DaveinOlyWA said:
the real issue in your story is the gasser's belief that their real cost is 10 cents per mile. That is highly dependent on their location as the West gas prices are MUCH higher, the North has fuel economy that is MUCH lower and there are other associated costs with driving gassers that EVs do not enjoy.
I challenge anyone who drives a gasser to track their costs; fuel, maintenance, licensing, taxes, insurance, etc. get a real "cost per mile" figure.
I've got spreadsheets that have been used to track every expense (depreciation, fuel, insurance, taxes, maintenance, accessories like floor mats and running boards, washer fluid, etc...) on my vehicles for the last 20 years. The only expense that I don't track in my spreadsheets is car washes (both cleaning supplies for home and commercial car washes).
1994 Saturn SC2 (purchased new)
Owned: 1994 - 2003
Miles Driven: 115,714
Cost per mile: $0.31
1995 Honda VFR750F Motorcycle (purchased new)
Owned: 1995 - 2009
Miles Driven: 51,445
Cost per mile: $0.33
2003 Dodge Ram 1500 (purchased new)
Owned: 2003 - current
Miles Driven: 98,527
Cost per mile: $0.58 (including estimated resale value)
2008 Big Dog Mastiff Motorcycle (purchased used)
Owned: 2009 - 2011
Miles Driven: 5,240
Cost per mile: $1.12
2006 Ariel Atom 2 (purchased used)
Owned: 2010 - current
Miles Driven: 8,077
Cost per mile: $1.68 (including estimated resale value)
2013 Nissan Leaf SV (purchased new)
Owned 2013 - current
Miles Driven: 13,700
Cost per Mile: $0.69 (including estimated resale value)
The two vehicles that I got driven relatively low miles per year (Mastiff and Atom) have the highest per mile cost. For the Mastiff, I didn't end up and keep that motorcycle long enough to prorate the sales tax over enough miles of driving. For the Atom, the big per mile hit is insurance. Since I'm only putting about 2,000 miles a year on it, on a per mile basis, it's a pretty big expense.
- Back in 1995 when I first purchased the VFR, I figured out that even with me babying the motorcycle and getting a lot more miles out of a set of tires than others would get, I spent more on tires than I did on gas. Everyone would complain about gas prices going above $1 per gallon, but I knew that maintenance costs were a higher per mile expense back then.
- The pickup has burned $18,000 in gasoline over its life. That's even with gas being about $2/gal when I first purchased it. If gas was always 3-4 dollars per gallon, I would have spent more on gasoline than the original purchase price.
- Everybody says motorcycles are cheap to run. Even with me putting 4,000 miles a year on my VFR,and it getting over a 40 mpg average during the 14 years that I owned it, the VFR was still more expensive to drive than my little Saturn coupe.
- For gas vehicles, my fuel expense was between 10% and 32% of my total expenses on the vehicle. For the Leaf, paying retail rates on electricity in Kansas puts the fuel cost at 4% of my total costs. With the 5kW solar system I had previously installed on the house, covering most of my electricity needs, my personal fuel cost is 2% of the total expenses on the Leaf. With this super low on-going cost, the more I drive the Leaf, the lower that per-mile cost becomes. It should soon drop below the pickup's per-mile cost, which was my goal when purchasing the Leaf.