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Source: Making sense of electric car window stickers: What it all means | Autoweek

Making sense of electric car window stickers: What it all means

Trying to compare EVs with gasoline or diesel vehicles isn't easy, and the current window sticker doesn't help

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While in principle MPGe is a good way of conveying relative efficiency, I'm not sure that it's actually meaningful to consumers, nor is energy efficiency in general for plug-in vehicles," said Sam Abuelsamid, senior analyst at Navigant Research. "Much as most consumers focus on what their monthly payment is going to be, for EVs, I think they are mostly just interested in the electric range and, in the case of PHEVs, the gas/diesel efficiency."
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MPGe stands for "miles per gallon equivalent." A slew of alternatives were debated before this metric was applied for vehicles that use something other than gasoline or diesel for power. MPGe, developed by a number of federal agencies, won out because it was the easiest to compare the efficiency of one vehicle with another, regardless of powertrain.

The MPGe for a plug-in vehicle expresses how many kilowatt-hours it takes to go 100 miles compared to 33.70 kWh, which is the amount of energy in a gallon of gasoline. An EV that uses 25 kWh to go 100 miles would get 134.8 MPGe, for example. MPGe is the official way that the industry answers Tesla's question about the 25 mpg car and the EV with a 56-kWh battery.
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A big question moving forward is whether a window sticker is even important anymore. Maragno said most EV buyers educate themselves well before they go out to kick the tires, which means lots of online research. These shoppers use discussion forums, automakers' websites and official government sites to figure out what they want before they buy. In fact, he said, the usefulness of the paper label is more as confirmation for shoppers that the vehicle they're looking at is the one they researched.​

The last paragraph pretty well hits all of my buttons. When I don't have the data I want, I benchmark the car to get the answers I want yet I understand the goal. When showing off my plug-in hybrids:

• $2.50 to drive 100 electric miles - Prius Prime, a three stop car
• $2.90 to drive 100 electric miles - BMW i3-REx, a ten stop car

Thanks to free chargers at shopping centers, I get about a 66% discount on EV miles.​

• $4.20 to drive 100 gas miles - Prius Prime, 600 mile range
• $6.75 to drive 100 gas miles - 2014 BMW i3-REx, motorcycle range 72 miles

My wife and her two dogs like the frequent BMW gas stops. The Prius Prime drives through expensive gas areas.​

When I explain things in dollars, everyone understands. But these numbers are dependent on local electrical and gas prices.

Bob Wilson