NPV Economic Analysis Between EV and ICE Automobile??

[jclay]

Have any of you performed a net present value (or even just raw $) analysis comparison between the total ownership and operating costs of ICE and electric automobiles (same functional capability of the vehicles assumed)?

Somebody please make my day and say "here is the spreadsheet", else I'll have to work my brain more than I'm used to in retirement!

I'm also considering an electric cargo bike which would take care of just about all my local driving as well as a fair bit of recreational driving down towards the coast which is usually less than about 50 miles.

[Mark Kelly]

Very dependent on charging costs and kilometers used.

We charge ours from the house solar as much as possible*, effective cost for this is the loss of the feed-in tariff, ours is 6 c / kW.hr. At the other end of the scale public fast chargers here charge ~66 c / kW.hr, so eleven times the cost.

We live in a regional area so long average trip lengths mean we do about 30,000 km per year. Cost per kilometre is thus more important than it would be if you live in the city and do say 12,000 km per year.

Capital cost is about 50% higher for EV vs equivalent ICE at the lower end. At the moment residual value at 5 years is probably equivalent but it's quite likely that residual for ICEs is going to plummet in the next few years, possibly to near zero.

Another major factor is service cost, much lower for EV than ICE. With an EV all you really have to look after is tyres, brakes and bearings. The brakes don't get used nearly as much due to regen taking care of 75% of braking needs but this is partially offset by the EV being about 30% heavier than equivalent ICE. Tyres for EVs tend to be more expensive than standard and wear relatively quickly.


* We installed a Myenergi "Zappi" (their spelling) which monitors the solar and the grid and has settings so you can choose how much of each gets used.

[fastupslowdown]

I was just having a conversation about maintenance costs on an combustion car vs an electric one. Virtually the only part of the an electric vehicle that might have a repair issue over time is the battery which comes with a warranty of 8-10 years. A lot fewer moving parts. No oil changes, no tune -ups, no alternators, no fluids. -Mike G

[rwsaunders]

The Washington Post recently ran an article and their take is that the operational costs depend upon what the costs of electricity and fuel are in your area. Cheap gas/high electricity = gas and High gas/cheap electricity = EV. More to your questions, Edmunds has also been publishing true cost to own information on most cars for years.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/clima...e-vs-gasoline/

https://www.edmunds.com/tesla/model-3/2022/cost-to-own/

[Scott G.]

Don't forget car insurance, what an insurance company thinks
is expensive to repair or qualifies as a "hi-performance" vehicle
can be a nasty surprise.

[bigbill]

I was surprised by the insurance costs on the Edmunds link. I pay half that for my F250 diesel pickup, which costs more to purchase and arguably will cost more to repair. EVs make sense in some parts of the country, but out west (not California), their usefulness is limited because of infrastructure. One of my neighbors has a Tesla that he uses to commute but, like me, has a large pickup for his travel trailer. I can't yet replace my truck with an EV and pull my travel trailer. I hope the free market and capitalism create demand, not the government. In 2012, commercial biodiesel was prohibitively expensive. Now, it is competitive with dead dinosaur diesel. Ford is working with Tesla to share compatibility with Superchargers, so some standardization could help lower costs and improve the customer experience.

We just need to keep the bicycle industry out of it. We see what they did with bottom bracket standards.

[Chik]

If you're using the term "ownership" loosely and include the option of leasing or in any case the cost of financing an outright purchase, then it's worth looking at the interest rates charged in your area based on whether it's an EV, plug-in hybrid or ICE. Over here, the rate variance is significant. If you take EV as the baseline, hybrids attract a rate of +1%, ICE +2%. Therefore, an EV with a sticker price $10k higher than an ICE could actually cost you the same when considering the financing cost. I think that's because, as Mark already mentioned, the depreciation of an ICE, the collateral, will be much faster, especially in the EU where the regulatory deadline to switch to EVs is looming. At that point, the local secondary market will disappear, forcing all second hand ICE to be sold in remote places like the Middle East, Africa, FSU and, of course, the US.

