The vehicle is literally paying for itself based on my usage.
Now, if you’re driving less the math may not work out but the cost of fuel alone has to factor into those annual maintenance costs.
My car insurance is very much higher for a Model 3 than a similarly priced car because repairs are more expensive. This should be added to the TCO.
I like the Model 3 still, because it’s a fun car to drive. It’s not cheap though.
It is fun to drive though.
And others with overall low rates have dumb utilities that charge high rates if you use more than 1000kwh, which most EV owners certainly do.
This is just like a gas car, where the conversation would start with mpg, not "What's your gas cost per month before and after getting gas car?" It is precisely because of the variation in both gas price and usage that it is important to start from consumption per mile and not a total price.
In general, EV owners are pretty savvy. More than most actually know what they pay per kwh and have a pretty good idea of their consumption. The biggest common mistake that I see is net vs gross.
I've got a Tesla Model 3. My wife had a Pacifica Plugin Hybrid. Any given point of the day, one of them is probably plugged in if we're at home.
It took 2-3 hours to recharge the Pacifica for it's 35 mile range. Full recharge on the Tesla is about 5 hours if it's totally drained but the Tesla has much better battery management so you typically set the maximum charge to 80% of the battery for daily driving. Typically, I'll plug the Tesla in when it's still got 50-60% of the battery left.
Looking at a graph of the usage at my house from the utility company is pretty hilly and coincides with weather. Goes up a lot during the hotter months as my AC kicks on. I don't notice anything significant from it though.
I'm also enrolled in a bill normalization program with my utility company where they give me the same bill every month throughout the year so that we don't get surprise spikes as the weather changes.
Anyway, for any EV owners, a more likely scenario is a person spending about $100-$150 for fuel per month. Doesn't buying a brand new $50000 EV's as opposed to a $30000 IC car (potentially used), and the insurance/registration costs offset the gains made by fuel savings?
Yes, given current prices, even with a $7.5k subsidy
> potentially used
If you open the door to ~$10k used Japanese compacts with a good 100k+miles left, it's not even remotely close.
EVs are still a rich person thing for now, which may be the primary reason?
If we had access to BYD cars in the US maybe...
But in general, new cars are for well above median income people and used EVs have a cost time bomb attached to them in the form of a battery replacement.
To me this seems extreme, what would you say the average gas price is for you and what cars do you drive and what's their fuel efficiency?
I suppose with a truck or large SUV, it's possible to spend that much, or a commute that is hundreds of miles. Ah, one more scenario, if you have a luxury car and fill it up with premium fuel, that can raise the price substantially.
With the average fuel efficiency in Europe, I'd say the average car here uses about 8-9l in a mixed driving regime (town/city + highway). So that would mean about 3000-3300km per month, 36000-40000km per year.
That's a TON of driving :-O
Edit I:
Though I imagine in the US we're a lot more likely for the fuel efficiency to be closer to 15l/100km (F150 or something), so those distance numbers go down by 60% or so :-)
Edit II:
Oh, I forgot the cost of gas in the US, so nevermind. Gasoline is about 60% cheaper in the US so at the end of the day... the distance numbers do end up closer to 3000km per month.
Do a 30 mile commute every day plus a weekend outing and you're there. It's a lot of driving, but not totally insane by US standards.