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Notes: Costs are calculated for vehicles driving 12,000 purposeful miles per year. Uses energy prices, gas taxes, and EV registration fees in the Midwest or State of Michigan. Representative models within segments were selected on the basis of sales volume and to include a variety of manufacturers. Entry, mid, and luxury segments are defined based on typical purchase price. …
As in the first edition, AEG calculated all four categories of costs involved in fueling both EVs and ICE vehicles across benchmark use cases that reflect real-world driving conditions for U.S. households. The costs included:
- The cost of the underlying energy (gasoline or diesel fuel, or electricity)
- State excise taxes charged on fuel and EVs for road maintenance
- The cost of operating a pump or charger
- The cost of driving to and from fueling stations (deadhead miles)
This seems like the Anderson Economic Group is playing with statistics to make gas cars seem more attractive.
- the cost of energy in Michigan is above the national average.
- EV registration costs in Michigan are among the highest in the country
- 80% of EV owners will charge their cars at home, making including costs driving to and from public outlets and the higher rate charged there yield (intentionally?) misleading results.
- There is a marked loss of performance and an increase of energy-per-mile when using EVs in cold climates, like the kind Michigan has
If you look at this map of savings with EVs vs. gas cars, you’ll find that most states have much larger savings with electric vehicles over gas vehicles, and there’s still savings when driving in Michigan by their accounting!
Michigan is the most expensive state to run an electric vehicle with an average annual cost of $5,076
TL;DR: Disregard this study.
So if I was to be really generous, this study shows, at best, that it’s cheaper to own a ICE car if your living in an apartment without charging capabilities in Michigan?
…how? Like, it cost $30 (10 gal) to fill my petrol car in the states. Even if I was using 150kwh in electricity, at my power rate in Wisconsin ($.13/kWh), it’s $19.95. I live in Vietnam now, and pay 2500 VND per kWh, and petrol is about 23500vnd/litre. I have an electric moped that goes 110km/charge, and has a usable capacity of about 0.7kwh. I rarely empty the battery, but even if I did it daily, it would be .08USD/day.
I’d like to see the math crunched on this.
Edit: I found the math. It’s dishonest. Shocker.
It’s actually not as bad as I was expecting. The electricity prices seem to be about right (17 cents per kwh at home, 43 cents at fast chargers), and the idea of having to drive farther to get to a charger is likely a reality for apartment dwellers.
The two shitty parts are that they included the cost of the charger in this which is obviously a one time expense, and they calculated that “mostly at home” users would still supercharge 20% of the time, which seems like a TON. I put 21K miles on my car in the past year, and I supercharged 470/6897 total kWh, so 7%. If you rectify both those things in their math (let’s say maybe 10% is average?) then the “at home” EVs clearly win.
But it is absolutely viable to point out that if you can’t charge at home (or at work, although I personally wouldn’t want to tie myself to an employer to be able to charge my car. I already hate that we do it for health insurance), then it is going to be much more expensive than for people who do, and possibly more expensive than similar gas cars. For example, I had a VW ID.4 for a year and it got AWFUL efficiency for my driving patterns (about 2 mi per kWh) and I exclusively fast charged at the local electrify america station because it was free.
If I had had to pay retail price for the EA charging for the 10,000 miles that I drove, 48 cents per kWh * 5000 kWh, that would’ve cost me $2400 to charge, which is absolutely more than it would’ve cost to just drive our CRV instead (25mpg, $3.87 for gas over 10K miles = $1548).
Oh yeah, absolutely. When I was stateside I put on better than 30k miles a year. An EV wasn’t a viable vehicle for me (for work anyway). Must people I know aren’t that though. Including the charger price as a constant is what inflated this, as well as commercial charging.
I’m not reading further down the line to see but did anyone notice the pic used in this post to show someone not understanding where their fuel door is? Back out and back in correctly and pump gas like a normal human being.
That’s a Costco, they specificially tell you to use any lane and the hose is long enough to reach. That person is just following directions. The stations are built with one way traffic flow and get very busy, it’s not practical to queue for a particular side of the car.
Ah! Today I learned that happens. Thanks for letting me know.
MOST cars have the fuel door on the left, Costco tends to have more cars queue in the lanes that match up with the left hand fuel door so regardless of what side your fuel door is on grab the lanes with the pump on the right of your car and you’ll get through a bit faster since you can pull it around.
Research firm is bullshitting. It costs like $1-$2 for me to fill up my car with electricity at home.