[thollandpe]

I pay some of highest electric rates in the nation, but an EV is still way cheaper. Looking at only fuel costs…

EV: $0.32 per kWh / 4 kWh per mile = $0.08 per mile

Gas car: $3.75 per gallon / 25 miles per gallon = $0.15 per mile

And as said earlier, the EV eats only wiper fluid, wiper blades, and tires. Tires at a slightly higher rate (with all other factors being equal) and brakes at a much slower rate. No oil changes.

The other thing you should add to your analysis is whether you put a value on carbon pollution. Because the EV starts with way lower emissions, yes even if charging on the dirtiest most coal-intensive grid in the US, and you can clean it up. There ain’t no renewable gasoline.

[TonyP]

How does battery replacement and recyclability add up? Also, what's the impact of mining the elements needed for the batteries?

[jclay]

All: Thanks for all the info/observations.

There’s no question about AC motors and drives being supremely reliable, far more efficient than Otto cycle engines, and very long lived.

Here’s the deal: Lately I’ve ratcheted up puzzlement as to whether it would make personal economic sense to keep my 2016 Grand Caravan until it’s no longer something I want to rely on and only then purchasing a small EV (keeping the essentially fully depreciated GC for local truck duty); or trade it in for a new EV now, take the tax credit and be “truckless”.

It’s a bit of an apples to eggs comparison since the age and operational capabilities of the two are so different. The things that the GC can do, but the EV can’t, are infrequent, not mandatory to a good life and work-arounds are generally available, if less convenient. We're gonna make some changes and sacrifices if the animal kingdom is to survive so this really comes from wrestling with that reality....and yet I'm weighing keeping the GC as a truck; go figure.

So, if trading-in the GC and moving to a “Bolt class” EV now made obvious, slam-dunk economic sense over a reasonable time-frame then I would give it serious consideration.

Economic analysis was not my career métier; plant design, commissioning and operational issues were but I was involved with it enough to appreciate that meaningful NPV analyses of this sort are not simple affairs. If someone else has plowed this field I’d be happy to be a beneficiary. In the meantime I’ll make a simpler first cut by figuring out the personal cost/mile (ignoring the broader externalities) of driving the GC from the day I bought it until it’s projected retirement. Then I can make a quick comparison with some of the published info on the EVs, like those at the links some of you have provided. At that point I’ll be better able to see if a more sophisticated analysis is needed.

[Chik]

Over here, the economics are obvious so there's no need to break my head trying to do a DCF to arrive at NPV. The gap is big enough that a napkin isn't even needed to do a rough calculation.

For me, the deal breaker is primarily my usage case. I cannot quell my range anxiety particularly given the still underdeveloped charging infrastructure and the charging time required, the fact that I cannot charge at home given that I live in town, plus the energy crisis thanks to Putin coupled with the inadequate capacity of the grids so obviously coming to a head soon. When Switzerland ordered EVs to stay TF away last winter unless it is absolutely necessary, that was a bit of a wake-up call. So are stories of people spending most of their summer holidays in southern European countries looking for charging stations -- in the south of Italy, it's difficult enough finding a petrol station that takes foreign cards, forget about a charging station that actually works and doesn't have a random ICE just parked in the spot. Here, companies have a significant fiscal incentive to provide plug-in hybrids or full EVs as company cars in lieu of ICEs, but even for commuting, many owners/employees are finding them impractical because of the inconvenience / difficulty of charging, given their set of circumstances.

Just like a bike frame, it's not just about numbers.

[caleb]

So, if trading-in the GC and moving to a “Bolt class” EV now made obvious, slam-dunk economic sense over a reasonable time-frame then I would give it serious consideration.

I doubt it makes economic or environmental sense to get rid of a perfectly good 2016 vehicle that meets your needs in order to buy a much more expensive new vehicle that will likely meet those needs less well.

Economically, the new EV would need to be massively cheaper to operate to overcome the purchasing and additional insurance costs.

Environmentally, your van exists and will get driven for its remaining useful life, whether you do it or someone else does. And building a new EV to replace it has huge environmental costs.

