ELECTRIC CARS... The REAL Cost Per Mile (From Ed Owens)
Rebuttal with Actual FACTS added so you know the truth......
3 to 4 -1/2 cents per mile @ $0.15/kWh electricity cost.
This has been floating about the internet and it really shows how far we have regressed as a society. Lying and dis-information to gain profit and control over people. The byproduct is delaying transition to essential technology that we need to combat climate change. It made me so mad I had to add corrections to the BS and try to get REAL facts out to the public. As an electric vehicle user and an engineer, this type of dis-information upsets me because so many people believe this garbage, so I filled in some facts based on REAL numbers (and a few comments).
(FACTUAL Corrections In Parenthesis)
Electric cars are expensive, don’t be duped.
(Translation: Don't Stop Paying The Energy Companies your hard earned cash!)
You gotta read this one! The Best Is Yet To Come! For Every Rainbow, There Must Be Some Rain. All you engineers out there, any thoughts!
Very interesting! This needs to be widely reported on. Do you ever wonder, just why the big push for these electric cars?
(Fact: The reason there is a push for EV'S is because they are automatically 50% to 75% more efficient than gasoline engines. The most efficient modern gasoline engines have a maximum thermal efficiency of about 25% to 50% when used to power a car. In other words, even when the engine is operating at its point of maximum thermal efficiency, of the total heat energy released by the gasoline consumed, about 50-75% is rejected as heat without being turned into useful work, i.e. turning the crankshaft.) Baglione, Melody L. (2007). Development of System Analysis Methodologies and Tools for Modeling and Optimizing Vehicle System Efficiency (Ph.D.). University of Michigan. pp. 52–54. (This means less than 1/4 to 1/2 of your gasoline energy is used to power the wheels. The rest is used to heat the air and most of the energy goes right out the exhaust!!!)
ELECTRIC CAR...Hmmm... It makes you wonder...
Ever since the advent of electric cars, the REAL cost per mile of those things has never been discussed. All you ever heard was the mpg in terms of gasoline, with nary a mention of the cost of electricity to run it. This is the first article I've ever seen and tells the story pretty much as I expected it to.
Electricity has to be one of the least efficient ways to power things yet they're being shoved down our throats...
(Fact: If this was true, why are we not still using gasoline powered washing machines used in the early 1920's and why are we not using oil lamps for lighting? Remember when the Model T came out and all the horse owners said "I don't know why anyone would buy that smelly contraption and it will never catch on” Right?)
Glad somebody finally put engineering and math to paper.
At a neighborhood BBQ I was talking to a neighbor, a BC Hydro executive. I asked him how that renewable thing was doing. He laughed, then got serious. If you really intend to adopt electric vehicles, he pointed out, you had to face certain realities. For example, a home charging system for a Tesla requires 75 amp service. The average house is equipped with 100 amp service. On our small street (approximately 25 homes), the electrical infrastructure would be unable to carry more than 3 houses with a single Tesla, each. For even half the homes to have electric vehicles, the system would be wildly over-loaded.
(Fact: First of all, most homes do not use the 100A (and many have 200A service) that is available and only use a portion of the energy that can be supplied from the utility. At night, when you would be charging your electric car (for lowest off peak electricity rates) , it would charge just fine using 75A of your total 100A service. Most of your electrical use is during the day. Your electric car can also be set to charge at the capacity you have available from your electrical panel, even if you would choose to charge during the day.)
This is the elephant in the room with electric vehicles... Our residential infrastructure cannot bear the load. So as our genius elected officials promote this nonsense, not only are we being urged to buy these things and replace our reliable, cheap generating systems with expensive, new windmills and solar cells, but we will also have to renovate our entire delivery system! This latter "investment" will not be revealed until we're so far down this dead end road that it will be presented with an 'OOPS!' and a shrug.
(Fact: Yes the infrastructure is old and outdated but it can be updated as demand increases. Most electric car owners also decide to purchase solar panels to supplement and reduce the peak energy use during the day to maximize the savings.)
If you want to argue with a green person over cars that are eco-friendly, just read the following. Note: If you ARE a green person, read it anyway. It's enlightening.
Eric test drove the Chevy Volt at the invitation of General Motors ... and he writes, "For four days in a row, the fully charged battery lasted only 25 miles before the Volt switched to the reserve gasoline engine." Eric calculated the car got 30 mpg including the 25 miles it ran on the battery. (incorrectly calculated) So, the range including the 9-gallon gas tank and the 16 kWh battery is approximately 270 miles.
(Fact: The new 2017 Chevy Volt will get 53 miles of all electric range (depending on how heavy your foot is) before switching to gasoline. The average miles you can go for each kWh is 3 to 5 miles so worst case 16kWh x 3 Miles = 54 Miles. The EPA rating for the Volt is 106MPGe which means for the energy in one gallon of gasoline it will go 106 Miles on electricity (There is 33.41 kWh of energy stored in one gallon of gasoline). The "all gasoline" EPA rating is 43Mpg (http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=37309) so 43Mpg x 8.9 gallons = 383 Miles. Add this to the 53 all electric miles and you will get 436 miles range with a full fuel tank and fully charged battery.