Agreed. I have spent $8 in the past month, and I have a 60 mile round trip commute to the office 2 days a week.
God, I wish. We unfortunately do about 1200 miles per month and our electricity is cheap (15cents per kWh) so we pay about $70/mo to charge our car. Much cheaper than the roughly $200 I would’ve been paying in gas had I kept my Accord though, and if we were better about charging at my wife’s work where it’s free, we’d save a ton more. But she’s only in the office once a week and it’s hard to line up our driving habits such that it’s low enough to charge then
Cost to fill up is not cost of ownership.
Given that oil changes don’t cost that much, electric cars almost universally cost significantly more than the same ICE car, and insurance rates are tied heavily to the value of the car, ICE/Hybrids still have a pretty good advantage on non-fillup costs. If/When electric cars cost the same as an ICE car to buy, that math with change considerably.
Yes, of course, oil changes are the only additional cost of an ICE engine /s
From August 2022 to August 2023 I’ve spent $220 dollars TOTAL on keeping my EV charged…
What kind of maniac intentionally only charges at public charging stations? That would be the only way I could see to make filling up an EV cost more. Maybe on-street parking apartment dwellers who also can’t charge at work would fit that description.
This is pretty similar to the numbers I ran myself. Public charging costs about the same as gas, and home electricity (particularly if in a cheap area) is where the savings come from. This was using US numbers, which has some of the cheapest gas in the world.
I’m about 2 years from being able to charge at home using excess solar (during 9ish months of the year, anyway) almost exclusively. That, plus not needing nearly as many service appointments, is going to save me enough on running costs to cover about 1/2 of the car payment on the electric car I’ll get (based on current prices, solar wattage / sqft, and my own driving habits). Its a very privileged position to be in.
Does not include the cost of environmental impact of burning fossil fuels… Which we are all starting to pay.
If we are talking just filling up - I went from $200/month with gasoline to $15-20/ month with my ev and charging at home. Obviously YMMV
Seems like bullshit to me. Recognizing the logical fallacy here, it’s still worth pointing out the firm has a history of working with major auto manufacturers, and is headquartered near Detroit. Their CEO, Patrick L. Anderson, also served under a Republican governor in multiple roles and is a contributor to numerous conservative research institutes.
Thanks for doing the work.
Consideration for readers. Remember not everyone lives where you do and has the same access and infrastructure that you do.
Some US states are pushing for EV but do not have the power production needed to support it at scale. Maybe another 10 or 20 years when everyone has a nuclear reactor in their backyard.
I’m all for EV for those that it makes sense. For many, especially the impoverished, it’s just another barrier to overcome.
I don’t see how working with major manufacturers or being near Detroit makes it likely that this group wants to push an ICE narrative. Ford and GM have some of the most advanced electric vehicle systems in the world and are shipping more EV units than competitors.
It seems inconsistent with other studies and the article only states results, not assumptions. Most importantly: where?
Yeah, this is bullshit. I charge my car at home by leaving it plugged in overnight. Costs me literally a few bucks a month to keep it charged. I don’t even notice it on my electricity bill.
If I were charging at fee-based charging stations all the time, the story would be different, but who the hell does that?!?
People who live in apartments and basement suites, basically anywhere with no garage. After 2030 or 2035 or whatever the deadline is there will be lots of people who have electric cars and no way to charge them overnight at home, so people will have to charge at public chargers everytime.
We were looking at getting an EV without being able to charge it at home. Charging it at public chargers here in the UK would’ve cost about the same as petrol. But having to rely on the public charging infrastructure in its current state made us decide against it, at least for now.
Here in DK we are fine with public charging only. Still quite a bit cheaper than gas for a comparable car. And I suspect lower repair cost, (currently) free parking and eventual city closures for ICEs to be enough logical reasons for hesitant people. Personally I would have never bought an ICE. Felt bad enough getting a car at all.
Out of curiosity, why couldn’t you charge it at home? Most electric cars can have their chargers plugged into a standard wall outlet. It’s slower, but it works fine.
Same as what others said. We basically don’t have a driveway. The UK government is pushing for public chargers to become more reliable and easier to use though. This reinforced our fears that the current infrastructure may be unreliable but at the same time really gives hope that it will be good enough for us in the very near future. Our employer’s office also doesn’t currently offer charging, which some of our friends get, which is really nice for people in my situation.
