Are we saving money?

Or.. just how far does $1.37 get you?

As I’ve mentioned a few times, the main reason we purchased an electric vehicle is that we hoped it would decrease our impact on the environment. But there were other alluring possible benefits too, including smooth driving, and perhaps we could save money.

Just as there are questions about whether EVs have an overall lower net impact on the environment than gasoline powered cars, there are questions about whether electric cars save you money. A typical electric car costs a fair amount more than a gasoline powered car. The hope, however, is that you save in the long run. Since we’ve owned the car about two months now, I thought I’d check in on how we are doing in the money department.

There are lots of factors to consider if you really want to figure out the total cost of vehicle ownership. But I’m going to try to streamline this a bit and just focus on the money we’ve spent (or haven’t spent) since we purchased the car. That boils down to maintenance and fuel costs.

Thus far with maintenance we’re doing pretty well. We haven’t spent a dime.  Knock on wood, we have yet to have a problem that would warrant a visit to the dealer. A couple weeks ago I got the J.D. Power Survey of Initial Ownership. After reading the results of those surveys for years I found it kind of fun to fill out one of the forms myself.  It didn’t hurt that I was truthfully able to say that everything was working fine.  The only blip in the entire survey was when I noted that the mileage estimates were not accurate. But on the whole, as I read through the list of things that could go wrong (and do go wrong on some cars) I felt pretty good with where we are at.

When I turn to the fuel costs of my car, I’ve crunched the numbers and it appears we’ve driven 1759 miles and spent $1.37 on electricity for it thus far.

How is that possible? The main reason is that Hyundai has graciously offered to pay for 30-minute charges at Electrify America charging stations for two years for customers who purchase new EVs from them. As I’ve mentioned in my blog, we’ve definitely taken up Hyundai on its offer and I’ve largely been relying on Electrify America to keep my car going thus far.  Thus far we’ve charged the car 13 times at these public charging stations for a grand total of 445 kWh. 

Hyundai offers this perk as an attempt to ease the transition to the complexities of EV ownership and I must say it has been incredibly helpful.  It’s the kind of attention to the broader sociotechnical system that other companies should be thinking about (I’m looking at you Hertz).

I’ve only charged my car three other ways. First, Hyundai gave me a tank that was 80% full when I first pulled away from the dealership. Second, my neighbor graciously allowed me to test out whether his level 2 charger would work on my car, and in the process he donated 7 kWh to this project.  And finally, in my level 1 charger experiment I managed to get 14 kWh into the car over the course of a 36 hour charge.  I’ve looked back at my electric bill and that appeared to cost the $1.37 I mentioned above.

But, of course, Electrify America charging stations aren’t actually free. Hyundai is covering the costs, for now. And every time I charge, Electrify America tells me what the official cost of each charge is – 48 cents per kWh.* 

That price seemed a bit high, so I decided to crunch some numbers to see what it translated to.  I found that if I only used the public charging stations that I’m used to, and I had to pay out of pocket, I would ultimately end up paying a bit more than 13 cents for energy per mile traveled.

Again, not knowing what exactly that meant, I thought I’d compare it against my 2011 SUV.  That car gets 25 mpg. With the average price of gas in Arizona right now being about four dollars a gallon, I calculate that I pay 16 cents per mile traveled to put gas in that car.  That was pretty startling to me, especially considering that my SUV is not exactly the most fuel-efficient vehicle out there.

So of course, I did more calculations...

With the current gas prices in Arizona, a vehicle that gets 30 mpg costs the same in fuel as my fancy electric car when I charge it at public chargers.  Of course, it is possible to get an internal combustion engine vehicle with a lot better gas mileage than that. A basic 2024 Toyota Corolla gets about 40 mpg. If I had purchased that car I’d be paying 10 cents per mile for gas – or about 25 percent less per mile traveled than it costs to charge my EV at the public chargers I’ve been using.

All of this seems to go against what I thought I knew about EVs. I thought they were always cheaper to run that gasoline powered cars and that you’d at least help cover some of the cost premium in the initial purchase by saving money in fuel over time.

There are some other variables to consider. For instance, if gas prices go up significantly, my EV should become comparably cheaper than gasoline powered cars – if the gas price hikes don’t lead to corresponding equivalent increases in electricity costs, which they may very well do.  But the bottom line seems to be that public chargers may not be the cheapest way to charge your car.

I’m sure it costs a lot for Electrify America to run its charging system.  It has to set up the infrastructure, purchase the electricity it later passes on to me, and maintain the chargers.  My local charging station frequently has one or two chargers that aren’t working one day, but then are working again the next. I’ve run into maintenance crews more than once and I think they are kept pretty busy. And believe it or not, during my last charge I actually saw someone who was hired to clean up the garbage left behind in the parking lot. All of that incurs expenses that need to be covered. 

When I looked at my electric bill, it appears that I paid just less than 10 cents for a kWh in February.  That translates to 2.5 cents per mile traveled. That is significantly better than 13 cents per mile traveled for electricity I get from public chargers!  I know the cost of electricity will go up in the summer. And I know that my local power company will offer incentives for charging my car at night to help balance the electric grid at lower usage times. So I don’t know exactly what the costs will be year round. But it’s pretty clear that if I want to gain the financial advantages that I was promised, I’m going to need to figure out how to start charging at home.

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* The data I am given is what Electrify America would charge me if I was paying for the electricity out of pocket.  I have no idea of the details, but I would suspect that the company gives Hyundai some sort of discount that lowers the final price paid by them.