It will take you 4-1/2 hours to drive 270 miles at 60 mph. Then add 10 hours to charge the battery and you have a total trip time of 14.5 hours. In a typical road trip your average speed (including charging time) would be 20 mph. According to General Motors, the Volt battery holds 16 kWh of electricity. It takes a full 10 hours to charge a drained battery.
(Fact: The volt has a 3.5kWh charger. Yes it will take 10 hours to charge at 110V, so overnight your car will be charged up to another 53 miles range. However, if you have a level 2 charger, (220-240VAC or the same voltage as your dryer outlet) it will charge in 4.5 Hours so after running around in the morning you can go up to 53 miles and then plug in during the day and after 4.5 Hours you can drive another 53 miles on electricity. At any time you can just run on the gasoline automatically.)
The cost for the electricity to charge the Volt is never mentioned so I looked up what I pay for electricity. I pay approximately (it varies with amount used and the seasons) $1.16 per kWh.
(Fact: another lie here, who pays an average of $1.16 per kWh? They must be using electricity created with a gasoline generator!! If you used 750 kWh per month (Average household use) at this rate your bill would be $870 for the month !!!)
16 kWh x $1.16 per kWh = $18.56 to charge the battery. $18.56 per charge divided by 25 miles = $0.74 per mile to operate the Volt using the battery. Compare this to a similar size car with a gasoline engine that gets only 32 mpg. $3.19 per gallon divided by 32 mpg = $0.10 per mile.
(Fact: average cost of electricity for each kWh is $0.10-$0.15 per kWh (off peak) so 16kWh will cost $1.60 to $2.40 so this is about $0.03 to $0.045 per mile ($1.60/53 miles = $0.03/Mile), yes actual REAL cost is 3 cents to 4.5 cents per mile. Factor in the cost to maintain the gasoline engine and the savings increasing by going all electric like a Chevy Bolt, Nissan Leaf or a Tesla. (Add in solar and you will pay 0.06 to 0.09 / kWh, or 0.018 per mile to 0.027 per mile, yes 2 cents to 2.7 cents per mile! Solar has a federal tax credit of 30% which can be amortized each year over 5 years)
The gasoline powered car costs about $20,000 while the Volt costs $46,000+... So the American Government wants loyal Americans not to do the math, but simply pay three times as much for a car, that costs more than seven times as much to run, and takes three times longer to drive across the country. I foresee the time that travelers that plug in at motels will be 'charged' an additional plugin fee. If they are not already.
(Fact: Yes the Volt cost more than a cheap economy car because batteries are expensive. There is a federal tax credit of $7,500 for the purchase of a new EV. (Tax credit means you must owe more than the $7,500 federal tax in one year to be able to get the full credit.) There are several state rebates as well. In California there is a $2500 rebate. Many states and utility companies also offer rebates.
Also most EV's are for local trips. They are not designed to travel across the country (unless you have a Tesla Model S with the free supercharger use, then you can travel across the US for FREE). Using data obtained from the Department of Transport’s 2009 National Household Travel Survey (NHTS), Garrett Fitzgerald and Rob van Haaren analyzed the travel data of survey participants, concluding that 95 percent of the 748,918 recorded single-trip journeys by car were under 30 miles. More astonishingly, around 98 percent of all single-trip journeys were under 50 miles in length, with trips over 70 miles in length accounting for just one percent of all single-trip journeys. This means one EV for every family makes perfect sense.
The fact is that solar panels and one electric vehicle will save you quite a bit. I have solar and two EV's and because I oversized my solar, the payback in savings of gasoline and electricity saves me about $500-$600 per month. (That is $7,200 a year that I would be sending to oil companies and the electric company). It all depends on if you like handing over your money to a fossil fuel company (which some of it eventually ends up in one of the middle east countries) or if you can see that what we are now doing is not sustainable and there is a better solution. A bonus of using solar and an electric vehicle is less pollution and breathable air. If we have any chance of a sustainable future, electric is a path towards a brighter future.
Another factor is maintenance. If you go with a total 100% electric vehicle there are no oil changes two times a year. There is less wear on the brakes because it uses the motor to put energy back into the battery to slow down (regenerative braking). This means lower maintenance cost. There is only one moving part in the electric motor, one speed gearbox because the motor has full torque at 0 RPM. This also makes them quicker than almost all internal combustion engine vehicles. Battery technology will keep increasing the range and the more cars that we manufacture and get to the public, the quicker the cost of batteries will come down.
In conclusion: This is a revolutionary technology and as people learn the REAL truth about them, they will take off exponentially. The problem with electric vehicles is that you can become energy independent and with solar panels and you can save a lot of money over the years. There is no profit (or control) if people have their own energy source. Our whole government system is based on oil and taxing the oil so that is why we are slow to change. Follow the money and you will see it is about freedom and control. Please pass on the REAL truth about electric vehicles.
Johnny EV