If you are troubled by the recent spike in gasoline prices, you might be interested in our experience with a car that uses no gas.
In November 2021, my wife and I took delivery of a new all-electric car. Our EV is powered by a battery located under the car’s floor and will travel 260 miles on a full charge. It has no engine, gas tank, exhaust pipes or radiator that conventional cars and hybrid-gas-electric vehicles have.
We analyzed our home electric bills and public charger station receipts to calculate the additional electricity we used to power our EV for six months, between November and May, and compared that with our electricity use in the same months a year before. The result: After driving 4,600 miles, we drew an additional 191 kilowatt hours (Kwh) of power through our municipal utility. At 13 cents per Kwh, that translated to $25 more than the same period the year before. In our travels outside the area in that time, we spent $67 at public fast chargers. With the $25 in additional power used at home, we spent a total of $92 more than the year before.
If we had not bought the EV, we would have used our 2013 Honda Accord that gets an average of 32 miles per gallon of gasoline. Assuming the average of $4 per gallon price over that period, we would have burned 144 gallons costing $575 — or $483 more than the EV did. Weather, power demand and other factors can affect utility bills. But we could find no factors that would have significantly affected our power bills over both six-month periods.
Some warn EVs are expensive. The invoice price of our base-model car was $39,990. The invoice price of a Ford F-150 XLT SuperCab pickup is $40,481.
We have found fast charging locations at 24-hour well-lit locations such as restaurants, supermarkets and convenience stores. After a bathroom break and a bite to eat, our car is charged and ready to roll in less than 30 minutes. It is the future.
Walter Hamilton
South Hadley