Quote:
Originally Posted by biker1
The price of oil changes depends on whether you do it yourself. In which case, the cost is about $4 per oil change for my gas cart. Regarding the cost of "electric" fuel, my lithium-ion electric cart costs, at the electrical outlet during recharging, about 5 miles per kWh or about 2.5 cents per mile. My gas cart get 50 miles per gallon or about 7 cents per mile. Gas carts do have some additional "maintenance" items such as a new battery about every 5 years and maybe some belt replacements but these, along with the oil changes, are only about 10% of the fuel charges over 75,000 miles. I put the operating cost of my electric cart at about 1/3 of the operating cost of my gas cart or a 75,000 miles savings of about $4000. We will probably replace the 10 year old gas cart with another electric cart within the next couple of years.
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I lease an electric vehicle. The range for it is about 230 miles with average mixed driving. Around town it's better, on interstates it drops. The same model car would get around 25 mpg average on premium unleaded at around $4/gallon at the moment. That equals $0.16/mile. Even at $0.14/kWh and 3.4 miles per kWh, that's a bit over $0.04/mile.
Biker1 is right in that the maintenance on an EV is less than a gas engine, and the operating cost much less.
The rub is the lack of range and the time to recharge making a gas vehicle more desirable, plus the lack of ability to recharge away from home. You can find a gas station every 2 miles or so in this country. In a nutshell, this is why that EV for us is basically an around-town car.