If you are plugging into an outlet in your garage (level 1) you are only charging up 3 - 5 miles per hour. Putting in a 240v 40 amp (level 2) will get you 20 - 25 miles per hour i.e. a complete recharge for current batteries in 12 hours.
I’d love to have one too but I live in the city now instead of the suburbs. My car is parked on a concrete pad in the alley behind my house, a good 80 feet from any electricity. I could probably charge at work though by just parking in the warehouse and plugging in to one of the many extension cords we have around.
I mean, if your employer doesn’t mind, that could be a hell of a cost-effective way to keep it topped up.
I’m the VP so I’d better be able to get away with it lol
Yeah, I’m gonna guess you won’t get in trouble for it then.
A bit difficult to do if where your living you aren’t able to run the charging cable from the inside of your house to the outside.
Ah. Yeah, if you don’t have any external outlets, that would make an electric car less practical.
I live in a hilly suburb, there’s a parking pad at road level which is far from my house and on council land. No way for me to install charging equipment. It’s very common in my country.
Yeah, that sounds like a fully electric vehicle wouldn’t be a good fit, then.
Well not yet. We have to make it a good fit though. Can’t keep burning oil.
I wish I could make it work, and it highlights some huge infrastructure issues that need to be solved before the combustion engine goes
I made a similar decision. The only garages available to me are unpowered, not cheap, and not even super close to my apartment door. If I felt I could get my landlord to build the infrastructure for parking lot charging and penalize ice vehicles for parking in charging spaces I probably would’ve gone electric
This is such a major issue. I genuinely wonder if we apartment and non-garage having individuals are going to be just shit out of luck for a long time. People normally don’t care about us at all.
Yeah I figure that’ll be the case. Like I mentioned it to my gentrification happy landlord and apparently they’d never even considered it
People who live in apartments. Or generally places where they can’t just plug in at home.
It’s not a
logical fallacyconspiracy when they’re really out to get you though.That said, my experience charging an EV in the space of one month cost as much as 14 twelve gallon tanks of gas. There may be something wrong with my electric service but the power company is an evil monopoly that doesn’t care about anything but getting paid so…
Did you charge at home during the night, or during peak hours/at fast chargers?
How many tanks of gas would you have gone through in a comparable vehicle?
Here’s my answer for this (with data!): For the month of July, I charged 440.0 kWh. I averaged 94% efficiency while charging, so the chargers actually used 469 kWh. There were 35 charges, for a total of 66 hours spent charging. My total electric cost is 15 cents per kWh (my plan doesn’t have peak/off-peak). I did no charging at superchargers in July.
In that timeframe, I drove 1314 miles. 355kWh were used while driving, giving me an average efficiency of 3.7 miles per kWh. You’ll note that I used 85 fewer kWh driving, that’s because thosed 85 kWh were used to precondition my car, keep the AC running while I’m in the store or on a bike ride, etc. Super wasteful, but it’s so cheap that I can’t help myself).
So to break it down: 15 cents per kwh * 469kWh = $70 to charge, $12.75 of which was just used for climate control while not driving.
My last car was a 2016 Honda Accord Touring V6 which, in my area and with my driving style, averaged about 22mpg (lots of steep hills, 85mph driving, and stop and go traffic. I live 15 miles from town by interstate and town has lots of traffic).
According to AAA, the average cost of gas in PA is $3.87 (I know that price changes, but the math gets harder if I look up the price of gas each time I would have had to fill the tank so I’m just taking the current avg). 1314 miles / 22mpg = 59.7 gallons of gas * $3.87 = $231.
For extra fun math, looking at purely fuel costs, the Accord would cost 17.5 cents per mile to drive (not including the fact that I’d need an oil change every 4 months, transmission fluid every year and a half, etc).
My current car at current electric rates costs 5.3 cents per mile to drive.
Additionally, i’m planning on getting solar in a year or two, which should bring my cost down to effectively zero. AND, we can charge for free at my wife’s work when she’s in the office (as well as at the park I bike at), but she wasn’t in the office at all in July; we both worked from home full time last month.
TL;DR: my Model 3 Long Range costs about a third as much per mile to drive as my similarly sized Honda Accord did before I sold it
Only ever overnight, and maybe 5 tanks tops.
I charge a Lightning at home with an 80 amp charger and before that I had a gas f150. The increase to my energy bill was about $30-$40 a month and offset about $400 a month in gas.
That is a clear comparison, and sounds like a fantastic change as well!
