The Price of Gasoline vs Electricity

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Gasoline in 1998 was 99 cents a gallon.

From the EV1 site:

Assuming your electricity costs 10 cents per kilowatt hour, and with a 100-mile trip, energy cost for the lead-acid EV1 is 2.6 cents per mile. Therefore, a 100-mile trip in the EV1 would cost $2.60. In comparison, a gasoline-powered vehicle that gets 22 miles per gallon has an energy cost of 6.82 cents per mile (assuming gasoline costs $1.50 per gallon). For a 100-mile trip in the gasoline-powered vehicle, the energy cost would be $6.82. Using this example, the gasoline-powered vehicle has an energy cost that is nearly three times higher than the EV1.

In 2008 gasoline average was $3.89 a gallon.

CA Electricity Rates in 2008 were14.14 per kW

Why not use the power source that is cheaper over time?

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There is a lively conversation here on EDN:


Electronic Design News readers are hard to fool but writer Paul Roko holds his ground.

[TEG]

That article mentions high daytime PG&E rates as a downfall for EV owners... *but* for EV & Solar Panel owners it is a boon - you want to get *paid* high rates when you are generating power. (and charge your EV at night when rates are low).

[bolosky]

One of the things that's always bothered me about these price comparison is that they ignore highway taxes. Right now, in the state of Washington where I live, there's a $0.559/gal tax on gasoline. If you assume that the average vehicle gets 25 MPG, then there's about 2.2 cents/mile of highway tax.

When I get my Roadster in a few months, I'll be one of a handful in the state, and I'll get away without paying tax (even the sales tax is waived in Washington for EVs for now). 10 years from now if there are tens of thousands of EVs on the road, you can bet that we'll be paying about the same amount of tax/mile that the ICE cars do now. And I can't even complain about it, because since I'll be using the roads I should pay my fair share to build/maintain them.

It'll still be a lot cheaper than the $0.15/mile that I pay now for my 17 MPG RX-8, but 4.8 cents/mile is nearly twice the 2.6 that you'd get without figuring the tax.

[TEG]

Yeah, that has been discussed before. I hope they leave EV miles "tax free" as another incentive to get away from burning fuel.