EV Guru's help me with the numbers

K

Kinetic

Well-Known Member
Backstory: Wife's car needs to be replaced in the next couple of years, she drives 1000km a month, she's always driven sub compact/compact cars.
So I just started looking at new vehicles (but in no rush) and thought I'd look into the numbers difference. This is where I got lost and I need some help to double check my math.
I looked at the Hyundai Kona gas model, $25,300MSRP and it uses 7.4L per 100kms combined. With my math (typically horrible) I figured it would cost her $1811.50 a year to drive with a $2.04 a litre gas price. Then I added in 2 oil changes a years at $75 each.
The I looked at the Kona EV and its $52,350MSRP. I didn't even want to try to calculate the cost of electricity.
So when I project this out, it would take driving the gas model 13 years until I reached the cost of the EV? Am I missing something here with my math, or does it take that long to make financial sense?
 
The financial case for EV gets more compelling as annual km driven goes up, or for larger vehicles like trucks and SUVs. Which you've probably seen from my Lightning thread.

Your numbers look correct at a basic level, although the Kona is eligible for government rebates that could be as much as $9000, and they only scratch the surface of maintenance costs with gas cars. Electricity costs for that vehicle will be around $200-250 a year.

A couple other items to consider: will the annual km remain at 12,000? Lots of people start off with an EV intended to be a second car, but it soon becomes the preferred car of the family and does substantially more km than originally envisaged.

Second: will gas stay at $2/L? Electricity prices in BC are a lot more controlled than gas and diesel. That paydown period moves a lot quicker at $2.50/L or more.

Third: have you considered a used car as a way of easing into EV? Nissan Leaf and first gen Chevy Bolts can be found for about half of the new Kona price. Obviously that halves the paydown time.

Lastly, what about other EV models? New Chevy Bolt starts at about 10K less than Kona.
 
check out a plug in hybrid. My wife’s uses .2 litres per 100km. She seldom goes far enough for the gas engine to kick in, but it’s there if she does. I think the PHEV is a cheaper option than full EV. Depends on what you want, my wife hates stopping for gas.
 
ziggy said:
check out a plug in hybrid. My wife’s uses .2 litres per 100km. She seldom goes far enough for the gas engine to kick in
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To me that means you've paid for 2 drive trains when you only need one.
 
i hope this isnt considered a derail, but earlier this summer California; who has among the highest environmental standards, was instructing EV owners not to charge their cars as it was a strain on their already taxed electrical system while they dealt with historically low water for their hydro dams. we already send them a vast amount of our locally generated electricity.
i dunno. i just shook my head at that. i know something has to give but …imagine paying for a car you can’t even use…
 
CA was asking everyone to cut down electricity use during a heatwave, especially during the 4-9 pm period. That included EV owners requested not to charge during those hours. Even the navy unplugged ships from shore power and ran on generators each evening.
 
sly_karma said:
CA was asking everyone to cut down electricity use during a heatwave, especially during the 4-9 pm period. That included EV owners requested not to charge during those hours. Even the navy unplugged ships from shore power and ran on generators each evening.
Click to expand...
What will it be like when 15 million more EV's are owned in California? No gas cars after 2035
 
They said the same thing about appliances like clothes dryers. It’s funny seeing the oil industries EV scare articles planted by “experts”. The grid will adapt, for California solar will likely make up the power difference. BC with increased AC and heat pump usage is going to more interesting, and more of worry for me.

For town folk, Electric cargo bikes are amazing. No range anxiety if you aren’t lazy. If there was good cycling infrastructure we could really change energy usage in Canada year round but once again not what this thread is about.

Looks like you can pick up a Tesla 3 for just under 50k, considering it is almost a luxury car a compact electric should be had for under 40.
 
sly_karma said:
To me that means you've paid for 2 drive trains when you only need one.
Click to expand...
We bought the car 6 years ago specifically for that reason. At the time she was unsure of going electric and it made total sense to have a backup ICE to eliminate her range anxiety. It’s worked out well and she now is considering going to full EV. While it may seem a waste to have two drive trains it also offers options for those who want to run electric for city errands but still be able to just take off and not worry about planning around charging stations. I think it’s a good option for a lot of people, everyones wants and needs are slightly different.

As A side note, I noted when shopping recently for a new EV that all the AllWheel Drive models have two separate drive trains and I admit that concerned me.
 
Don't forget about the added depreciation expense and the opportunity cost of the difference in purchase price in your calc.
Hidden and often forgotten!
 
