As you’ll recall from my last blog entry, I had lots of questions about electric vehicles. Well, I got some answers:
How far could they go on a charge?
This turned out to be the biggest factor in determining which car I would select. My commute is 38 miles round trip. The EV’s range varies widely, based on the type of driving you’re doing, the outside temperature, and the use of air conditioning or heating. They even have a term for worrying about how far an electric vehicle can go on a charge. It’s “range anxiety.”
The Nissan Leaf, which is an all-electric vehicle, doing the type of commute I usually do is said to have a 73 mile range, according to the EPA estimate. This is more than enough for my commute.
The Chevy Volt is not a purely electric vehicle. Although the drivetrain is completely electric, there is an onboard gasoline-powered engine that works as a generator to provide electricity to the motor, once the battery is depleted. The EPA estimated range of the battery is 35 miles. Although insufficient for my 38 mile commute, the gasoline engine (called a “range extender”) can deliver enough electricity to go an additional 340 miles.
How long does it take to charge?
This is also different for each EV and there are different types of chargers as well. The Nissan Leaf has a larger battery pack. It has a storage capacity of 24kWH (kilowatt hours). Kilowatt Hours are the units used to calculate your electric bill each month. It was fairly difficult to determine what sort of charger came with the Leaf. The specs state that it has a 3.3KW charger. According to a charge time calculator I found on the web, it would have a load of 15 amps and could charge the battery in about 7.3 hours. This appears to be a 220 Volt charger, but I was unable to determine this with certainty. The 110V “trickle charger” would require almost 17 hours! 17 hours would not be acceptable to me, as I’d have to start charging immediately when I got home and the charge would still not complete before I had to leave for work the next day. I would have to install a 220/240V circuit and outlet in my garage to have a short enough recharge time.
The Chevy Volt has a 16kWH battery capacity. The charger that comes with the Volt plugs into a standard 110V wall outlet. It can pull 15 amps and at that rate can charge a fully depleted battery in as little as 10 hours or as much as 16 hours, depending on the outside temperature and the charging level selected (amps). 16 hours would not be acceptable to me, as I’d have to start charging immediately when I got home and the charge would complete just before I had to leave for work the next day. In other words, we could not use the car to run errands in the evening and still have the advantages of an electric car. Because of this, I decided to have a 110V 20A circuit and outlet installed in my garage, to get the 10 hour charge time.
How much electricity was required and at what cost?
To determine this, you have to find out what you pay for electricity currently (pun intended). We pay 10.725 cents per kWH.The Nissan Leaf’s 24kWH battery pack would cost $0.10725 X 24 = $2.57 to fill up.
The Chevy Volt has a smaller batter pack (16kWH) but is never allowed to drain completely. I found a cab driver’s post that his Volt took about 12kWH to charge the battery. Using that value, the Chevy Volt’s battery pack would cost $0.10725 X 12 = $1.29 to fill up.
How would the cost of electricity compare to gasoline?
I had been driving my Lexus about 15,000 miles per year and averaging around 22 miles per gallon. I was using regular gasoline, which at the time I was checking out cars was about $3.55 per gallon. So it was fairly easy to see what I’d been paying per year in fuel and what it cost me per mile.
Lexus:
Cost per mile driven: $3.55 / 22 = $0.1614
Cost of driving 15,000 miles: 15,000 X $0.1614 = $2,420.45 (or $201.70 per month)
Nissan Leaf:
Cost per mile driven: $2.57 / 73 = $0.0352
Cost of driving 15,000 miles: 15,000 X $0.0352 = $528.08 (or $44.01 per month)
That’s a savings of $157.69 per month, compared to my Lexus!
Chevy Volt:
This is a bit trickier. The estimated number of miles I could drive on electricity was 35 per charge but my commute was 38 miles. That meant I was going to drive 3 miles per workday on gasoline. The Volt requires premium gasoline, which cost $3.84 at the time I was checking this. The Volt is estimated to get 37 miles per gallon, when running the gasoline “range extender.” So, it breaks down like this:
Weekdays:
Electric miles (35) = $1.29 (the cost of charging the battery)
Gasoline miles (3)
Cost per mile driven on gasoline: $3.84 / 37 = $0.1038
Gasoline cost per weekday: $0.3114
Total weekday commute cost: 5 days X ($1.29 + $0.3114) = $8.01 per week (Monday – Friday)
Weekends:
My weekday commute only accounts for 9,880 miles per year (based on a 52 week year), so at 15,000 miles per year, I would be driving 5,120 miles in addition to my commute. The best case scenario would be that those miles would be split evenly over Saturday and Sunday, or 5,120 / 52 / 2 = 49.23 miles per weekend day.
Electric miles (35) = $1.29 (the cost of charging the battery)
Gasoline miles (49.23 – 35 = 14.23)
Cost per mile driven on gasoline: $3.84 / 37 = $0.1038
Gasoline cost per weekend day: $0.1038 X 14.23 = $1.48
Total weekend cost: 2 days X ($1.29 + $1.48) = $5.54 per weekend (Saturday – Sunday)
Cost per week:
$8.01 + $5.54 = $13.55
Annual cost (15,000 miles): $13.55 x 52 = $704.60 (or $58.72 per month)
That’s a savings of $142.98 per month, compared to my Lexus!
Will you “fill up” at home or at an electric equivalent of a gas station?
Due to the long charge times, it it NOT like pulling into a gas station and filling up in 5 minutes. Due to this, I anticipate most of our charging will occur at home.
What do electric vehicles cost?
Although I usually buy cars, this time I decided to lease. My reasoning is that battery technology will hopefully advance during the three years I plan to lease the car and I’ll get whatever is the best technology at that time. In fact, at the first Nissan dealership I went to, to do a test drive, the salespeople told me to NOT buy the 2012 Leaf, that the 2013 was coming out shortly with twice the range of the 2012 model!
The U.S. government has a $7,500 tax incentive for people who buy a Leaf or Volt, but that is if you buy. I have found that the leasing companies will credit the majority of that to the lease, reducing the lease payment.
Based on that, here’s how the offerings look on October 27, 2012:
2012 Nissan Leaf SV: 36 month lease, $1999 initial payment, $219 per month (averaging out to $274.53 per month)
2013 Chevy Volt: 36 month lease, $1529 initial payment, $299.00 per month (averaging out to $341.47 per month)
I was trying to see how my actual monthly spending would change, so I then subtracted the fuel savings I calculated above for each model to see how leasing one of these cars would compare to driving my paid-off Lexus ES300:
2012 Nissan Leaf SV: $274.53 – 157.69 = $116.84 per month increase in expenses!
2013 Chevy Volt: $341.47 – 142.98 = $198.49 per month increase in expenses!
How long would the battery packs last and how much would it cost to replace one?
Once I decided to lease, I didn’t care, since the cars battery packs would be under warranty the whole time I leased them. But just for your information, both the Leaf’s and Volt’s batteries are warranted for 8 years / 100,000 miles.
How fast could they accelerate?
Fast enough that I’ve spun the tires in both the Leaf and the Volt (and wasn’t trying to)! The torque of an electric motor is really great. Does it compare to the Tesla’s 0-60 in 3.9 seconds? No. It’s not even close. But it seems a lot peppier than the Prius!
What did they look like?
The Nissan Leaf, in my opinion, looks odd but much of that was to keep it aerodynamic. It also can carry 5 passengers. The Chevy Volt looks cooler to me but only carries 4 passengers. As a family of 3, passenger capacity was not an issue.
The down side:
When I compared total cost of lease & operation, there was no way I could get the Mazda Miata convertible. It was going to cost several hundred dollars more per month.
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