More on fuels….
At $4/gallon, would you buy an electric or advanced hybrid car? The issue has attracted surprisingly little attention in recent weeks. While an all-electric fleet would bring your neighborhood’s grid to a halt (and even your house during a daytime charge), YOU might like the numbers! If the Chevy Volt, after tax credits, is a $7500 premium to, say, a Honda Civic, here’s a simple “rule of thumb” way to analyze it:
You can drive 3-4 miles on a kilowatt of electricity in electric mode. This adds about 60 miles/gallon to the effective mileage of a VOLT/Civic . At $4/gallon, that’s about 240 gallons saved a year, or $1000/year on 12000 miles a year. The net is a seven and a half year payback, or five years with a $5000 ‘hybrid/electric’ premium. We’re getting there….and the price of batteries is falling.
In a recent survey, most respondents listed a lower price or some form of leasing model as the primary incentive for purchase. This is not the same as a tax credit since nobody – manufacturers or customers – seems comfortable with the sustainability of subsidy programs.
But analysts forecast that the average electric passenger car, priced at over $42,000 in 2010, will be $31,000 by 2013. Federal tax credits up to $7500/vehicle are still available.
I drove an SUV-like all electric car last month – a gasoline-based Ford Transit Connect, converted for one of the delivery services. No problem with the acceleration – it’s starting to make sense for taxis, utility/repair vehicles, and other ‘return to base’ applications.
Lastly, while this is encouraging for ‘lower carbon, more efficient,’ electric or natural gas (below) transport, the conventional internal combustion engine is far from dead. Improvements such as light-weighting, better combustion, and aerodynamic design could as much as double overall fleet mileage in the next quarter century.