But how much more does a lightning cost vs a gas truck? I bought a truck last year and badly wanted the lightning but it would have taken roughly 140000 miles before I broke even and the electric was saving me money. That was also using $5 a gallon for gas as a comparison which I only ever paid to at much for once. I’m all for electric and if you have the money and want one go for it but financially speaking it doesn’t make much sense right now unless you want a bolt or a leaf which are actually comparable in cost to a gas car. Everything else is so widely overpriced.
I paid 76k for the f150 I had (2022 kr)and 85k for the Lightning. So about 10k difference for fairly equivalent trim.
I ended up with a Toyota tundra for 62k that had more features than the 86k lightning lariat I was looking at. I’m guessing your gas truck was much more decked out for only a 10k difference because and even equipped gas F150 I looked at was only about 3k more than my platinum tundra.
This is definitely hitting the nail on the head. Until the technology trickles down into the lower-end models, it’s not anywhere near as much a cost savings when you have to buy way up in trim level to get electric as an option.
It’s also worth noting that electric economy is notably worse in cold climates - your internal combustion car generates heat for ~free, the electric heater in your Tesla does draw a fair bit of current.
Just going from the website, an F150 Lariat is $68k in Canada, and the Lightning XLT is $69k. If you wanted a more comparable Lightning Lariat, it’s $80k.
Both the gasser and sparky version can be optioned up to well over $110k, which is insanity to me.
That lightning lariat you have selected probably doesn’t have the long range battery. You need the long range package to make it comparable to the gas F150 lariat feature wise, at least in the US. Who the hell wants an electric truck with only 200 mile range anyway?
When it gets to costs it really depends on what the comparison is since trucks have a wide price range even for the same model. Plus maintenance costs are far lower for an electric vehicle than regular maintenance on a gas engine if neither have defects. That of course does not include costs for insurance, interest on a loan, regustration, and other expenses that go along with a higher sticker price.
All that said, initial cost alone can certainly be a barrier even if the break even point is only a few years away.ong term savings on expensive vehicles are nice for those that can afford it.
It sucks that compact trucks weren’t one of the first models offered since they would be at a perfect spot for the benefits of high torque and shorter range for light work.
I think people overstate maintenance on an ICE vehicle. My last car I sold at 120k miles and only ever did brake pads twice and oil changes every 7500 miles for about $25 a change. I probably should have changed spark plugs around 80k and done the transmission fluid but I didn’t. Those things are also really cheap to do.
When it comes to unplanned maintenance I agree it can get costly but that’s much more rare and will only affect some people and probably shouldn’t be factored in. Unplanned maintenance on an electric vehicle is also very costly. Probably negligible when compare the both types across the board.
Like I said, I’m all for electric and I will own one someday but for many it just doesn’t make sense because the insane markup or manufacturing costs, whatever it may be.
Unfortunately people don’t want small vehicles and are willing to pay huge markups on their SUV’s/trucks so prices and size aren’t coming down anytime soon.
There’s definitely a lot of nuance involved. For instance my service provider charges more for electricity than the public charge stations do (seriously fuck PG&E and every other monopolistic service provider), so I actually save money by not charging at home. It’s still absolutely cheaper than filling up on gas though, especially when I can find a spot where I don’t have to pay (like my work.)
Assuming gas is $3.75/gal where you live, that is $630. If you spent $630 on charging your car in one month then you either drive 3000 miles a month or have a problem with your electric meter. Assuming you live in the state with the highest electricity prices that isn’t Hawaii (because then we couldn’t assume $3.75/gal for your gas), your rate is $0.34/kWh. That means you 1853kWh.
Assuming you drive the least efficient EV, the Hummer, which goes 329 miles on 213kWh, you would have to drive 2862 miles in one month to spend $630. So for the worst case electrical price, with the worst case EV mileage, with average gas prices, you are driving a lot more than most people to spend 14 twelve gallon tanks of gas worth. For reference, switching that Hummer to a Bolt would only cost $278 to drive 2862 miles.
It’s worse than that, it’s a hybrid that can only go maybe 30 miles before the battery is drained. So that doesn’t even account for 1000 miles. Super wasteful, but whatever’s going on isn’t the norm so I’m getting hit on multiple fronts.
I got blasted with a $700 electric bill this month, and we didn’t really do anything new or different. So this doesn’t surprise me really.
If electricity is going to cost this much, I guess the only way electric gets “cheaper” than gas is by hiking gas prices until its cheaper to charge. Consumers are never going to win though.
