Where are the electric savings?

My Prime Advanced cost me less than a 2 Eco liftback would have because of the tax credits.

 

Hmmm.... I buy it because I want to feel like I am doing something helpful to our environment. With an attitude that unless you make money, the environment is not worth it, we are in trouble. As one of the original Sierra Club members....an environmentalist my entire life. and even a huge John Denver fan....wow...a statement like that really hit me.

 

Yes. We ARE in trouble.
In the US, we are taking giant steps BACKWARDS with regards to the environment.
And other things too.

 

i see chevy bolt starting at $37,500. less $7,500. fed tax credit = 30k

prime starts at 28k less $4,500. fed tax credit = $23,500.

so the delta is $6,500. not $15,000.

 

When I got my Prime, I didn't do my homework and found that charging the Prime kicked me up to the next tier which was about $.35/kwh. I stopped charging for a while as doing so was much more costly than gasoline. After a few months, I got solar power, which I probably should have done some years ago but was putting off because I wasn't sure I was going to live in the same home for the next X number of years. Now I pretty much charge whenever I want to and have a L2 charger which helps with that.

I find it amazing that power costs vary so much throughout the country. It seems where there's a push for electric vehicles by the state in question, power costs are ridiculously high, which makes owning one uneconomical, unless one is willing to put out $$ for solar or can charge for free at work, for example.

 

Mike In some parts of CA there are EV rates, or time of day rates that make overnight charging cheaper. I do not know about SF.

 

mike lives there, he likely knows. and he has solar now, so it's a non issue.

 

Look at the savings on electricity the gas station experiences by not pumping more gas.

 

Didn't the cost of solar kind of put a kink in the whole cost savings? It's like saying, I spent 15k in order to save 35 cents per kilowatt hour?

 

for the next 30 years.

 

The EV-A time of use plan probably would have cost me more because I need air conditioning during the day for four months out of the year (we're home during the day). PG&E had a pilot program with a submeter where your home was on the tiered plan and the charger was on the submeter that might have been the best alternative to solar, but I didn't pursue that.

I figure I've got a 7 year payback period for the solar system and, if I sold my home, I'd get most of that investment back in the sale so I think it was a good investment. Plus hey, it's good for the environment and I don't have to worry about power bills.

 

Electric is far easier to hypermile, even at you 25 cent rates my EV costs still blow gas out of the water

 

Charge at home. For me, it's $0.78 for a full charge. That makes the gas, if any cheap.

Also, get to know where the free chargers are. There is are free level 2 chargers at the mall. Set your car to auto auto unlock the charge plug when full.

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Yeah, but Volts don't get 55 mpg like Primes do.

 

Nah mine is getting 49.98MPG per the graphic above, EV cost is still less even if it were a 55mpg comparison

Also I have no doubt the EV side of a Prime can be hypermile into a lower cost per mile than the gas side

 

I don't hypermile and am pretty much uninterested in driving like that. Maybe I could get 70 mpg if I did.

I am saving my battery for slow speed city driving instead of using it up on the highway though.

 

how do you hypermile ev? everything i've read here says not possible. all you can do is accelerate and drive as slowly as possible.

 

The Volt isn’t really possible to hypermile on the gas side, the 49.x is on the freeway killing the engine going down hills is about it.

EV side is on slow country roads, my shorter slower route gives my EV it’s range and yes slow acceleration and coasting are critical to EV efficiency, “as for driving like that”, if you drove the roads I do, you would have no choice but to be efficient unless you break the law.

 

that's how i eek out 15 miles from the pip.

 

Heck, you could almost venture out of the 'hood with that, but be careful. It's a big, dangerous world out there.