Based on the figures provided, much like the lottery, buying and operating an electric vehicle is clearly a tax on people too stupid to be able to do basic math.
Old NFO breaks it down for you at his blog.
According to General Motors, the Volt battery holds 16 kwh of electricity. It takes a full 10 hours to charge a drained battery. The cost for the electricity to charge the Volt is never mentioned. If you pay approximately (it varies with amount used and the seasons) $0.36 per kwh. 16 kwh x $0.36 per kwh = $5.76 to charge the battery. $5.76 per charge divided by 25 miles = $0.23 per mile to operate the Volt using the battery. Compare this to a similar size car with a gasoline engine that gets only 32 mpg. $3.19 per gallon divided by 32 mpg = $0.10 per mile.
I think this might be a little skewed, maybe high, but it still doesn’t take into account the hydrocarbons, etc. used to make the electricity. IMHO, the only ‘fair’ way to calculate the ‘carbon tax’, if you will, would be to also factor in the amount of hydrocarbons used to make the electricity vs. the hydrocarbons burned by a gas or diesel engine. And there are small diesel engines now getting 70mpg in Europe. I drove a little Mercedes with one.
The gasoline powered car costs about $20,000 while the Volt costs $46,000-plus. It looks like the “Greenies” in the American Government want loyal Americans NOT to do the math, but simply pay three times as much for a car, that costs more than seven times as much to run, and takes three times longer to drive across the country.RTWT
Why in blistering f*** anyone would pay twice to thrice the price of a new gasoline econo-box for a vehicle that delivers a 25 mile actual range is a subject best left to psychiatrists studying the insane.
You could by a new 4-cylinder car for that, and invest the rest in gasoline storage, and start out with only about a 200,000 mile improvement in range over a fully-charged Volt (which name has to be a Teutonic or somesuch approximation of "dolt", if we're talking about the prospective owners.)
I could see living with an electric car that got 200ish miles, if you charged it with solar panels and battery-stored energy daily, which would functionally decouple you from the grid for a quarter-century.
But 25 mile range, and at 3X the price and 7X the upkeep?
You'd literally have to have $#!^ for brains to even suggest, let alone consider seriously, adopting such an asinine option. It's the screen-door-on-a-submarine kind of stupid.
7 comments:
IIRC Chevrolet gets a subsidy to produce these things. Thomas Sowell some years back figured the actual cost of a volt somewhere near $80K. Thus, it would seem the volt is not a tax on just its purchasers but on ALL of us.
Boat Guy
Aesop,
Your problem is you can do the math. Got to stop that if you want to be green.
They did some math on the carbon impact of a Prius compared to a Hummer. Seems what with 2 battery changes in the Prius lifetime, etc. The Hummer had less than 50% of the carbon impact over 100K miles.
Course carbon, either as C or as CO2 isn't a pollutant. Never was and never will be as long as plants are around.
It's all about the control resources. Scratch a Greenie and you'll find they're a watermelon. Green on the outside and red all the way through.
Electric cars might be the future but they aren't the present. Course when we get some really good batteries and feed the left wing into the foundations of nuclear power plants we're good to go.
"Soylent Green is made of people".
I wouldn't be caught dead in any of these electric vehicles. You couldn't get out of town fast enough on a single charge with the hurrican' closing in on you. Then when you return and your house is in a shambles, what the hell are you going to use to charge it (rhetorical)?
Rented a Mazda 3 recently, damn efficient 4 cylinder.
it all makes when someone else money is being used. 1. "FREE" public charging station. 2. state and federal tax break and cash for clunkers programs. if I remember correctly an article i read about man who took advantage of all the "free shit" end up paying almost nothing per month. here is my hillbilly fact, when the power goes down all those "Greens" are not worried let alone protesting about the 10 ton, diesel fuel eating, local utility truck showing up to fix it. they are not worried about all the poly-plastic coated wire in their car, in their home, miles and miles of transmition lines. this rig https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1r7CFaresM and all the front and follow vechicals are not powered by magic fairy dust. with out oil and coal, their green lifestyle would not exist.
Not sure at all about the Volt, but I have a Ford fusion that's a plug-in hybrid, and I can go 25 miles on a charge and then another 600 or so on my hybrid gas-electric motor. I bought it used for 17000$, a thousand more than a standard hybrid model would have cost used and since my commute is less than 25 miles round trip, I fill up my tank only once every few months. I agree with you Aesop that someone would have to be a real idiot to buy a new Volt for 46000$ and only get the same distance as I do without the gas engine to take you the rest of the way. But I do love my plug-in option for the shorter trips.
Not pick nits, but $0.36 per kilowatt hour? Is that how much electricity costs in California? Around here residential electric rates are about $0.11.
The Peugeot ion costs £15000, but that includes a £5k government tax credit
The suzuki celerio costs £7,000
A litre of fuel in the uk costs £1.20 at last fill up.
A difference of 6666 litres
The best mileage ive ever gotten was 65mpg on a full tank
The worst I've ever seen is 52mpg, call it 50.
1 gallon is 4.5 litres
6666 litres is 1,468 gallons
1,468 gallons is 75,000 miles, give or take.
Admittedly, phev trucks are a wildly different matter
Post a Comment