Let’s start with the most user-friendly. The one we can see consumers managing on a daily basis without have an anxiety attack, or having to go to school to learn how their car is powered. The fact is electric cars reduce our dependency on oil. It produces no tailpipe emissions and ends up being much cheaper to operate. Yes it is still electricity which pushes the emissions to the electricity plants but the Carbon footprint is reduced tremendously as a whole. In theory electrical power converts 90% into movement. Gasoline manages only 20%. On average a driver fills the Gas tank 8 to 10 hours a year, which is at least, 8 hours of wasted time.
The overall fuel efficiency of electricity would be the remainder of the burning of fossil fuel at a power plant at around 40% efficiency then it is delivery or transmittal to the consumer’s home at around 93% then the electricity is used in the vehicle at 92% providing a total of 34% efficiency. The oil refinery functions at 75% of efficiency then the delivery causes another 6% loss of energy. Combustion engines are around 20% efficient leaving the total efficiency at 14%.It’s probably more beneficial to break this all down to dollars and cents.
12.5 gallons at 20 miles to the gallon will get 250 miles. If gasoline costs $3.09 per gallon, the total distance will cost you $ 38.62. With electric, it costs $10 per kWh; it will cost 3.7 cents per mile or $9.25. Remember at night economy rates for electricity kick in as low as 2 cents per mile. So what would be the differences between driving an electric and gasoline vehicle? With a gasoline vehicle, you can travel more miles on one fill compared to electric which the average range is 100 +/- miles. It only takes minutes to refuel with a gas vehicle as opposed to minutes to hours with electric. Now you can recharge conveniently at home or work, in other words –while being productive. Electric vehicles costs around 2 cents per mile compared to 10+ cents for gas. Okay so sooner or later you will need to replace the battery pack, some manufacturers have recycling programs. There is a cost to replace a battery pack, you’re not going to get t for free, It costs around $375 per KWh. A Nissan Leaf 25 kWh battery will cost $9,375. This cost is far less than the yearly maintenance costs for a gasoline run vehicle. Electric vehicles produce no tailpipe emissions; Gas vehicles create pollution and greenhouse gasses.
Do you want to know what your current vehicle costs to run compared to let’s say the Nissan Leaf or the Audi e-Tron? Well there’s a nifty little website http://www.ccds.charlotte.nc.us/~jarrett/EV/cost.php, where you can actually plug in your driving information and instantly see the difference in costs.
Just curious… where did you get your cost of the LEAF battery of $9,375? And, it is 24 kilowatt hours rather than the 25 kilowatt hours mentioned in your post.
Thanks for your comment. We are going to check with Nissan and update the article if needed :O)