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Banned
Please Focus and drive this thread forward.
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Any GTAM'ers own an electric vehicle?
- Thread starter PrivatePilot
- Start date
Please Focus and drive this thread forward.
I've found this thread very interesting. It isn't feasible for me, as I'm fortunate to work from home, so my only driving is errands or dropping my son at school. Will definitely consider for my wife who has a 'proper' commute when she's due for a new ride.
I haven't seen one in the wild yet, although when I was last at OMS they said they had 1 in stock. I meant to ask to look at it but in the shuffle and such (between the oil change, the non-action on the brakes, and the discussion with the manager) I forgot all about it.
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Banned
Wouldn't it be ideal for you since you do low km's and will be within the charging/distance range?
Pretty much dirt cheap/free driving for you.
Kill some time, visit Ikea and recharge, lol.
If we're talking 40-50K a day worth of "running around", then it makes sense.
If we're talking 5K a day, well...the justification gets harder when the additional cost of an EV is taken into consideration...unless a bit of extra money up front satisfies a desire as well, not just a need for savings.
But yes, in that scenario an EV would be truly gas free driving in all except the coldest weather.
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Banned
He would have to do it over a week. He might only need to recharge every 3 days.
Short trips burn more gas than highway runs.
This. My basic 4-cylinder car is paid off and is well maintained. The math doesn't add up in my mind.
As much as I am a proponent of EV's, I am also very much a realist.
It also comes down to the question of whether you are actually needing a new vehicle, or just potentially buying one solely in an effort to achieve savings. If your vehicle has died and you need a new one then favoring and EV does make sense in the long term - kind of like opting for the more expensive but highly energy efficient windows during a renovation makes sense, or the more expensive but highly efficient furnace also makes sense. In both scenarios you could have cheaped out and saved money upfront but it will cost you more in the long run, or spend more money upfront but *save* money in the long term.
There's defiantly math to be done, for sure.
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Banned
way to take a dog leg and veer the thread off the tee theme, well let's steer the thread back on course.
Looking at a 100km commute (each way) come fall. Electric charging may be available.
IF you have confimed charging at work...a Gen 1 Volt will get you there and home using a little gas.
A Gen2 Volt will get you there and back using even less gas.
A Bolt or other pure EV will get you there and home using no gas at all and you can take advantage of the at-work charging for all it's worth.
"May" or "will"?
A Bolt will do it with the caveat that we don't yet know how badly the winter range is affected. If you reliably have 240V Level 2 charging at work, it shouldn't be an issue. If all you get is a 110V extension cord, it'll help. If charging at work might not be available then it might be an issue on some winter days. No other straight EV short of a Tesla will even come close.
A Volt will do it without any worries but using a bit of gasoline. It's the same situation PrivatePilot is describing.
The new Hyundai Ioniq might be another option.
I saw a new Prius on the road today, from behind. What were they thinking. Those taillights look like Dracula's teeth.
A Bolt will do it with the caveat that we don't yet know how badly the winter range is affected. If you reliably have 240V Level 2 charging at work, it shouldn't be an issue. If all you get is a 110V extension cord, it'll help. If charging at work might not be available then it might be an issue on some winter days. No other straight EV short of a Tesla will even come close.
A Volt will do it without any worries but using a bit of gasoline. It's the same situation PrivatePilot is describing.
The new Hyundai Ioniq might be another option.
I saw a new Prius on the road today, from behind. What were they thinking. Those taillights look like Dracula's teeth.
So, for those still interested in the numbers, our first full month of Volt ownership is complete and I have some preliminary fuel consumptions and electricity bill info. It's a long post, but here's the nuts and bolts.
Electricity consumption is of course variable so all I can do is compare last April to this April. Obviously THIS April is expectedly higher due to the EV charging (which, FWIW, was almost exclusively done during off-peak rate times) but of course other consumption year to year can vary as well so the difference may not be an exact calculation of how much the car used obviously, but close enough.
