I’m retired and don’t go to work everyday. In fact, most of the time I don’t drive at all. I think an electric car, along with some solar panels and storage batteries, would be ideal for me.
I also live in Alabama, right between Montgomery and Auburn, and get plenty of sun most days. I might drive to Walmart or Piggly Wiggly every few days, occasionally, less than once a month, 30 miles to the big city.
I also have my dependable F-150 for farm and town completely paid off.
What do you think?
But would the extra costs of owning an EV be made up with gas savings? No. So don't get an EV unless you just want the novelty of it, or the zippy acceleration, or the convenience of charging at home vs having to stop at the gas station even for local driving.
Here are some of the costs that come with having an EV:
Monthly costs:
1. Car insurance is higher because the car value is higher. (In my case it's $70/month higher than the coverage on our ICE car it replaced because I want from liability-only coverage of the old gas car to full coverage of the new EV).
Annual costs:
2. Alabama has a $200 EV fee on the car tag renewal to offset EV owners not having to pay the gas tax. IMHO it's reasonable, us EV owners should pay our share of the road upkeep. But count that as one extra cost that EV's have that gas cars don't have.
3. The rest of the car tag tax is higher because it's ad valorem. In other words, if the EV is worth more it's taxed more.
10-year maintenance cost:
4. Replacing the battery will cost at least $10K in today's dollars (more if it's an expensive EV like Tesla).
Up-front costs:
5. EV's cost more. Or at least they did when I bought mine 2 years ago. Maybe now a new EV costs less than a comparable new gas car.
6. Setting up the home charging costs. In my case about $2K (not counting extra I paid to have the electrician to add outlets to my garage while he was there, and run two charging circuits so that one could be powered by only free solar).
The gas savings is real. I get about 3.8 miles per kWh added to the power bill (pretending I don't have solar providing 80% of my power) for local driving. (My car gets more miles per kWh than that, but after accounting for about 10% loss when converting AC power to DC while charging, call it 3.8 miles/kWh.) Alabama Power charges us about 15¢ to 16¢ per kWh (after adding in their fuel surcharge per kWh and the 4% state tax, but subtracting the fixed monthly fees and state tax totaling $15.60 per month regardless of how many kWh we pull from the grid that month). So think about how many miles you drive per month, divide that by 3.8 to get the # of kWh charging would add to your monthly power bill, then multiply that by 16¢ and that's how much it'll probably add to your power bill at today's rates. That's probably less than the gas you spend, plus the oil change (in my case I replaced my oil every 5K miles). Thus, the gas savings is real.
But probably not as much as the extra costs I listed above for owning an EV.