Are you somewhere that is a lot hotter than normal and working the AC? Did your kwh rates change?
There should be something that lets you know why it is higher if you didn’t really really do anything different.
You can make your own electricity at home if you have the room, by installing solar panels.
IMO everyone should invest in off-grid solar if you can manage it. I have electricity on tap no matter what the power company or their wires are doing.
Or if gas is actually cheaper than electricity, just install a trailer hitch and a hitch cargo carrier, then mount an inverter generator on your cargo carrier and charge the EV on the go with gas.
I can’t wait to get solar. Personally I don’t have the cash on hand to pay the $40K quote I got for a 16kW system, and I’m not comfortable taking out that big of a loan with the economy being such a huge question mark, but in a year or two I’m really looking forward to it
Just get yourself self-smarted on the learnins you need to DIY the solar install. 40k would buy an enormous shit-ton of solar power components, way more than you need. Mine was under 10k
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What was your bill the month before? How much more or less did you run the AC this month? Did you take any road trips?
Why was your bill $700 though?
Is that all new charges for the previous month, is there an unpaid amount from last months bill? If you owed $650 on the last bill and didn’t pay it while the new month generated $50 in new charges then yeah your bill will be for $700. Just as an example.Just saying a number doesn’t mean anything. How did you manage to get charged $700.00 for your electric last month?
Edit: dude posted his bill below. His charge for one month is $350
No unpaid balance, just new charges. That was the cost of electricity for the last billing cycle.
Jesus, what’s your utilization or price per kWh? I use a shitload of electricity (around 2000kWh per month and my utility provider says average is more like 800) and my bill has never exceeded $300, even with an EV that I drive 1200 miles a month
For reasons I’m not sure about, I posted a screenshot of my bill below in answer to the quack telling me I don’t know what my bill was.
We live in the upper, larger portion of the house and there is a suite downstairs. I’m not sure what they get up to, but the cost is high. We have led lights, central ac which we only use conservatively. Other power sucks would be the extra fridge in garage I guess, so the household (with the suite) runs 3 fridges, 2 sets of laundry machines and 2 dishwashers. Our range is gas.
I have no idea how the bill is so high. I can only imagine how much higher it would be if I charged a vehicle on top - though I do understand that would eliminate the $120/week I spend on gasoline
He just posted a picture of his bill in a reply to me if you want to take a look at it.
I’m sorry but I simply do not believe your new charges were $700, especially if you “didn’t do anything different”. Did you host a rock festival in your backyard or something? Did you plug in a 12 foot pile of air conditioners on high the entire month on your driveway?
What state are you in and how many electric heaters are you using this summer?
Lol. I just told you I didn’t do anything different.
I didn’t do anything odd. We have central ac and ran it conservatively, and had it off for 2 weeks during vacation also.
We are on 2 month billing cycles, so this is for 60 days. But I said I got blasted with the bill this month, which is in fact the case.
So, its not a $700 monthly bill, it’s $350, which is a pretty important detail to leave out.
2500 kWh is pretty massive though. We have a smaller house but with multiple air window conditioners running we only use roughly 1k a month.
You’re electricity is actually significantly cheaper than mine, Our base price is the $0.14 kWh, which is lower than the standard rate from the utility company which last I remember was something like $0.23.
Yup, mystery solved.
It’s also in CAD, so it’s $262 USD.
Holy crap, that’s crazy. I stand corrected. There’s got to be an error with this. Have you called the utility? That’s just nuts.Nevermind. This is for two months, and it’s CAD. That’s completely different than OMG my bill is $700!!
With my job I get other people’s hydro bills to split between upper and lower tenants and I see their bills too. While I find this bill exceptionally high, it’s not really out of whack. This is just what we pay for electricity here (in BC Canada)
Canada. That’s why. I wish OP here had said that originally.
Where i live its literally 5 times cheaper. I call bullshit.
Well this article just isn’t right at all
I drive an entry level EV (Hyundai Kona) that advertises 4mi/kWh, which is roughly accurate (2-3 in the winter, 5-7 in the summer). That’s 25 kWh for 100 miles.
Average cost of electricity in the US is, according to a quick Google, somewhere between $.15 and $.25 per kWh; where I live it’s a steeper $.33.
Therefore, depending on where I charge, I’m paying anywhere between $3.75 and $8.25 to drive 100 miles–$1.50 short of the article’s published $9.78 even with my expensive power.
In reality, though, I pay nothing–my office offers free charging. Show me an office with free gas.