I don't know how depreciation will look with EV. The growth in new sales has been so rapid, ICE vehicles haven't seen numbers like this since the post WW2 years. The existing used market is small - the first commercially available EV was only a dozen years ago - so any trends in price or availability are based on tiny sales numbers. At the same time the most established EV makers are beginning to drop prices with a view to squeezing out latecomers while they still have substantial R&D costs. And we haven't yet really seen the full effect of large scale EV production and the advantage of fewer moving parts. My estimate was that by 2027/28 we will be seeing most EVs at lower prices than ICE equivalent, but it might come a year sooner than that. So it must surely impact new value when new vehicle price drops $5K overnight. But if you can't find a used Tesla to buy...

We will learn to look at used value in a different way with EV. Simple odometer reading won't be as indicative as it is for ICE. Most of us know to expect to spend some money on a vehicle with 200,000 km or greater; fuel pump, alternator, timing belt all reasonably expected. Those items don't exist on an EV. Brake pads will last most drivers about 400,000 km. The big items will be remaining battery life, mostly indicated by percentage of original range at 100% charge, and general interior and exterior condition ("It's got 300,000 km on it, are the seats and mats trashed?").
 
kaelc said:
They said the same thing about appliances like clothes dryers. It’s funny seeing the oil industries EV scare articles planted by “experts”. The grid will adapt, for California solar will likely make up the power difference. BC with increased AC and heat pump usage is going to more interesting, and more of worry for me.

For town folk, Electric cargo bikes are amazing. No range anxiety if you aren’t lazy. If there was good cycling infrastructure we could really change energy usage in Canada year round but once again not what this thread is about.

Looks like you can pick up a Tesla 3 for just under 50k, considering it is almost a luxury car a compact electric should be had for under 40.
Click to expand...
One thing to keep in mind is when a new EV added to the electrical grid, it doesn't have to find the electrical energy equivalent of what a gas car burns in a year. About 25-30% of the energy we feed into an ICE actually turns the wheels, the rest is lost as heat and noise. So an EV only needs somewhere between a quarter and a third of the energy. Yes, it's still substantial when we talk of millions of vehicles added over a decade, and yes, legislators should address growth needs for energy generation and electricity transmission when they pass ICE cutoff laws. Personally I think the cost benefits of EV will lead most drivers there sooner or later without any need for a ban on sales.
 
Kinetic said:
Looks like this UBC study helped confirm my initial thoughts that it doesn't make sense in our case to buy an EV.
https://vancouversun.com/news/local...e-save-money-ubc-researchers-crunched-numbers
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The study itself covers small and midsize cars and SUVs. And it uses average km driven figures. Think carefully about your vehicle needs and actual daily, monthly and yearly driving patterns and km driven before concluding you are similar to the study parameters. Average annual km driven in Canada is 15,200 km - are you in that area? And are you looking at a midsize car or compact SUV? There's no trucks in the study at all.

Consider a truck, which most members of this forum own. A gas half ton truck burns 14-16 L/100 km, plus 20-25% more when towing a boat. At the average 15,200 km a year, it'll burn about 2500 L/year. At $1.834/L (BC gas price used in the study), that's $4585 a year, plus oil changes, say $5000. So over 15 years of ownership, you'll go through $75,000 in consumables. Or,in other words, you will literally burn the purchase cost of a new truck.

For comparison, see my thread on owning an F150 Lightning, contains lots of cost data. The TLDR: purchase price was the same as an equivalently equipped gas F150, and electricity costs would be $528 a year for that 15,200 km average. The gap only widens if you drive more than that. I'm averaging 24,000 km a year, saving me about $6500 a year.

Please understand I'm not singling you out for furious rebuttal here, just wanted to point out that articles that quote studies only cover an average use case, people should look at their own situation and vehicle usage to see if EV is or is not for them. Three key areas where EV may not be right:
- if you do more than 50% of your annual km in away from home road trips
- if you tow more than 200 km, more than 4-5 times a year
- if you can't arrange a way to charge at home
 
One flaw in your analysis, Kinetic, is the assumption you'd buy an EV that is 2x the price of a gas car.
eg. In my case, I said I'll pay $50k for a car, ev or otherwise. So we got a $50k EV instead of a $50k ICE car.
In that sort of buying scenario, the savings in energy costs are far more favorable to the EV side of the scale.

Of course, that's also just arguing $ costs. There are also the carbon emission costs which are not directly quantifiable.
 
jackfish said:
One flaw in your analysis, Kinetic, is the assumption you'd buy an EV that is 2x the price of a gas car.
eg. In my case, I said I'll pay $50k for a car, ev or otherwise. So we got a $50k EV instead of a $50k ICE car.
In that sort of buying scenario, the savings in energy costs are far more favorable to the EV side of the scale.

