We’ve just completed our second month of using the Blink Level 2 chargers. During the month of December, I drove two relatively long drives, one of about 100 miles, to a fencing tournament my daughter was in, and one of 412 miles, to a panel discussion on electric vehicles and battery technology in Austin, Texas. Obviously, these drives required the use of gasoline after the initial electric charge was depleted. This also dropped the percentage of miles driven on electricity.
I got an email from Blink that mentioned a dashboard that shows the impact my decision to switch to electric vehicle has had. Here’s what the dashboard looks like:
However, I took a close look at how they calculated the pounds of CO2 saved and found I was doing much better than the dashboard shows. The reason? The dashboard assumes that the electricity I used generated 1.66 pounds of CO2 per kWh. I use wind-generated electricity, from Green Mountain Energy, which does not generate CO2. They also assume the amount of CO2 that would have been generated by driving a conventional gasoline-powered vehicle by using estimates based on a vehicle that gets 29 MPG, emitting 20.6 pounds of CO2 per gallon (0.71 pounds per mile). Let’s modify things a bit to reflect what has really changed. First, we can wipe away the 1.66 pounds of CO2 per kWh. Then actually compare my previous car’s mileage per gallon (22). If we assume the same amount of CO2 would be generated per gallon and only the MPG varies, it indicates that my previous car would have spewed 20.6 pounds of CO2 for each 22 miles I drove, so any electric driving, would have reduced my carbon footprint by .94 pounds per electric mile driven (20.6 lbs / 22MPG). This means, instead of reducing CO2 emissions by 569 pounds, over the last two months, by driving 2,294 electric miles, the actual reduction of CO2 emissions has been 2,148 pounds. That’s a reduction of over a ton of CO2 in just two months! This means it is incredibly important, if you’re considering an EV for ecological reasons, that you get renewable, clean energy to power it. In my case the CO2 savings are 4 times what the Blink dashboard showed!
As of the end of November, there were a total of 28,825 Volts that had been sold in the U.S.. If each of those drivers got savings like this, it would save almost 31 MILLION pounds, or over 15,000 tons, of CO2 per month! Once the income tax incentives end for the Volt, there will be 200,000 of them on the road, with the possibility of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by over 107,000 TONS per month. Imagine what that day will be like. Add in the Fiskers, Teslas, Leafs, Sparks, iEV and other models coming to market in the coming year. THIS IS HUGE!!!!!
Think about that weight for a moment. CO2 is not very heavy. It’s a gas. It weighs 0.1144 pounds per cubic foot, according to wiki.answers.com. That surprised me, as I thought it would be much lighter than 1/9 of a pound per cubic foot. Learn something new every day. That means my previous car generated 8.22 cubic feet of CO2 for every mile I drove! As mentioned before, I have driven 2,294 electric miles over the last two months, so the volume of CO2 saved was 18,849 cubic feet! How big is that? That’s a cube 26.61 feet per side, filled with pure carbon dioxide! After a year, at this pace, the cube of CO2 would be 48.36 feet per side.
When running on gasoline, my Volt has been averaging 38.1 MPG, so there’s even a savings there, compared to my old car or even the example vehicle used by Blink for the dashboard. I’ll have to contact Blink to suggest they have an input field the customer can use to select what their electricity source is, as well as the mileage achieved by their alternative vehicle…
The Blink dashboard estimate of gallons saved is pretty close to my calculation of the number of gallons saved, just on the electric miles. I also save gas on the gasoline-powered miles because my Volt gets over 50% more mileage out of a gallon of gas than my Lexus did (38.1 MPG vs 22 MPG). Gallons saved just from electric miles: 102.23 gallons. Gallons saved overall: 115.37 gallons. At $3.00 per gallon (regular gas in my Lexus) that’s a savings of $346.10 in just two months!
Let’s apply that savings to my monthly lease payment on the Volt ($330.07), in order to understand my total cost of ownership, compared to my previous car. The average saved per month is $173.05 ($346.10 / 2). The cost of electricity to operate my Volt, over the last two months was $75.01, or $37.50 per month.
$330.07 – $173.05 + 37.50 = $194.52. In other words, compared to driving my Lexus (which was paid off) and buying gasoline versus driving my Volt, using 77% electricity and 23% gasoline, results in an additional expenditure of $194.52 per month for my family. It’s as if my Volt’s monthly lease payment is only $194.52! That’s amazing for a car of this quality. When I was making payments on my Lexus, they were $452.23. It’s true I was buying the Lexus (over a 5-1/2 year period) versus leasing my Volt (over a 3 year period), but I think the comparison is valid. Believe it or not, people still tell me they’ll consider purchasing an EV, “when the prices come down.”
Last month, I had pretty much decided that unless the Blink chargers were free (they were), then the payback time for the incremental increase in electric driving I would get, over using the 110V charger that came with the car, was just too long to justify. But to keep you apprised of how my electric driving percentage has progressed, I present the following update:
Here are the givens, based on my actual mileage (from my spreadsheet) from October 8th until today:
- My miles per kilowatt hour have been averaging 4.18 (was 4.21 last month)
- My miles per gallon have been averaging 38.1 (was 37.6 last month)
- Currently, premium gasoline is $3.30 per gallon
- My electricity cost is locked in for a year at $0.10725 per kilowatt hour.
At the end of October (before Blinks were installed), my Volt had the following mileage stats:
- 3532 Electric Miles
- 4641 Total Miles
- For all the miles driven, at that point, 76% of the miles were powered by electricity, instead of gas.
At the end of December, my Volt had the following mileage stats:
- 5826 Electric Miles
- 7574 Total Miles
- That’s 71% electric driving, just for the month of December. (remember, I drove two long distances, which brought my electric percentage way down)
- For all the miles driven so far, 77% of the miles were powered by electricity, instead of gas. (before the Blink units, my average was 76%, so the Blinks helped a lot, if you consider the two long gas-powered drives)
