Operational Costs of Electric Vehicles Are Great, But…
My colleague Bill Moore of EV World fame sent this pic and writes: “Used my long-unused KillaWatt meter to measure how much energy it took to top off the Fiat 500e battery after driving 14.3 miles yesterday. Answer: 4.6kWh for total trip cost of 51¢ at current OPPD (Omaha Public Power District) rates. Calculated same trip would be $1.29 for conventional ICE getting 24.7 mpg and gas priced at $2.24/gal. See why EVs make such economic sense from an operational costs point of view.”
That’s cool. The issue, however, is that prospective EV drivers aren’t too concerned about fuel costs, especially if they’re $2.24/gallon. They’re almost twice that here, and it’s still not a big deal.
In large measure, this is due to the the fact that gasoline is artificially cheap, insofar as the price doesn’t reflect the costs of the long-term environmental damage and medium-term respiratory damage to every member of Earth’s animal kingdom. IMO, until we internalize these costs into the price of gasoline, we’ll continue to see sluggish growth in this space.
Craig,
You are quite correct, the cost of gasoline, and rapid improvements in ICE technology, have emphasized the convenience of ICE powered transport.
Artificially increasing the cost of gasoline/diesel by some form of ‘moral’ justification for imposing even taxes for ideological reasons will not succeed as the general public will show their disagreement through the ballot box.
Such strategies are inherently dishonest and no matter how moralistically guilty you try to make consumers feel, Joe Public will simply become antagonistic and alienated by such hypocrisy.
Once credibility is lost, it’s impossible to regain.
Bill Moore of EV World means well, but can’t help himself when it comes to rigging the figures.
Surely an honest comparison to a Fiat 500e , would be a Fiat 500 1.2 lire ICE model. So why the deception?
The Fiat 500 1.32 litre claims 68.9mpg, not 24.7. (real world road test would probably be more like 45-55 mpg).
The point is, why the pathetic deception ?
The adoption of EV transport is hurt more by dishonest advocates and false claims, than oil companies!
Until the problem of low capacity, slow charging EV ESD is solved, in an era of cheap and plentiful gasoline, EV adoption will not occur beyond the niche 1-2% of the automobile market.