LAST April (2016) we used 439KWH, off peak.
THIS April (2017, with the Volt charging regularly off peak) we used 766KWH.
The difference is 327KWH. At roughly 10.5-11.0 KWH per full charge (I'll use 10.75 for the math) this comes out to almost exactly 30 charges, and hey, 30 days in March, so that sounds pretty much right on. There were days that we did recharge and use a second full (or near full) charge on a weekend so the EV numbers might actually be a bit larger, but I didn't track it exactly and it just makes things harder to calculate, but they would only help the numbers, not hinder, but again, I'm trying to be real-world here.
At 8.7c/KWH that comes out to $28.44 in electricity. Less than the cost of one tank of gas in the Volt.
Assuming each full charge took the car an AVERAGE (some charges got more, some got less) of 50KM, over 30 days, the car would have travelled 1500KM on electricity alone. As mentioned above, it probably travelled more than that on EV mode, but again, it was impossible to track it exactly, and I'm happy with an average for this month.
That works out to $0.018 per Kilometer for operating cost on electricity.
For comparison, a Hybrid burning 5.0L/100KM, assuming current average $1.10/L gas costs, would have burned 75L of gas to cover the equivalent number of EV miles the Volt travelled on electricity, and that would have come at a cost of $82.50, or $0.055/KM.
That's a 101% difference, so in short, running on electricity costs half of even a super fuel efficient hybrid. And gas, on average, was over $1.10 last month, but I used current pricing instead of past pricing, so in reality those numbers were actually even slightly better.
FWIW, with the changeover to the summer Time Of Use metering as of May 1, the overnight (off peak) electricity rates also went down from 8.7c/KWH to 7.7c/KWH, a 12% drop, also bolstering the EV savings calculations.
Yes, we did burn gas as well, but those numbers are separate from the "pure EV" numbers above - the car travelled far more than 1500KM this month, actually closer to about 3800KM.
I haven't yet calculated the average (mixed EV & gas) L/100KM (my wife needs to fill up tomorrow so I can do so) but it's looking like it's going to come in under the 3.0L/100KM point according to my gas stats program on my phone. Other interesting stat - the car travelled an average of nearly 1000KM between gas fillups.
The numbers are super impressive when compared against our old car, her Chrysler 300.
3800KM at it's average 12L/100KM consumption would have been 456L of gas last month, at a cost of just slightly over $500 based on the $1.10/L calculation I used earlier.
The Volt, in comparison, I expect to see a final gas cost around $150. Add in the $28 in electricity and our first month of operating cost was roughly (and I stress roughly, but I'm using simple estimates here) $180.00.
So, very long story short, we saved roughly $320.00 last month in operating costs vs her old car.
Using the above full month estimates and comparing the overall monthly mileage total to a Hybrid instead, at a 5.0L/100KM fuel consumption figure, a Hybrid would have burned $228 in gas (based on last months $1.20/L), so we saved $48 vs a Hybrid.
All of the above numbers will trend significantly better towards the Volt when my wife gets the charging setup at work. That's still ongoing. Even without it, the numbers are still very favourable however.
Electricity consumption is of course variable so all I can do is compare last April to this April. Obviously THIS April is expectedly higher due to the EV charging (which, FWIW, was almost exclusively done during off-peak rate times) but of course other consumption year to year can vary as well so the difference may not be an exact calculation of how much the car used obviously, but close enough.
LAST April (2016) we used 439KWH, off peak.
THIS April (2017, with the Volt charging regularly off peak) we used 766KWH.
The difference is 327KWH. At roughly 10.5-11.0 KWH per full charge (I'll use 10.75 for the math) this comes out to almost exactly 30 charges, and hey, 30 days in March, so that sounds pretty much right on. There were days that we did recharge and use a second full (or near full) charge on a weekend so the EV numbers might actually be a bit larger, but I didn't track it exactly and it just makes things harder to calculate, but they would only help the numbers, not hinder, but again, I'm trying to be real-world here.