Of course, that's also just arguing $ costs. There are also the carbon emission costs which are not directly quantifiable.
Click to expand...
In BC, the emissions of operation of an EV itself are next to zero, because we have almost 100% hydro power. The only significant carbon emissions for hydro are those created during the construction of the reservoir and generation facilities. Other provinces have a mix of power sources in their grid, so it gets harder to calculate.

We all know there is embodied carbon in creating electricity: manuacturing components, transporting them to site, building the facility itself, connecting to the wider grid. Using existing technologies to create, develop and implement newer technologies isn't hypocrisy, it's the way things have been done throughout human history - we used copper and then bronze tools to develop iron making, and then iron was in turn improved into steel.

Here's a list of major energy sources' total emissions, including operational and embodied carbon, according to the IPCC:

Wind turbines: 11 g/kWh
Nuclear: 20 g/kWh
Hydroelectric: 23 g/kWh
Solar: 41 g/kWh
Natural gas: 440 g/kWh
Coal: 1040 g/kWh (plus a bunch of particulates; ie, soot, and NOx emissions).

It should also be noted that as renewable energy sources become more widely deployed across the world, the embodied carbon in building all energy generation components and facilities will be lower. This will have least effect on the two fossil fuel sources since their total emission continue to be dominated by the CO2 produced by combustion.
 
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Continuing on with quantifying emissions, looking specifically now at motor vehicles. Obviously, the argument that "EVs are just coal powered cars" doesn't hold water in BC (or most of Canada, in fact, as nationally we are the second-least carbon-dominated electric grid of the G7 countries, just behind France).

Ah, but the critics say, a bunch of CO2 is emitted just building an EV and its battery. I couldn't find exact figures per vehicle, but the general range of embodied carbon in a new ICE is agreed to be 4-8 tonnes. Since many of us on this forum drive trucks, let's take the upper end of the range, 8 tonnes. Same sources consider EV builds to add another 50% more CO2 due to battery production. We won't bother with end of life carbon costs, as these are relatively small and are the same for EV and combustion vehicles.

Now take a look at CO2 emissions when considering production and driving emissions together:

F150 EcoBoost 3.5 V6 4x4
CO2 emitted in production: 8 tonnes
CO2 emitted in operation: 284 g/km*
CO2 annually (15,000 km/year): 4.26 tonnes
CO2 at end of lease (3 yrs): 20.78 tonnes (8 t build + 12.78 t operation)
CO2 total (10 years of driving): 50.6 tonnes (8 t build + 42.6 t operation)

RAM EcoDiesel 4x4
CO2 emitted in production: 8 tonnes
CO2 emitted in operation: 260 g/km*
CO2 annually (15,000 km/year): 3.90 tonnes
CO2 at end of lease (3 yrs): 19.7 tonnes (8 t build + 11.7 t operation)
CO2 total (10 years of driving): 47.0 tonnes (8 t build + 39 t operation)

F150 Lightning dual motor standard range
CO2 emitted in production: 12 tonnes
CO2 emitted in operation: 7 g/km**
CO2 annually (15,000 km/year): 0.105 tonnes (105,000 g)
CO2 at end of lease (3 yrs): 12.3 tonnes (12 t build + 0.315 t operation)
CO2 total (10 years of driving): 13.1 tonnes (12 t build + 1.05 t operation)

* based on NRCan 2023 Fuel Consumption Guide (sorry, they don't have data on 3/4 or 1 ton trucks)
** based on 30 kWh/100 km energy use as per NRCan, and the 23 g CO2/kWh figure for hydro power from my post above

The differences are clear. At the end of a decade of ownership, the electric truck is responsible for barely a quarter of the emissions of its ICE cousins. And that's based on just 15,000 km annual driving, and at the official government fuel consumption rates that almost no one can achieve in real life. Throw in some towing, and 20,000 km a year, and a gas pickup driver could easily be responsible for 70 tons of CO2 emissions over a decade.

When it comes to actual real people considering their vehicle/s, there are lots more factors: age and condition of existing vehicle, resale value, interest rates, paid-for used vehicle vs cost of new, annual km drive, mix of city, rural and longer trips, special duties vehicle needs to competent at (heavy hauling, towing, offroading, frequent long distance driving). It won't always make sense to buy a new vehicle, nor should a new vehicle automatically be an EV - there are some cases where they don't yet fit well. But in our province with expensive gas/diesel and cheap, clean electricity, an "average" driver will save a lot of dollars and emissions by making their next purchase an EV. And even if they don't suit your needs right now, don't write them off longterm: they're becoming more capable and more affordable every year.
 
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