Sometimes I think we (the collective "we" of environmentally concerned people with resources and time) struggle with the best option being doing nothing differently, at least for now.

[jclay]

I doubt it makes economic or environmental sense to get rid of a perfectly good 2016 vehicle that meets your needs in order to buy a much more expensive new vehicle that will likely meet those needs less well.

Economically, the new EV would need to be massively cheaper to operate to overcome the purchasing and additional insurance costs.

Environmentally, your van exists and will get driven for its remaining useful life, whether you do it or someone else does. And building a new EV to replace it has huge environmental costs.

Sometimes I think we (the collective "we" of environmentally concerned people with resources and time) struggle with the best option being doing nothing differently, at least for now.

My hunches, ever since my buddy got a used BMW i3, have been exactly the same as your 1st, 2nd and 4th paras. But lately I've been ruminating on the fact that I haven't really done the math, and I wasn't aware of increased insurance costs for EVs.

The third? My EV will eventually get built, assuming I don't decide an E-bike is a better option (something I omitted for the sake of analytical simplicity, here). My car represents a sunk environmental cost and the sooner we (royal) get the benefit of my use of an EV, the better (assuming it actually is a resource/environmental benefit which would probably be the case if folks were getting Bolts instead of EV F150s (which I think is just nuts from most civilian use" perspectives).

So, to muddy the water a bit more: An EV cargo bike wouldn't take care of our dog's daily (like 355 days out of 365) car ride (a requirement of staying married to a lovely if hard headed woman....was that redundant??) but technically, operationally, it could take care of virtually all non-electric-storm-weather errands and my frequent get-aways to my i3 buddy's place down by the coast. So that's rattling around in my head, further complicated bc I can (which means I "should") build it both from cultural/fore-bearer perspectives and I'll be damned if I'll drop 8k on a Bullett long john when I can build an equivalent ( ) for a whole lot less.

I need to do at least a cursory $ analysis but I think you're going to be right.

And as what I think is an interesting aside: I see the I3 with range extender as fundamentally the smartest, simplest motive design going that covers all the currently relevant bases. From the perspective of this former industrial process control guy, cars with two prime movers who's operations must be smoothly coordinated, just makes my head spin; Toyota et al. must have it down but it still makes my head spin. A single electric prime mover with an on-board IC gen-set just seems like the slickest solution going. I've been on several 700 mile trips in it. But new they're more than I'd want to spend on any car and used misses the tax incentive.

As a second aside: Does any thinking person really believe that the USA, with it's infrastructure and cultural expectations so based on what is essentially the unlimited consumption of dirt cheap petrol, will survive very far into the future. I sure don't; I think the party's still blazing away on the rail road ties, drinks are flowing, the band is hot, and few want to consider the freight train bearing down on us.

So that's my wrestling match.

[thollandpe]

Sometimes I think we (the collective "we" of environmentally concerned people with resources and time) struggle with the best option being doing nothing differently, at least for now.

I think that option is the only wrong option. Doing nothing differently is literally the road to ruin. The cavalry ain’t coming, it’s time to giddyap.

If the concern is the embodied energy and manufacturing footprint of a new vehicle, why not consider getting a used EV?

[echappist]

I think that option is the only wrong option. Doing nothing differently is literally the road to ruin. The cavalry ain’t coming, it’s time to giddyap.

If the concern is the embodied energy and manufacturing footprint of a new vehicle, why not consider getting a used EV?

I'm not going to trade (whether directly or as part of sell-and-then-buy) my V60 CC for a corresponding plug-in hybrid. I might get $32k for it if lucky, and the hybrid V60 costs $65k before taxes (albeit a less powerful version theoretically should cost closer to $59k new).

I'm not going to do jack squat about selling it early.

But I will do the following to reduce my footprints. Trips to Costco's aside, I can do most of my grocery shopping (up to 5 miles) by bike. I'm getting a rack and pedaling in lieu of driving, choosing to go on days and times amenable to cycling. Unfortunately, I'll have to drive in the winter (can't stand either the rock salt or the dirty slush). Doing my errands on the bike also saves me from having to get on roads where I'd drive 50 mph for 90 seconds, only to stop for the next minute.

