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Sure, financing plays a huge role in fulfilling my desire to be self-reliant. Energy independence must go side by side with financial independence. If the solar panel installation cost is 1/3 of the current level of cost, I would have them installed today. At our current household usage level and electricity rate, and cost of the installation, the payback period is about 15 years. To me, that is a too long and too risky investment. Some people who have had solar work in their house often say it is "guaranteed" to pay back the initial cost and free electricity for years after that. But, I also have read and heard stories of people whose solar panels never paid themselves nor realized any savings on electric costs. I have even heard, that having solar panels on the roof was considered to be more of a liability than an asset that devalues the property when it comes to time to sell. To some extent, both sides of stories tell some truth but never apply 100% accurately to my own case.

The same is true with the EV. If I can find a BEV much cheaper than an equivalent class PHEV, I would have already bought it. The fact is for my use case, a BEV is inferior to an equivalent class PHEV in every aspect of owning a car, except for the fact it will eliminate the need to buy gasoline and to change the oil. A payback period? That would be never. At the current initial cost and associated upgrade to install L2 EVSE, no BEV is for saving. If I buy a BEV, it will not be to save the cost. That being said, if I can buy a BEV with a huge discount using incentives, then I will consider it. I was planning to buy Soltera (or bz4X) in the year 2022. Of course, the initial estimate for those cars was reported to be starting at ~$35K. My plan was to make the final price down to $20K by applying various incentives, but in the end, none of that was possible. Thus no BEV for me in the year 2022. For the year 2023, however, the least expensive Bolt can be had at a little over $10K final cost, at least doing rough calculation on paper... I am seriously thinking about it if we really NEED/WANT a second car in our household.

Then again, I am trying to curve down the NEED/WANT to use technology and resources. We may just try harder to do things we did with two cars years before using our new Escape PHEV only.

 

Having owned two PHEVs, BMW i3-REx and Prius Prime, cabin HVAC depends on whether it is an EV with added ICE or ICE with added EV. The EV biased PHEV handled preconditioning the cabin electric from the grid. Much cheaper than running the ICE.

Bob Wilson

 

unless you pay more for electric than gas

 

For the majority of the life of the car. Gas prices can easily fluctuate much more than electricity prices.

Mike

 

true. for instance, electricity only goes up around here, where gas can can up or down

 

A recent trip to Horseshoe Casino and back, this was my most expensive charging session:


So:

• $10.75 / 145 miles = $0.074 / mile :: SuperCharger session
• $0.074 * 54 MPG = $3.966 for Prime rated MPG
• $3.26 / gal - average US gas price (Google)

My 2019 Tesla was horribly more expensive for this charge versus our former, 2017 Prius Prime. But Tesla operational cost is more than one charge session:

Note the advantage of

• $0.074 / mi - recent SuperCharger session
• $0.027 / mi - around town ($0.12 / kWh * 225 Wh / mi) / 1000 Wh / kWh
• $0.000 / mi - free other chargers

Using partial fractions, my Tesla cost per mile for the past 31 days including one trip:

• (11% * $0.074) + (72% * $0.027) + (17% * $0.000)
• $0.0276 / mi = $0.00814 + $0.01944 + $0.000
  
• $1.49 = $0.0276 / mi * 54 MPG :: Tesla cost to drive Prime 54 MPG
• $3.26 :: Prime gas cost

Given my last 31 days as typical use case, $1.49 / $3.26 ~= 46 % cheaper to operate the Tesla. A big part of the cross cross country trip savings were free L2 charging at the hotel. If I were 100% dependent on SuperCharging, the Tesla would cost more to operate than the Prime. But Tesla owners are generally clever people (so many are former Prius owners,) and have a blend of lower home owner charge rates and use free charging when available.

Bob Wilson