Featured Kiss your GAS goodbye?

With our Prius, the 52 MPG city and highway saved one month's car payment, ~$350, each year. Then we paid the car off and the fuel savings continued for the next 10 years.

With two plug-in hybrids, a BMW i3-REx and Prius Prime, the electric miles I pay for are half the cost of gasoline miles. On top of that, merchants who want our business offer free charging which covers about 1/3d of our EV miles. Since over 80% of our miles are in EV mode around town, the annual savings exceed $400/year over our earlier Prius.

Compared to our previous gas-only cars, the annual savings is ~$750.

Bob Wilson

 

I understood that the break-even on gas vs ev was 0.11 per KW with gas @ 2.60 per gal.

In other words, assuming 50 mpg with a standard prius, vs ev @ .11

Am I correct?

 

I think that is approx. correct.
But Plug-In owners can sometime charge up for free at work/public charging etc.
In the post above, we are not hearing how the cost savings was accomplished, and perhaps they are not saying versus a Prius.

 

Let me point you to a better methodology:

• The actual breakeven point depends upon the vehicle efficiency. So the BMW i3-REx has a significantly greater difference, $2.90 vs $7.10, than the Prius Prime, $2.50 vs $4.62.

Bob Wilson

 

Now, how can you put a price on the coolness factor.

 

My bank does not have a ‘coolness’ deposit option. Does yours?

Bob Wilson

 

@ .24/kwh, i should be kissing my electrons goodbye, but i'm not. it must be great to live somewhere, where electricity is cheaper than gas.

 

Talking $3.00 for gas this summer so the fuel savings figures skew even more.

But they must be discounted by the effect of the additional initial purchase price cost of the EV or Plug-in over a comparable hybrid or ICE car. Opportunity cost. What, had the cost to purchase difference been invested, would that difference grow to over the years and would it cover the fuel cost difference at what point?

 

prime is cheaper than prius.

 

60 miles of gas = $3.00, 60 miles of ev = $3.60

 

Why yes, Bob. It's something new with banks.

 

$3.00 gas this summer?! This is the norm for California, we are already seeing close to $4.00 gas.

 

$2.44 for us right now. Driving electric is still way cheaper for us at around 8 or 9 cents a kWh.

 

sweet! if i ever get to cali, maybe it will be financially worthwhile. for now, i'm satisfied with the 'electrotainment'.

 

This is an important point. We don't have to financially justify paint color, sound system, wheel rims, or any of hundreds of car bling. That some of us can, great, but not the sole reason.

Bob Wilson

 

For me, charging at home works out to around 40% cheaper per mile than 55MPG gas. Obviously that varies depending up on gas prices and how hot it is outside (using the home air conditioner puts us into a higher price tier), and a few lesser factors.

However, the really big $$$ advantages for us are:

1. Austin (TX) Energy’s Plug In EVerywhere program gives us the vast majority of our charging for about $1/week. Altogether, we end up paying about 1/4 of the price of gas!

2. Even better: Our P.Prime has about 17500 miles on it, but the engine has only about 1500 miles on it. I bet we can keep this car for 200K-300K miles. Shelling out $30K once every 20 years, rather than once every 12 years, represents serious savings!

 

Two thoughts, from the perspective of the Prius Prime:

First, at 55MPG and $2.20/gallon, you’re looking at 4c/mile. At 4.7miles/KWh and 11c/KWh, you’re looking at 2.3c/mile.

However, second, make sure you include not only the cost of the electricity itself, but all fees and so forth. In our particular case, it comes out to about 2.5c/mile year-around average. Somewhat more in the hotter months and somewhat less in the colder months.

Actually, maybe a little higher than that; it varies. Then again, gas here is currently running more like $2.65, and tends to be higher in the summer, when our electric rates are higher too.

 

Also, quietness, non-pollution (or at least displaced pollution), and immediate, high-precision application of torque.

Regarding quietness, I sometimes hear people saying things like, “I like cars with Ferrari whine, rather than a Harley-Davidson throaty roar,” or the like. To me that sounds like, “I like phonographs with pops and scraping sounds rather than wows and skips”! Dang, I’ll take CDs and (good-quality) digital downloads, thank you very much!

 

To me, they sound like high frequency whoopi cushions