Where I live, it's also cool enough that I don't need to run the AC until noon on the majority of days, and even then at 75 F (which translates to 77 F upstairs where my office is). When we move and buy our own place, the office will either be on the first floor or I will run a window unit.

It's not doing nothing for any and all aspects, but it's distinctly not doing jack squat in terms of getting a new or new-to-me vehicle when the current one is fine as is.

I suspect that may be what @caleb refers to.

[jclay]

I'm not going to trade (whether directly or as part of sell-and-then-buy) my V60 CC for a corresponding plug-in hybrid. I might get $32k for it if lucky, and the hybrid V60 costs $65k before taxes (albeit a less powerful version theoretically should cost closer to $59k new).

I'm not going to do jack squat about selling it early.

But I will do the following to reduce my footprints. Trips to Costco's aside, I can do most of my grocery shopping (up to 5 miles) by bike. I'm getting a rack and pedaling in lieu of driving, choosing to go on days and times amenable to cycling. Unfortunately, I'll have to drive in the winter (can't stand either the rock salt or the dirty slush). Doing my errands on the bike also saves me from having to get on roads where I'd drive 50 mph for 90 seconds, only to stop for the next minute.

Where I live, it's also cool enough that I don't need to run the AC until noon on the majority of days, and even then at 75 F (which translates to 77 F upstairs where my office is). When we move and buy our own place, the office will either be on the first floor or I will run a window unit.

It's not doing nothing for any and all aspects, but it's distinctly not doing jack squat in terms of getting a new or new-to-me vehicle when the current one is fine as is.

I suspect that may be what @caleb refers to.

That's close enough to the context in which I interpret and agree with Caleb's comment; we humans seem to first look to technology changes, silver bullets that will allow us to sidestep personal behavioral changes. What's needed, fundamentally, is a rethink of the reasonableness of our expectations, like family size, is it reasonable to hop on a commercial airplane to go on vacation, big houses, burning 25 gallons of fuel to go to my fave surf spot to catch maybe a dozen decent waves (if lucky), etc.). Electric vehicles and technology in general allow us to displace or get too close to natural boundaries thereby reducing the ability for natural systems to recover when over exploited. I'm in too much of a hurry to finish a bunch of food prep to continue but I think Vsalon folks are smart enough and circumspect enough to fill in any blanks and grok the general picture.

[Mark Kelly]

I doubt it makes economic or environmental sense to get rid of a perfectly good 2016 vehicle that meets your needs in order to buy a much more expensive new vehicle that will likely meet those needs less well.

Economically, the new EV would need to be massively cheaper to operate to overcome the purchasing and additional insurance costs.

Matilda took care of that for us by pulling out in front of me at a notorious local intersection.

The EV costs about $2 per 100 km to operate, the ICE that got totalled cost about $20 per 100 km in the last year of its life.

[jmgorman]

The other thing you should add to your analysis is whether you put a value on carbon pollution. Because the EV starts with way lower emissions, yes even if charging on the dirtiest most coal-intensive grid in the US, and you can clean it up. There ain’t no renewable gasoline.

While we need to also understand the carbon and environmental cost of manufacture, this is the crucial point. We must make consumption (and investment and political) choices that help roll this climate catastrophe back.

[thollandpe]

While we need to also understand the carbon and environmental cost of manufacture, this is the crucial point. We must make consumption (and investment and political) choices that help roll this climate catastrophe back.

I'm used to doing this for buildings, where the embodied energy to make the building becomes important only after you make the building very efficient. Like twice as efficient as an average building. And if it's a net zero building, which produces as much energy as it uses over the course of a year, then it's very important. Because it's the building's only energy footprint.

So let's wing it for electric vehicle vs. gas car. There are a few wild-ass guesses here but it's a start.

