Electric Vehicles Save Money

Electric Vehicles Save Money

All this emotional stuff is nice, but let’s talk out-of-pocket dollars. Ask any electric vehicle conversion owner, and they’ll tell you it transports them where they want to go, is very reliable, and saves them money. Let’s examine separately the operating, purchase, and lifetime ownership costs and summarize the potential savings.

Operating Costs

Electric vehicles only consume electricity. In between charge-ups, there are no other consumables to worry about except an occasional watering of the batteries. These figures are covered in more detail later, but the Ford Ranger electric vehicle pickup conversion of Chapter 10 averages about 0.44 kWh (kilowatt-hours, a measure of energy consumption) per mile. At $.165 per kWh for electricity in New York (check your electric utility monthly statement for the prevailing rate in your area) that translates to 0.44 kWh/mile 3 $.165/kWh 5 .0726 (7.3 cents) per mile (Note: Does not include charging cost and 3.3 cents per mile for battery replacement.)

Let’s compare these costs with the EV’s gasoline-powered internal combustion engine counterpart in a pickup chassis. The latter consumes gasoline; its ignition, cooling, fueling, and exhaust systems require filters, fluids, and periodic maintenance. The gasoline-powered pickup chassis (equivalent to the previous example) averages 20 miles per gallon or 0.05 gallons per mile. At $4.50 per gallon for gas, that translates to 0.05 gallons/mile 3 $4.50/gallon 5 .225 (22.5 cents) per mile

Consumables and periodic maintenance must still be added. Assuming these cost $41.67 per month (oil change averaged over three months, fuel additives, aligning and balancing tires), and annual mileage is 12,000 miles per year, this translates to $500/year 4 12,000 miles/year 5 .0416 (4.2 cents) per mile

Adding the two figures together, you’re looking at 27 cents per mile operating cost for a gasoline-powered vehicle versus 7.3 cents per mile for its electric vehicle equivalent—almost three times the cost of the electric vehicle. While your average EV conversion—made with off-the-shelf components—might consume about 0.4 kWh per mile, General Motor’s Impact electric vehicle is rated at 0.1 kWh per mile (0.07 kWh/ km). This drops your electric vehicle operating costs to 0.5 cents per mile! (Note: cost per mile varies with driver.)

Purchase Costs

Commercially manufactured electric vehicles are prohibitively expensive today—if you can find one at all. Tomorrow’s electric vehicle costs will obviously drop to become equal to or less than internal combustion–powered vehicles as more units are made (and manufacturing economies-of-scale come into play) because they have far fewer (and much simpler) parts.

But this book advocates the conversion alternative—you convert an existing internal combustion engine vehicle to an electric vehicle. You remove the internal combustion engine and all systems that go with it, and add an electric motor, controller, and batteries. If you start with a used internal combustion engine vehicle chassis you can save even more (with the advantage of having the drive train components already broken in, as