The cost of fuel over a lifetime vs solar powered EV

Not the most accurate assessment, but it does deliver the general idea:



Link to article:
http://green.autoblog.com/2012/02/07/infographic-a-lifetime-of-fuel-costs-gas-vs-solar/

Nice!

Like the idea, but find the assumptions to be off. Most cars now get more than 20mpg, gas prices fluctuate too much to make an assumption and solar panels in No. Cal for enough juice to completely power my Leaf are being quoted at $30-34K for panels and installation (before Fed and State credits)

Still, given a 50 year period, solar should come out way ahead, just not quite as dramatically.

Yes, and in 50 years you are most certainly going to have to replace more than just two inverters; perhaps the entire system by then...

Spindoctor said:

Like the idea, but find the assumptions to be off.

Click to expand...

seems to low to me. i was driving a car at 15 mpg, gas was 4.00 gallon (premium only) in all my performance cars. I had an average of over 300 dollars a month for fuel . so more like 3600.00 yearly x 50 years looks more like 180,000.00 then add the 3% annual increase, Not pretty. I would say that would be worst case but , that was my current projection in real life. now down to about 32.00 a month fuel cost electric. ( still spend about 20.00 a month for gas if you count the other toys dirt bikes, 4 wheeler,lawn mower, and weed eater .

A couple other questions about this:

Is it reasonable to expect the panels will last 50 years?

Regarding free electricity for your EV, this seems to work only because a lot of other people aren't doing it. Your solar system pushes power out to the grid during the day then draws back from the grid at night while the car charges. Or am I missing something?

Pushing power to the grid during the day is helpful because that is when demand is highest. Charging at night when demand is lowest also helps smooth out the demand on the grid. Fifty years does sound optimistic.

I was doing some more rough calculations inspired by this. Even if you include a complete replacement of the solar system at the 25 year mark AND factor in the "EV Premium" AND factor in that you'll probably have replaced the car 3 or 4 times over the 50 years (resulting in 3-4x the EV premiums) - well, it STILL comes out to half the cost of the ICE car. Ok, at 20MPG that'd be more like an SUV, but those are pretty common. Even if you double the MPG of the ICE and assume all of the worst case factors above, it's still a wash and you've helped the environment to boot!

Most likely, though, gas prices will rise faster than the OP projects and the EV premium and solar prices will diminish as technology advances, further tilting in favor of the solar EV.

Pretty interesting to think about.

OK, this chart and the people that use this comparison to sell solar PV really upset me. It's a huge pet peeve of mine. The math and assumptions used on this chart to prove their incorrect point are also pretty horrific but that should be obvious to everyone. GeekEVs summary of the factors shows just how bad theirs is.

The financial benefits of an EV do NOT have any impact on the financial benefits of solar PV.*

The financial benefits of solar PV do NOT have any impact on the financial benefits of an EV.*

The reason is simple. For example say you drive EVs for 50 years and that saves you $50,000k over driving/owning ICEVs and you buy your electricity from the utility.

Then you install install solar PV and for 50 years you save $25,000 on your power bill because you didn't have to buy as much electricity from the utility.

It's implied that if you install solar PV and buy an EV that you will be saving even more money than just doing the one. But the fact is you can save $50k if you just have an EV and you save $25k if you just have solar PV. By installing both you still only save $75k.*

Solar PV is not replacing gas consumption. It's replacing electricity which would be bought from the utility for whatever loads you have. Adding the additional load of an EV generally speaking doesn't add additional savings attributable to your solar PV.

The EV is the one replacing gas consumption with electricity from the utility. The fact that you have solar PV doesn't mean that the EV uses less electricity or saves more money.

Whenever someone is talking about the cost of gas to power a car in the context of solar PV your BS meter should go off.


*Caveats: TOU metering and tiered rate structures could cause solar PV and EV usage to have a positive impact together but that starts to get complicated and when EV and solar PV are showed like this they are certainly not talking about these potential benefits. Also, some utilities don't buy back your excess power, or some don't pay you the same rate, etc. So if your system was larger than your consumption buying the LEAF could add additional benefit, but again that starts to get complicated and is not the intention of people doing these comparisons.