Featured EV savings calculator

i'd tap Bob Wilson for info. He's been drafting stats like that since the early 2000's.
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Many of those stats will vary highly depending on your specific circumstances.
For example, in my area, some EVs are cheaper to insure than their ICE counterparts. Other EVs are as expensive, or even more costly to insure depending upon the insurance agency and how up to date their data is on each car make.

In short, most of the online calculators probably consider insurance and registration costs a wash. But depending upon your local, registration may cost more.

The deal you can get on the car also plays a big role. For example, last year the Leaf has a $10,000 rebate on it for quite a few months. But if you were buying a different EV, that didn't apply.

 

Your best bet is to make your own spreadsheet. You can start with a template that can be found online.
This Reddit site has a potential Excel spreadsheet you can download and amend to suit your needs.



The math involved is straight forward provided you have adequate data on the cost for each vehicle you are trying to compare. Should work for either EV or gasser. In my case no matter how I estimate, a BEV (even including a used or leased) at this time will cost 100% to 300% more than equivalent hybrid or PHEV. Considering the inconvenience I have to face with the lack of infrastructure for charging on roads around where I live and the time it takes to charge, it is still not time for me to go fully BEV.

 

Have you included "externalities" of ICE emissions, petroleum drilling, military, etc.
Simplest to just add $10,000 to $25,000 or more per car to get to whatever EV price you want to buy.


Mike

 

For calculators, I would probably start with Edmunds:
Auto Calculators

My current interest is maximizing performance of our Tesla Model 3 and BMW-i3 REx.

Bob Wilson

 

If you know your electricity cost per kWh and know the kWh/mile of the EV, there's your cost per mile for the new car.
If you know you gas price and and mpg, there's your cost per mile for old car once you add in the oil change/s.
Multiply both by miles per year and find the difference.

There are other factors like unexpected repairs, but those ... errr ... unexpected and therefore unpredictable. Plus they don't kick in till after the warranty.

 

It's not a static calculation to begin with. Price of battery used, how many miles the pack will preform at it's AMP/Volt/Watt rating and charge time. How those numbers change for hot and cold areas per type of Pack - battery / cooling / heating. How much the driver pushes the limits of the BMS (battery maintenance system). ie: what kind of traffic the car is driven in daily and how well the cars systems fit that daily driving scenario.

Than where is the calculator supposed to get all the data from? There's plenty of ICE data to use and generalize across the temp range, mpg as there's not that much of a difference with those anyway, but it gets more complex as repairs are added and the count of lemons off any specific assembly line.

Electric motor trains have a ways to go before there's enough data to make accurate predictions across the temp range and longevity of mpge per battery type used, with a fairly large difference in those numbers over the cold / hot temp range per type.or battery and thermals used with the pack.

Than there is A/C and cabin heat and how good those are at reducing load on the pack and the comfort level in the cabin.

Don't forget about the way the driver uses the car. It's a big variable even with ICE cars and it's an even bigger variable with hybrid and electrics with both charging difference and how much stress the pack gets while driving through each pack discharge cycle.

 

This varies from company to company as well as zip code to zip code. I know people that have found it cheaper to insure a Leaf, and more expensive to insure a Leaf.

You may find better information from an EV group in your local area? They could give you better information for your specific case.
As a data point, our Volt cost us $10 less per month to insure than our Gen II Prius with State Farm in Minnesota.

As for battery prices, no one can tell you what the prices will be in 8 years (when the warrantee runs out).
I believe currently the Leaf batteries for their 150 mile model is $8,000 installed at a dealer. In 8 years I would take a guess that will be $3k, but who knows?
Tesla battery packs, it was rumored, in 2013 cost $35k. Last year, I heard a Model 3 pack (310 miles) was $14,500. But again, those are under warrantee for eight years, so it doesn't matter the cost today.
The best source for that kind of information may be to find one of the guys rebuilding Teslas or other BEVs and inquirer with them.

 

Competing against a $16k new car cost is not the hybrid's strength. Electric cars are years away from competing over a reasonable term of ownership calculation. You may find a heavily discounted or used one of either but they are liable to be less desirable models.

When last I did the calculation, I made the then reasonable calculation that gas would cost $3.50 a gallon over the 8 year keep-it-for-me life of the car. At $1 per gallon cheaper the decision I made made no economic sense.

 

Humm, I can see the link OK. But try this. this is just the excel form link.

 

i think the major cost difference is what is available for purchase. if you can get a much better deal on one of the choices, it will probably overweight all the other variables over the life of ownership

 

I’d say cobalt mine security is a no-go. 63% is mined in DR Congo but that country is supported 100% by the Chinese and Chinese companies are directly responsible for its security. A single Chinese company is the major miner and refiner of almost all cobalt produced. So even if 43% of cobalt is used by batteries, 80% of all batteries are for mobile devices, not EV Batteries. So roughly 5.5% of all cobalt used for EV batteries is produced in the DR Congo. I’d probably go on to say all of that is used by Chinese companies making EV batteries.

The rest of the major producers are Australia and Canada, not exactly hot beds of terrorism, exploitation or conflict assets.

According to the 2018 AFRICOM posture statement to congress we have 0 assets in the central part of Africa. Most of our focus is on Somalia, Libya, Niger and Chad and the closest base is in Spain. France has more assets in Africa than we do.

So we only have administrative assets like every country, such as the State Department.

Now for the Middle East, yikes do we have a lot of assets.


iPad ? Pro

 

Tough to beat a used Leaf for TCO. Obviously have to take into consideration your driving habits, such as a Leaf not able to do roadtrips. But for an around town car they are great!

 

The best way to go for EV savings, go used. That's what I did. I found that even with my limited range Spark EV, I use it most of the time now and a benefit of that was my electric bill went down.

 

Diluted by the non-EV still in inventory.

Bob Wilson