Car life = 200,000 miles

EV efficiency = 0.25 kWh/mile
Source-site ratio* = 2.8 (average grid efficiency, you put 2.8 kWh energy into a power plant to deliver 1.0 kWh to a ratepayer)
EV energy efficiency = 2.8 * 0.25 = 0.70 kWh/mile
Lifetime energy use = 0.7 * 200,000 = 140,000 kWh

Gas car efficiency = 1.51 kWh/mile (24.2 miles/gallon)
Source-site ratio* = 1.01
Gas car energy efficiency = 1.01 * 1.51 = 1.67 kWh/mile
Lifetime energy use = 1.67 * 200,000 = 333,000 kWh

According to the University of Michigan's sustainability indicators carbon footprint factsheet, an average automobile's lifetime energy input is 9% manufacturing and 91% operational.

Gas car embodied energy = (0.09 / 0.91) * 333,000 = 33,000 kWh

Lets say the EV's manufacturing footprint is double that, which seems unlikely, given the modest price difference. But still a swag.
EV embodied energy = 66,000 kWh

EV lifetime energy use = 140,000 + 66,000 = 206,000 kWh
Gas car lifetime energy use = 333,000 + 33,000 = 366,000 kWh (1.8 times higher)

Want an even more compelling case for the EV? Buy renewable electricity. That's not the same as owning or hosting your own solar panels, which is one way to do it, but there are several other ways any of us can buy renewable power. Then your site-source ratio* drops to 1.00.

EV energy efficiency = 0.25 kWh/mile
Solar-powered EV lifetime energy use = 0.25 * 200,000 + 66,000 = 116,000 kWh

And the embodied energy is now the majority of its lifetime energy use. Which is less than a third of the gas car's.


* https://portfoliomanager.energystar....e%20Energy.pdf

[echappist]

I'm used to doing this for buildings, where the embodied energy to make the building becomes important only after you make the building very efficient. Like twice as efficient as an average building. And if it's a net zero building, which produces as much energy as it uses over the course of a year, then it's very important. Because it's the building's only energy footprint.

So let's wing it for electric vehicle vs. gas car. There are a few wild-ass guesses here but it's a start.

Car life = 200,000 miles

EV efficiency = 0.25 kWh/mile
Source-site ratio* = 2.8 (average grid efficiency, you put 2.8 kWh energy into a power plant to deliver 1.0 kWh to a ratepayer)
EV energy efficiency = 2.8 * 0.25 = 0.70 kWh/mile
Lifetime energy use = 0.7 * 200,000 = 140,000 kWh

Gas car efficiency = 1.51 kWh/mile (24.2 miles/gallon)
Source-site ratio* = 1.01
Gas car energy efficiency = 1.01 * 1.51 = 1.67 kWh/mile
Lifetime energy use = 1.67 * 200,000 = 333,000 kWh

In terms of actual energy needed to do something, even the EV lags behind a bicycle/ electrical bicycle.

Assuming your quoted "efficiency" is the actual energy input to move a single mile, 0.25 kWh is 900 kJ.

The stat for my ride to and from Trader Joe's + Target (3.5 miles each way by bike or by car, with a small-ish hill) as follows. Power measured using a SRM power meter.

Trip out: ~13 minutes (with a heavy-duty Abus lock, 2x empty Soda Stream canisters);
Trip back: ~12 minutes (with the same Abus lock, 2x full Soda Stream canisters, and some grocery items);
Energy expended (output): 275 kJ, or ~1,100 kJ input;
Mostly on dedicated bike path and only one traffic light.

And the kicker, because of surburban sprawl road design and traffic lights, a trip by car is usually 10-11 minutes each way.

1100 kJ input for purely human-powered. Let's say double (doubtful) for an electric bicycle.

Both are still quite a bit less than corresponding input into an EV, which is 6300 kJ of energy (or 17,600 kJ delivered by the grid).

For the relatively fuel-sipping Ford Focus we have (probably averages 28 mpg for a short trip like this one), this would have been 0.2 gallons of fuel burned (or 0.3 gallons in my V60 CC). I've read that 0.2 gallons of fuel supplies ~32,500 kJ of energy into the system.

If you are saying a saving of 45% (compared to ICE, and this conveniently omits the much higher up-front cost of EVs) is worthwhile, then much more worthwhile would be to get people to do most of their chores on bikes/ electric assist bikes.