Simanaitis Says
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EV VERSUS GASOLINE—IFS, ANDS, BUTS PART 1
THERE ARE TIMES WHEN I feel like the prototypical EV guy: I’m environmentally hep. I don’t travel much in retirement so considerations of EV range are no big deal. Updating the manse to efficient and safe EV replenishment is doable, albeit non-trivial. So how come I don’t go EV?
Michael J. Coren analyzes aspects of this in “Is It Cheaper to Refuel your EV Battery or Gas Tank? We Did the Math in All 50 States,” The Washington Post, August 8, 2023.
Thanks, NiceNews.com (a daily website offering positive information) for recently including this article, ordinarily behind a paywall to WP non-subscribers.
Overview. Coren writes, “The answer is less straightforward than it seems. Just calculating the cost of gasoline vs. electricity is misleading. Prices vary by charger (and state). Everyone charges differently. Road taxes, rebates and battery efficiency all affect the final calculation.”
Coren says, “So I asked researchers at the nonpartisan Energy Innovation, a policy think tank aimed at decarbonizing the energy sector, to help me nail down the true cost of refueling in all 50 states by drawing on data sets from federal agencies, AAA and others. You can dive into their helpful tool here.”
Here in Parts 1 and 2 today and tomorrow are tidbits gleaned from this fact-filled article.
Initial Cost. “The average EV,” Coren says, “sells for $4,600 more than the median gasoline car, but by most calculations, I’ll save money over the long run. It costs less to refuel and maintain the vehicle—hundreds of dollars less per year, by some estimates. That’s before government incentives, and any consideration of never visiting a gas station again.”
His study doesn’t address any costs of modification to make a residence suitable for EV replenishment. Coren does note, “Electricity rates not only vary state by state, but by the time of day and even the outlet. EV owners may plug in at home or work and then pay a premium to fast-charge on the road.”
Where You Live. “In all 50 states,” he says, “it’s cheaper for the everyday American to fill up with electrons — and much cheaper in some regions such as the Pacific Northwest, with low electricity rates and high gas prices.”
Fill up costs around the country. This and following graphics by Naema Ahmed from The Washington Post. The online original has an expandable list of states.
It may seem odd that gas-guzzling pickup trucks enter into this discussion, but then consider that the Ford F-150 pickup is among the top-selling vehicles countrywide year after year.
Driving from the Golden Gate to Disneyland. Coren includes data for the F-150 and its electric counterpart, the Lightening, for an imaginary 408-mile jaunt from San Francisco to the Los Angeles sprawl’s Disneyland.
He reports, “The winner? The EV—barely. The savings were modest because of the substantial premium for using [Level 3] fast chargers, typically three to four times more expensive than charging at home. In a Lightning, I arrived at the park with $14 more in my pocket than if I had driven its gasoline counterpart.”
Coren mentions the options of longer stops at Level 2 charging, but also cites that these add only about 30 miles of range every hour. Also, he doesn’t provide data on battery degradation in response to repeated fast charging.
Tomorrow in Part 2, Coren drives from Detroit to Miami with mixed results. Also, he doesn’t ignore carbon costs. ds
© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2023
Simanaitis Says 
Good column, cogent points. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, until we listen to the world’s scientists and confront overpopulation, EVs and hybrids are just more Band Aids on a patient hemorrhaging in the ER, resulting in future wars not just over oil, but copper, lithium, nickel as well as fresh water.
EV battery recycling is a good case of NIMBYism, so much of our e-waste shipped to Asia; out of sight, out of mind but still poisoning a world so small the towers of major suspension bridges out of parallel to reflect the earth’s curvature.
The world can brook a certain amount of insult. But not from 8.1 billion. We passed our carrying capacity in 1965 at 3 1/3 billion babies onboard.
Meanwhile, those of us enjoying vintage internal combustion machines can look forward to fees, permits, regulations, bans regarding even occasional pleasure jaunts.
There’s no disconnect between these issues. None.
The 3.5B limit on the number of souls sounds generous (some say 2B is the sustainability ceiling). Readers can believe what they wish but Mt. Scott’s population theme is well taken. Convoluting the Bard’s words, “2B or NOT to Be–THAT is the question!” yet none of the ruling elite seem willing to address the principal cause of climate, mineral, water, and SO many of the essential needs of mankind. Mother Earth should post NO VACANCY signs for all to read–most especially for policy makers!
Thank you, Skip. And Mike’s fine, let alone Mt. Scott. Perhaps Foothill. At the risk of hijacking Monsignor Simanaitis’s nonpareil site for thinking folk of range, the globe’s scientists cannot see a larger, more overarching issue.
Bill Gates, whose Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provides contraceptives and education to women and girls around the world, as does the Clinton Foundation, and UNFPA.org, agrees with you and PopulationMedia.org that two billion is plenty enough, what global population reached in 1927, when Lindbergh flew a crude, single engine tail-dragger to Paris.
Ted Turner, who coolly gave a billion dollars to the UN, thinks one billion people optimum, what it finally reached in 1804, when Beethoven debuted his personal favorite of his nine symphonies, the third, the Eroica.
However, just as a relative few NRA gun loonies hold this nation of 350 million hostage, so do corporate funded think tank cheerleaders for those whose business model so weak it depends on evermore consumers and cheap labor, despite every nation with declining birthrate enjoying higher per capita GDP.
Unless we can have people wonder if not born 2024, 2030, 2037 (when we’re slated to hit 9 billion), might instead be born 2724, 4639, or 16737, revise our antiquated, agrarian tax code from when more babies meant more hands to work the family farm, half of all children not surviving past age four, to encourage –not mandate — having “one or none,” or adopting, pressuring the Pope and other religious leaders to see the immorality of doing no less, we can say goodbye to flora and fauna faster than they can be catalogued (perhaps you saw the 60 Minutes segment on mass species extinction repeatedly citing human overpopulation earlier this year), light pollution interrupting human circadian rhythm, causing breast cancer in women, preventing most of us from seeing more than a thousandth of the stars in the night sky, we’re sunk, Skip.
Until then, the next time you sneak your judiciously driven internal combustion survivor to an 8 am cars and coffee, and some bloke starts complaining about the 10 am traffic when we leave, ask him 1, how many kids do you have, and 2, are you vegan, bearing in mind UN and other vetted studies show animals raised for meat and dairy produce more greenhouse gas than all the world’s cars, trucks, buses, trains, planes ships combined, and marvel at the ensuing disconnect on his face.
Pardon, please, this missive’s length, but every day we read about record heat, rising seas, vanishing coral reefs, hybrids, EVs,
yet not a word about the cause.
I think EVs are part of a solution to getting off fossil fuels, but only part. There are not enough raw materials for the world to swap all ICE cars for EVs. After that everything is academic.
For those of us lucky enough to live where we do and have the wealth that we do, EVs make the most sense as part of a long-term electric grid decentralization plan (IMHO). Charging your EV or hybrid from your own photovoltaic system that also covers most or all of your home needs makes financial sense. Those of us in a position to do that are a tiny percentage of the world’s population.