Featured Best answer I've seen yet from Toyota about going full EV

For some, perhaps not. I know many Leaf owners that saved quite a bit starting the first month.
If you put on a lot of local miles, it can add up quickly.
Of course, if money is the only issue, you can save more by not owning a car at all

 

100kW into a 75 mi range traction pack potentially represents LOTS of heat. If you get 3+miles/kWh - plus a reasonable upper lower & buffer, that'd be a 30kWh pack size - roughly. Serious thermal management (a MUST). The lack thereof, for example, is why the leaf STILL can't quick charge more than 1X in a row, on a hot summer day without suffering extremely longer charge times.
So ... good list, but thermal management is still a foreign concept to some manufacturers.
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Confirming "Serious thermal management (a MUST)," I recommend viewing Bjørn Nyland's multiple videos on Model 3 battery thermal management. For example:

• On charging, Model 3 runs front and rear motors in heater mode to raise temperatures 45-50 C.
• In operation, it reduces the battery temperature to ~20 C.

This pattern is repeated in multiple videos. I've used it to home 'boost charge' my Model 3: (1) parallel condition car to warm, and; (2) let car cool after charging completes. This protocol typically shows a 4-5% increase in charge after an hour or two of passive cooling.

Bob Wilson

 

yeah, you'd have to lay that out for me to make me a believer. its a long complicated equation in most cases

 

Japan has decided to go with hydrogen. Their market is too small to support the manufacturing level needed to bring FCEVs down to a competitive level. So Toyota and Honda are pushing them for markets in which they make little sense. In California, they are being abetted by CARB, and have gotten incentives for hydrogen cars high enough that it puts them having to make plug ins; one Mirai was worth around3 BEVs for ZEV credits.

Hydrogen doesn't make sense for the US because of the huge infrastructure cost needed to support cars running on it. Perhaps it can work for trucks and trains which would need less refueling stations. Natural gas would also work, and it can be make renewably with excess electricity. Audi is already doing so at a pilot plant. The process is basically electrolysis with CO2 added in with some more energy. The reaction can be extended to make light fuel oil, that can be easily converted to diesel. Hydrogen and batteries are not the only options for renewable electricity for transportation.

 

Leaf lease was less than the cost they were paying for gas each month. This can vary from person to person.

For more in depth numbers, here is a more recent comparison of the 5 year cost of ownership for a Tesla SR+ vs a Camry.
Tesla Model 3 vs. Toyota Camry — 5 Year Cost of Ownership Comparisons | CleanTechnica

 

wrong equation. a bev cannot save money in most cases. one comparison means nothing. one can always find a better way to save money on buying another vehicle than buying an ev in most cases

 

Well, that is debatable, but not the statement I was responding to.

This is the statement I was responding to:

As shown, the "never" qualifier is not correct.
How rare, or how common that is, is up for debate. However, it is pretty plain that the calculations in favor of EVs get better and better as time goes by.

 

I have to disagree. In the example you posted, the author did not save money

 

???
The calcs show, that over a five year time frame, the author would spend less money than for a Camry.
Granted, the monthly loan cost would be higher for the Tesla. But the fuel, maintenance and higher resale value easily make up for that.

 

that is saving money 'relative to another car of the authors choice'. (s)he did not save money by buying a tesla. on the contrary, it was avery expensive decision.

also, the article is a joke. i can walk into a toyota dealer anytime, and drive out with a camry for about half the edmunds tco over 5 years.

 

How often does buying any brand new car save you money?

 

my point exactly. and yet, many people here, and i'm sure elsewhere, fall into that trap.

or maybe it's just an excuse to get a new car.

 

Seems like a lot was missing from that cost comparison. What maintenance were they doing on the Camry? You can make that look very expensive if you ignore the 24 months of free Toyotacare and let a dealership do whatever they feel like to your bank account for 5 years. Granted, some people do maintain their cars this way and that would make it a fair comparison for those people.

