The most frugal electric cars travel three times further than petrol or diesel for the same amount of money, study claims. Taking fueling costs into account, monthly costs for internal combustion engine cars and electric vehicles are much closer than the gap in list price might suggest.

Time is worth more money than fuel, but let’s check the math. Let’s say I buy a new car every 5 years. The average American drives 1000 miles a month, or 12k a year. So in 5 years, I will have racked up 60k miles. I get 37mpg on average. 60k/37mpg=1621gal of gas. According to the AAA website, Virginians pay an average of $2.31/gal in 2019. $2.31x1621=$3745. You can’t buy a Ford Focus anymore because they’ve been discontinued, so I’ll use the Fiesta as an example since it’s pretty much the same car. I can buy a brand new 2019 model right now in Richmond Virginia for $9,924. I bought my Focus for $10,500 brand spanking new from a local dealer, so no that’s not a typo. That’s a normal price. Let’s round to $10k for simplicity, and add the $3,745 in fuel for the 5 years I’ll keep it before trading it in on a better one. That’s $13,745. Let’s not forget oil changes! I change my oil every 5k miles, so in 5 years/60k miles I’ll need 12 oil changes. I usually buy Quaker State oil from Walmart. A 5qt jug costs me $13.47. An oil filter costs me $3.88. So I can change my oil for $13.47+$3.88=$17.35. Five years worth of oil and filters will run me $208. Add that to the price of the car and fuel, and we get a total of $13,953.

Now, let’s look for an electric car. According to a quick google search, the Fiat 500e is the cheapest electric car of 2019. It’s msrp is $33,210. For that price, I could buy two Ford Fiestas, including oil changes and gas for 5 years, AND have over $5300 left over for cocaine and hookers. Let’s say we are keeping it for a reasonable 5 years like the fiesta, and putting an equal amount of miles on it. The Fiat 500e gets a whopping range of 84 miles...Eighty. Four. Miles. That’s on a nice day. If it’s cold outside, range goes in the toilet. After 84 miles, it needs a charge. Most people will charge it at night, but for arguments sake, let’s look at how much time this shit sandwich will need to be plugged in. On 110v, it takes 24hrs. So if you park it at night and plug it in, it won’t be fully charged until the following night at the same time. That’s 110v though. Most will use 220v, which by the way you’ll need a contractor to come out and run a new 220v electric line to your garage to power your car, because in America we use 115v for standard outlets and 220v won’t be there. But we’ll ignore that extra cost and assume your clothes dryer is in your garage and you’ll just unplug it every time you want to charge the car. 220v will give you a full charge in a much more reasonable, but still pathetic, 4hrs. So for every 84 miles, we’re spending 4 hours tethered to a wall charger. 60k/84=714 charges @ 4hrs each, for a total of 2,857 hours of charge time. That’s 119 days, out of a total of 1,825 days of ownership in 5 years. So 6.5% of the time you own this vehicle, it will be undriveable because it’s charging. Let’s compare that to the gas car. I usually stop every 400 miles for gas, and it takes maybe 5 minutes to refuel. 60k/400=150 refuels times 5 minutes=750 minutes. That’s 12.5 hours...less than half a day spent fueling compared to the EV’s 119 days. That’s 0.02% of the time you own the car spent refueling. And In reality, the battery powered car will have reduced capacity as time marches on, so it will actually take more time charging.

Electric vehicles have a LONG way to go before they’re as capable as a traditional car. In my opinion, they’ll never be able to replace the gas cars in America because they can’t be used for longer trips. They’re only really good for commuting to work every day, and even then they are a luxury item that only the upper middle can really afford. You don’t see any blue collar workers riding around in a Tesla. Current electric vehicles cannot even come close to matching the capabilities of gas cars, let alone exceed them. You have to jump through some real mental hoops to think electric cars are better than gas cars.

/r/Futurology Thread Parent Link - thisismoney.co.uk