people getting rid of their Leafs/EVs/PHEVs and going back to ICEVs

[powersurge]

I, on the other hand would love to get another used Leaf.... It is the best "appliance" I have bought next to the microwave oven.

I'm in Long Island NY near New York City..

[IssacZachary]

I will always drive electric for my around town driving and keep my other vehicles for longer trips.

And this is something I've been advocating to most all my friends and family. The great majority of them don't drive over 30 miles per day and have two or more cars per family. A used Leaf would be much much better than the common SUV everyone around here thinks they need.

The problem for me is that I now have to drive farther on a regular basis, spending days and nights in the next town 70 miles away 3, 4 or 5 days per week. If there were simply one charging station between my home and the next town the Leaf would be my perfect car again. But so far all my efforts to have one installed or to use someone's 240V outlet, or even a 120V outlet, aren't working out. And the last time I tried the trip I had to call a tow truck.

[GlennD]

I wrecked my car and it took two months for repair. The first month I had a Hertz rental Versa Note that got 31MPG according the dash gauge, The second month I had a Dealer C300 loaner. According to the web site it got 24MPG. There were no books in the car. I put in a total of $70 for gas and my electric bill for 2 months went down $100.

Really, I hated the noisy Versa so it was worth paying more for mt B250E.

I imagine a decent ICE would be cheaper to run at today's prices.

I know California has high electric rates with usage tiers (at some utilities) so an electric car could be more expensive to drive if it raised monthly kWh to the next tier, but electric driving is much cheaper than gas for me in Arizona. I am on a time of use plan with extra charge for 1-hour maximum peak demand so it would be expensive to charge on peak, but I charge only off peak at home for between $30 and $40 to drive about 1,500 miles per month. I will always drive electric for my around town driving and keep my other vehicles for longer trips.

Unfortunately Anaheim Electric has no tiers. I have no option to charge late at night. I pay $.16 all the time. Now if I was in Edison territory it would be too expensive to charge during the day and I could charge late at night cheap.

[IssacZachary]

I wrecked my car and it took two months for repair. The first month I had a Hertz rental Versa Note that got 31MPG according the dash gauge, The second month I had a Dealer C300 loaner. According to the web site it got 24MPG. There were no books in the car. I put in a total of $70 for gas and my electric bill for 2 months went down $100.

Really, I hated the noisy Versa so it was worth paying more for mt B250E.

I imagine a decent ICE would be cheaper to run at today's prices.

I pay $.16 all the time.

$50 per month at $0.16 is 312.5 kWh per month. At 2.5 miles per kWh (very bad weather or driving habits) you can go about 780 miles per month.

At 31mpg you'd have to buy a bit more than 25 gallons of gasoline to go that far. Or at 24mpg, that's 32.5 gallons.

Now if your fuel costs are $70 per month for that same mileage you'd have to pay $2.80 per gallon for the 31mpg Versa or $2.18 per gallon for the 24mpg car. Is fuel really that cheap in Anaheim? But that's saying you get terrible electric mileage. 3.5 miles per kWh sounds more average. At that rate you'd be driving 1000 miles per month and your fuel prices better be between $1.20 to $1.55 per gallon in order to be spending just $70. Wow! That's cheap gasoline! And yet you'd still be paying $20 more per month for fuel than for electricity.

Then add to that bill oil changes, filter changes, sparkplug changes, hose and belt replacements, gasket and seal repairs, radiator and transmission flushes, valve lash adjustments, sensor replacements, and eventual major repairs etc.

The only two big price problems in an EV is 1) depreciation. But you can always just buy a used one for much less money. And 2) traction battery replacement out of warranty. Well that would depend a lot on where you live. Where I live, if I keep my Leaf I'm looking at a battery replacement sometime after 100,000 miles. That's only $0.06 per mile!

[SageBrush]

(fuel cost arithmetic)

Exactly -- GlennD's arithmetic is off.

I find it easiest to just calculate pennies per mile.
If GlennD gets crappy mileage in a LEAF, he does in an ICE too so we can just use EPA numbers instead to get relative costs

LEAF
16 cents for 3.7 miles = 4.3 cents a mile

31 MPG car,
$2.8 a gallon = 9 cents a mile
2.09x more expensive fuel per mile

24 MPG car,
$2.8 a gallon = 11.6 cents a mile
2.7x more expensive fuel per mile

[GRA]

(fuel cost arithmetic)

Exactly -- GlennD's arithmetic is off.

I find it easiest to just calculate pennies per mile.
If GlennD gets crappy mileage in a LEAF, he does in an ICE too so we can just use EPA numbers instead to get relative costs

LEAF
16 cents for 3.7 miles = 4.3 cents a mile

31 MPG car,
$2.8 a gallon = 9 cents a mile
2.09x more expensive fuel per mile

24 MPG car,
$2.8 a gallon = 11.6 cents a mile
2.7x more expensive fuel per mile

Yeah, $0.16/kWh if he doesn't have to worry about tiers would be fine, although that doesn't include an allowance for overhead and charging inefficiency - I figure .88, but .85 to .9 is about the right range for L2, so 17.8 to 18.8 cents/kWh. OTOH, for most people paying for public for-profit charging the numbers are usually the other way, Blink in California being an example: $0.49/kWh from the wall, say $0.54 - $0.56/kWh into the battery.

0.54/3.7 = 14.6 cents/mile

0.56/3.7 = 15.1 cents/mile

Even at 4.5 mi/kWh electricity's more expensive than gas for the 24 mpg car.

[SageBrush]

although that doesn't include an allowance for overhead and charging inefficiency

It does, I'm using the EPA MPGe, translated to miles/kWh

[IssacZachary]

I imagine a decent ICE would be cheaper to run at today's prices.

Of course there's no way of meeting exactly what criteria they use for TCO calculators, but I thought it was noteworthy to check out Edmund's TCO calculator. For a used Leaf like my 2013, it only costs around $24,000 to own it for five years by their current calculations (It was $21,000 when I bought mine). But a base model Toyota Camry for the same model year costs about $29,000 for five years. Just about any other ICE car you look at will cost even more than that, unless it's a cheap Mitsubishi Mirage or something similar.

Where the Leaf costs more is not so much the price of electricity, but when you buy it new. A 2017 Leaf SV will cost nearly $37,000 for five years of ownership compared to only $33,500 for five years for a 2017 Camry SE.

In any case, the fuel or electricity is only a fraction of the total operating costs of any vehicle.

[powersurge]

How do you figure that a Leaf will cost $37K for 5 years? OR Camry?? Is that a lease??

If you own, the first 5 years is the most expensive.. then you coast after that...

[IssacZachary]

How do you figure that a Leaf will cost $37K for 5 years? OR Camry?? Is that a lease??

If you own, the first 5 years is the most expensive.. then you coast after that...

I'm using Edmund's TCO calculator. It's based on ownership, not leasing, I do believe:

https://www.edmunds.com/tco.html

Yes, keeping an EV for longer than 5 years, especially if you live in a climate that won't be hard on the traction battery, can be very economical.