

You're getting residential power below production cost from Local Power Co. For now. That loophole will likely be closed, at least partially, as EV's become ubiquitous.

Do you have something to back up that bit about residential power being below cost? I was unaware of this and can't find anything about it.

I know that there are times when that's the case, because I pay a flat rate for electricity even though production costs spike heavily during periods of high demand. But on average, I thought it covered costs. Especially since I'm still paying that flat rate in the middle of the night when production costs are far lower.

If you don't like calling the ability to pollute a "subsidy" then fine, but I don't see how it's irrelevant. Part of the reason driving a gas car looks so cheap is because you're allowed to impose a significant chunk of the costs on other people.

There are additional costs if we compare ICE vehicles and EV charged with clean energy.

The economic, social and environmental costs of pollution and greenhouse gases of ICE vehicles are a considerable part of these and others costs, but not all:

- pollution health impact -

<< Some three million deaths a year are linked to exposure to outdoor air pollution. Indoor air pollution can be just as deadly. In 2012, an estimated 6.5 million deaths (11.6 per cent of all global deaths) were associated with indoor and outdoor air pollution together.

Ninety-four per cent of the deaths are due to non-communicable diseases – notably cardiovascular diseases, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and lung cancer. Air pollution also increases the risks for acute respiratory infections.

“ This new model is a big step forward towards even more confident estimates of the huge global burden of more than six million deaths – one in nine of total global deaths – from exposure to indoor and outdoor air pollution,” said Dr. Neira, who is WHO Director, Department of Public Health, Environmental and Social Determinants of Health. " >>

source: http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2016/09/vast-m...

- Greenhouse gases emission for climate change impact -

“Temperature change will leave the average income around the world 23% lower in 2100 than it would be without climate change” "This study is far from the first to suggest that climate change will slow economic growth. Big business has been especially keen on highlighting the potential damage. A Citigroup report released last month found that minimizing temperature rises to 2.7ºF (1.5ºC) could minimize global GDP loss by $50 trillion compared to a rise of 8.1ºF (4.5ºC) in the coming decades."

source: http://time.com/4082328/climate-change-economic-impact/

source paper in Nature: http://www.nature.com/articles/nature15725.epdf?referrer_acc...

- Fossil fuel subsidies -

"Fossil Fuel Subsidies Cost $5 Trillion Annually and Worsen Pollution The International Monetary Fund notes that subsides for burning fossil fuels enrich the wealthy and make air pollution worse"

source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fossil-fuel-subsi...

I repeat that ICE vehicles are a considerable part of this costs, not all. Also EV charged with clean energy have costs, R&D&I, subsidies, etc. but compared in economic, social and environmental costs and in each of them alone, EV charged with clean energy cost less and are better for society’s health, economy, security, survival and happiness, globally. There is a lot of work and costs left to do but I think we can do it with increasing innovation and social awareness.

It looks like a forced dichotomy. What is it compared to the cost of not owning cars and having decent mass transportation, and dense/safe/cities in which people can live without the threat of cars?

And also what about in both cases the costs of roads, bridge, traffic jam/signals, accidents, policing?

Seriously, it is as if the problem for solving man created excessive energy that screws the climate was to make MORE green energy and not about consuming less energy.

Consuming more dirty energy or more green energy still results in extra temperature on the surface of the globe.

Does this include the additional cost of the electric car?

That's discussed in the 2nd paragraph of the article: No.

Electric cars have a ways to go to have lower total cost of ownership.

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