At 8.7c/KWH that comes out to $28.44 in electricity. Less than the cost of one tank of gas in the Volt.
Assuming each full charge took the car an AVERAGE (some charges got more, some got less) of 50KM, over 30 days, the car would have travelled 1500KM on electricity alone. As mentioned above, it probably travelled more than that on EV mode, but again, it was impossible to track it exactly, and I'm happy with an average for this month.
That works out to $0.018 per Kilometer for operating cost on electricity.
For comparison, a Hybrid burning 5.0L/100KM, assuming current average $1.10/L gas costs, would have burned 75L of gas to cover the equivalent number of EV miles the Volt travelled on electricity, and that would have come at a cost of $82.50, or $0.055/KM.
That's a 101% difference, so in short, running on electricity costs half of even a super fuel efficient hybrid. And gas, on average, was over $1.10 last month, but I used current pricing instead of past pricing, so in reality those numbers were actually even slightly better.
FWIW, with the changeover to the summer Time Of Use metering as of May 1, the overnight (off peak) electricity rates also went down from 8.7c/KWH to 7.7c/KWH, a 12% drop, also bolstering the EV savings calculations.
Yes, we did burn gas as well, but those numbers are separate from the "pure EV" numbers above - the car travelled far more than 1500KM this month, actually closer to about 3800KM.
I haven't yet calculated the average (mixed EV & gas) L/100KM (my wife needs to fill up tomorrow so I can do so) but it's looking like it's going to come in under the 3.0L/100KM point according to my gas stats program on my phone. Other interesting stat - the car travelled an average of nearly 1000KM between gas fillups.
The numbers are super impressive when compared against our old car, her Chrysler 300.
3800KM at it's average 12L/100KM consumption would have been 456L of gas last month, at a cost of just slightly over $500 based on the $1.10/L calculation I used earlier.
The Volt, in comparison, I expect to see a final gas cost around $150. Add in the $28 in electricity and our first month of operating cost was roughly (and I stress roughly, but I'm using simple estimates here) $180.00.
So, very long story short, we saved roughly $320.00 last month in operating costs vs her old car.
Using the above full month estimates and comparing the overall monthly mileage total to a Hybrid instead, at a 5.0L/100KM fuel consumption figure, a Hybrid would have burned $228 in gas (based on last months $1.20/L), so we saved $48 vs a Hybrid.
All of the above numbers will trend significantly better towards the Volt when my wife gets the charging setup at work. That's still ongoing. Even without it, the numbers are still very favourable however.
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A fair consideration for the Bolt, but from what I've seen online even worst case scenario (cold weather, snow tires, aggressive driving in sport mode, heat on comfort along with heated seats and heated steering wheel turned on) I've seen ranges in the 225-240KM zone still.
GM advertises a 13 mile range drop on the Volt in extreme winter conditions - that calculates out to about 41%. This takes into consideration heavy HVAC use, heated seats, losses from driving in poor road conditions, etc. And that's worst case, the average seems to be about 25-30%.
Given the Bolts ~380KM listed range, using the worst-case figure of 40%, that does indeed calculate out to a still 225KM range in the extreme winter conditions, probably 250KM on a moderate winter day, and 260+ on a mild winter day.
Even without a charger at work a 200KM return winter commute is doable but I could understand some range anxiety for some. With a charger at work it's zero concern at that point really.
Whoops, didn't remember the number correctly, it's closer to 120km each way, most of it highway 401. looking at going to school in the fall and campus parking indicated that spots for electric vehicles are available but they didn't provide info if it's first come first serve or the whether it's 120v or 240v.
Despite not being able to make it there the entire way I'd sooner get a Volt over a Bolt or any other EV because of range anxiety.
Despite not being able to make it there the entire way I'd sooner get a Volt over a Bolt or any other EV because of range anxiety.
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