I've managed to save 60-70% off the estimated maintenance costs of all the cars I've owned, mostly by DIYing the things I can do. I can't do it all, I still pay pro wrenches when I need to.

No mention of high registration or use taxes for the EV, and that's a hot topic in a few states including mine.

A friend of mine has now paid for about 70 days of rental cars for the time his Tesla has spent in the shop. Obviously that's not happening to everyone, but it's something.

Lastly nothing at all to address the possibility of a crash in resale value. A heck of a lot of people dumped their Prius for a Tesla. When the next shiny thing comes along they'll ditch those M3s en masse for it. I sure can't predict what it will do to valuations but I don't see the author indicating it's even on his radar.

 

well, i've had five camry's, and maintenance has never been close to those numbers in the first five years and 75,000 miles of ownership. and a $500. repair? thats an outlier, if it ever happened at all.

 

Any replacement of gasoline to power cars will require massive infrastructure investment. Neither electricity nor natural gas are exceptions in that respect. Once electric cars surpass a certain fraction of the fleet, even nighttime charging will require increased capacity, not to mention fast charging or peak hours. Of course in the single digits as a percent of new car sales as BEV are now that's not required yet.

Only some kind of renewable diesel like Exxon is betting on would avoid this, but diesel or natural gas aren't problems for carmakers hedging their bets to worry about since they're ancient technology.

 

you may want to read up on how solar, wind, & battery backup is growing at leaps & bounds. Tesla has already begun the process of incorporating battery backup - coupled with solar panels on there multi stall supercharger stations, in order to cushion the impact of more & more quick charging electric cars. So before we start hand-wringing, let's see if we can get plug-ins above the 5% mark. It might take some arm-twisting to get the other charge installers to follow suit.

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Electric Car Myth Buster — The Electrical Grid | CleanTechnica

 

People actually do need new cars time to time. Used makes more financial sense, but someone has to buy new for there to be used.

There is over a thousand miles of hydrogen pipelines in the US; mostly between industrial plants. There is over a million miles of natural gas lines going to homes and businesses. For the most part, switching to natural gas just needs stations. Hydrogen will need more expensive stations, and all that pipe line or more distributed production facilities.

Upgrading the electric grid has benefits beyond that of serving plug in cars. It is needed in some locations without the cars.

Toyota's new engines are far from ancient technology, and the ICE is going to be around for some time still.

Delphi is developing a direct injector for natural gas engines. Direct injection test engines designed for CNG are showing to be more efficiency than and just as powerful as gasoline DI engines of the same displacement.

Solid oxide fuel cells can auto reform methane, and an outboard reformer will let them run on other hydrogen sources. The PEM fuel cells most are using are suspectible to impurity poisoning, so require pure hydrogen. Nissan has a solid oxide FCEV that uses ethanol, and a Volvo group is developing a diesel powered one to replace generators on long haul trucks.

 

Sure it takes about a decade to make major changes to the grid. Air Conditioning in Texas caused major changes as did wind. ERCOT the grid that provides my electricity was started to pool electrical resources and build infrastructure for the war effort for world war II. Adding more plug-ins to ERCOT will lower the cost/kwh of the improvements reducing prices for all rate payers as well as reducing carbon footprint of those customers.

The California portion of the western grid is in poor shape independent of plug-in adoption. The average age of PG&E towers was 68 years old, with an estimated lifetime 65 years. Right now Californians are paying for the lack of maintenance in the worst possible way with fires wiping out lives and property. Adding plug-ins can only help pay for new infrastructure that will help rate payers. Rate payers are also still paying for SCE's nuke, and underdevelopment of energy. Unfortunately the California PUC and the for profit badly managed utilities don't seem to be improving the grid properely. Hopefully adding more cars and better management will help. Each portion of the grid is different. In california and texas adding plug-ins should help make improvements more cost effective.

Its a lot easier and cost effective adding lines, wind mills, and ccgt power plants than growing plants or algea for renewable diesel, although both are probably good moves.