"Frank" wrote in message
...
On 2/24/2013 5:52 AM, Existential Angst wrote:
Awl --

After a recent thread on the Volt, I'm really tryna justify the purchase
of
one, but bleeve, it's hard.
I figger my gas cost per year is $1600 or so, and payments for a Volt
would
proly be $6,000 year.... PLUS electricity costs.

Now, about those electricity costs.....

If you calculate the $ per mile of gas, you get something like this:
At $4/gal, with 30 mi/gal, it costs 13c/mi in fuel.

Now, how much does it cost to charge a battery?
Don't for a minute believe what your ripoff utility tells you about c
per
kWhr.... Do the math on your bill, divide the kWhr on the bill into what
you actually wrote on your check. Around NYC, that seems to be about
25c/kWhr -- which is outrageous.

So let's figger that Tesla's 85 kWhr battery takes, well, 85 kWhr to
charge
it..... that's about $20 in electricity.
If the Tesla gets 200 miles on that charge, that's 10c/mile.
If it only gets 100 miles, that's 20c/mile..... !!!!
Split the diff, that's 15c/mile.... MORE than what I'm paying per mile
in
gas!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WTF??

You get similar numbers for the Leaf, and Volt.

Now, it gets worse:
There's the ever-present thermodynamic kick-in-the-ass.
It will NEVER take only 85 kWhrs to charge an 85 kWhr battery -- it
will
take proly 20% more.

So even if the Tesla DOES get 200 mi per charge (and jb's article
suggests
that it does not
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/au...ewanted=1&_r=0
)

factor in the charging inefficiency, and you are just about EQUAL in $
per
mi cost of a 30 mpg vehicle.

Anything less than 200 mi per charge, and the Tesla loses, and poss.
loses
badly.


So at NYC electric rates, an electric car, not counting ANY other
factors,
is actually MORE expensive than gas, at $4/gal.

YET, you see these huge "equivalent" mpg numbers for electrics, typically
around 100 mpg, implying a $ per mile cost of less than 1/3 the cost of a
30
mpg vehicle..
But my calcs show that an electric will be *at least* as expensive as
gas,
and likely considerably more than gas, as a fuel.... What gives??

Holy ****.... there goes my Volt....

Now factor in the high initial cost of electrics, inevitable battery
deterioration AND replacement cost, and wow, simply not viable. Unless I
made a mistake somewhere.

Now, some may bleat, Oh OH, MY electric rates are 5c/kWhr.... and I
would
repeat, do the net division on your bill to see what it REALLY is. At a
TRUE 5c/kWhr, yeah, it makes sense, you could divide all the above
electric
costs by FIVE.
But I don't think anyone is really paying 5c, and quite a few places,
like
CA, pay MORE than NYS utility rates.

AND, if your small car gets 40 mpg, that's even tougher competition for
electrics.

Idears?? Opinions?


Did the math myself.
Hybrids are good for those that drive over maybe 20,000 miles per year.
For the bulk of us, they cost more. For those that think it is worth the
cost of conservation, hidden costs have not been considered like mining
the battery material, and these are often environmentally unfriendly.
When Prius first came out, I looked up cost of battery replacement and
figured after warranty ran out and batteries needed replacement you might
as well junk the car for what it was worth.

But my point was, *just considering the fuel source alone*, electrics *at
best* are = to $4/gal gasoline, *unless* your electric rate is really low.
And I suspect few are.

Which makes those "MPGe" stats of 100 total effing bull****. They must be
using electric rates from 1950.

The other stuff involved with electrics -- initial cost, battery
cost/life/deterioration, etc -- just worsens the comparison.
What a bummer.

Sposedly, the batts for a chevy volt (16 kWhr, 1/5 the rating of Tesla), are
"only" about $3,000 -- not terrible terrible over 8 years/100,000 mile, but
that does add about 3c to the cost per mile calc, not insignificant.
--
EA