How did you arrive at it costing $10 to recharge its 238 mile battery?
That seems way high.
For your post to matter, you should really cite figures or at least detail your math a bit.
That seems way high.
For your post to matter, you should really cite figures or at least detail your math a bit.
In many parts of the country, power is much, much cheaper than mine. My friend pays less than $0.10 per kw/h in Georgia, which also has a $5,000 state subsidy (on top of the $7,500 federal subsidy).
Do the math with $6 full charge cost and a $12,500 subsidy and it quickly turns in the EVs favor...
At .02 ? Nope
Annual Average Price per Kilowatthour by State 46 Connecticut 17.76 47 Alaska 17.94 48 Hawaii 26.17
Sadly, this is no longer the case. They've actually gone in the opposite direction, imposing an additional $200 annual fee on EV owners
http://politics.blog.ajc.com/2015/06/24/georgias-electric-ve...
The EV fee is a bit disproportionate because of the limited range and fewer average miles driven, but there's no easy fix.
PGE charges tiered rates, each tier of about 325 kWh where I live, and the rates in the third tier are almost 40c per kWh. During summers and when using an AC, that's the marginal rate people you end up paying to charge your car. They might offer lower rates specifically for car charging but will impose other restrictions making it less attractive.
I assumed he used california prices. I live in canada and electricity is half the price as it is in cali based on that website (but the weather could affect millage as well).
But separately, depreciation on EVs is a bit unknown. The powertrain should be good for a very long time - but the battery pack may cancel out any benefit relative to IC cars.
Can your EV fully recharge in 5 minutes? No? Then I think we call it at least a draw in terms of saving time.
Cutting e.g. $3/charge off the cost doesn't really swing the figures towards paying off the Bolt's extra $5.2K starting price over the life of the vehicle.
The upfront costs are not prohibitive, they are just upfront, and in return, you can sustainable feedback loop, less gas station visits, less oil changes, few moving parts so fewer "unknown" repairs. Regular maintenance is a breeze. The ride is head and shoulder above a mid-lux vehicle.
So 60 kw-h is $7.20. Brings the breakeven miles down a fair bit, and I guess it should be possible to have quite lot cheaper electricity for charging (and lots of people will have to do the calculation with higher prices).
This number (which actually varies somewhat widely depending on which source you look at) hides a huge standard deviation.
For example, http://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/ lists the overall number at $0.1044 but by that ranges from $0.0776 to $0.1705 if we ignore the Alaska and Hawaii outliers. And even then, the number this lists for Massachusetts is $0.1535 but my bill (in Masachusetts) say $0.1906....
Of course gas prices vary quite widely state to state too.
As an example, the 'energy' charge on my electric bill is basically the average for my state (Oregon), but the rate I actually pay is about 50% higher due to other fees.