busybee fluffy rambles

In the past year I drove around 1000 miles.

According to my smart charger, which is the only thing I used to charge it with this year, I used a total of 334kWh, although there was the month when I didn’t have the car due to the incompetence of CarPros Kia Renton. We can extrapolate that if I’d had it during that time I’d have used more like 365kWh.

(Also, the first two months of the annual cycle were in my Nissan LEAF, but that has roughly the same power consumption as the Niro.)

Electricity here costs $.17/kWh. While my energy bill is offset by my solar panels, this is still essentially what electricity costs me. So, fueling the car cost me around $62 for the whole year.

By comparison, a typical efficient gas car gets, let’s say, around 30 miles per gallon. So I’d have used around 33 gallons of gas this year, and in Seattle, gas is typically aroun $4.50/gallon, so gas would have cost me $150.

There’s a bit more to consider, though. The state of Washington, like most states, uses a fuel tax to fund road infrastructure, so they charge EV owners an additional $150/year. (Which is a bit frustrating, given that it’s supposed to be usage-based, and that tax is the same as what I’d have been paying in gas in total over the course of a year, but that’s a whole other rant.) There’s also the RTA tax which is based on the retail value of the car, which means that on average an EV will have a slightly higher RTA tax than an equivalent ICE vehicle.

On the other hand, gas cars need oil changes. You’re supposed to get them at least twice a year, although with my level of driving most mechanics agree that I only need to do it once a year. That’s still a good $120, though, at least on my last ICE car which required full-synthetic oil.

Anyway, here’s the total of the things which have differing costs:

So, even with my minimal amount of driving, my EV ended up being cheaper to own and operate.

This doesn’t quite tell the whole story, like no real cost-benefit analysis would be complete without also looking at the depreciation cost assuming I want to sell the car and buy something else or whatever, but that’s not typically the way I operate with cars (trading my Mazda3 in for a LEAF in 2022 at a rather nice profit, and the LEAF for a Niro in 2024 at a rather major loss, notwithstanding).

There’s also the question of insurance. I don’t know how much my Mazda3 would be to insure right now, but the LEAF was pretty similar to the Mazda3, and the Niro is significantly less than the LEAF, so by the transitive property I think it’s safe to say that insurance rates are generally going to be comparable.

Anyway. If I were a much more frequent/heavy driver, the difference would only be much greater. Assuming driving 3000 miles per year, my ICE costs would be:

• Oil change: $120
• Gas: 100 gallons @ $4.50/gallon = $450
• Total: $570 ($0.20/mile)

while the EV would still just be:

• Infrastructure tax: $150
• Fuel: $180ish
• Total: $330 ($0.09/mile)

And of course, the more you drive, the more frequently you need oil changes, while the infrastructure tax for an EV is fixed, at least under the current regime in my state. (Other states will have different infrastructure tax offsets, but they’ll also have different fuel and electricity and insurance costs as well. None of the specific numbers in my specific experience are going to be universal.)

EVs also need less long-term maintenance for a bunch of other reasons; the brake pads are only rarely used due to regenerative braking, there’s no timing belts or spark plugs or fuel filters/pumps/alternators to wear out, the only air filter is for the cabin, and so on. Pretty much the only long-term maintenance that an EV needs is tires (which ICE have too, of course) and battery coolant (which is also way less frequent and voluminous than the coolant needed by ICE vehicles).

So, yeah, I continue to be a fan of EVs, as long as I need to have a vehicle to begin with.

(I’d still rather have good mass transit that made a car unnecessary to begin with though! Driving sucks! Especially when you have vertigo and anxiety and long-COVID brain fog!)

Update

I forgot to count the $75 for the additional “EV infrastructure” tax, which is part of the other rant. With that, my 2024 vehicle costs were slightly more than ICE would have been. I don’t know how long this bullshit tax is going to be in place, and I mean, it’s also funding “infrastructure” I literally never use and have no need for? It’s so frustrating.