Compare Cost to Own 2011 Nissan LEAF vs 2011 Toyota Yaris


Looks like you will break even in about five years, the cost of the solar plant might push that out to ten years.

Buying a beater, with just a little skill and just a little appreciation of depreciation, and replacing as needed always beats all of these options by a very wide margin.

It is not the man holding us back, or even knowledge of linear algebra, just simple arithmetic.

I can easily write a check today for any production Bentley, Ferrari, or Porsche with zero impact on my standard of living, but I didn't get to that position by foolish investments.

AOL??? Woo Hoo !!! The Toyota Yaris is a smaller car than a LEAF. The comparison that I generally offer folks is the Nissan Versa, since that is the same platform, size and manufacturer, and it's a gas burner. But, the end result dollars are similar to your Yaris, et al, examples.

I'd quibble at some of the numbers, like fuel cost and maintenance. $3400 in maintenance/repairs on an electric car in 5 years? For what? No oil changes, spark plugs, air filters, timing belts, clutches, transmissions, etc. It won't even wear out the brakes (regenerative brakes). You rotate the tires until about 70,000 - 80,000 miles, when you buy new ones.

Also, the fuel cost is tough to guess what it will be in 5 years for a gas burner. Could be double. Your AOL electric car "fuel" costs are double my actual costs, but perhaps more inline with Joe SixPack's average electric cost.


Compare Cost To Own 2011 Nissan LEAF2011 Nissan Versa



Solar is installed to power the house, and a by-product is power for this car, and whatever additional electric cars that I may own over the next 30 years. The car charges from midnight to 5am from grid power, when the sun isn't shining. That's the cheapest way to do it so far for my situation (7.7 cents/kW). Solar does not extend the break even point.



Yes, agreed. I don't drive junk cars to save a buck, though. I suspect you don't either. For folks who have to, or choose to, it is the cheapest.



I'm glad that I'm good at math, then!:p

Reference the "foolish investment"; certainly, that's a judgement only you can make in a 5 year payback. In my case, as I stated, I drive about 24,000 miles / year, not the 10,000 in your comparisons. Therefore, the pay back is somewhat quicker than your examples. Also, my electric costs are "fixed" for about 30 years, with my solar panels. Gasoline... let's just say that I don't think the price will stay the same during the same period. Do you?

I don't know how a Bentley, or other ridiculous show boat car would have anything to do with a logical, cost conscience transportation machine. I can also buy any car that I want, and have had a few of those seemingly over priced cars over the years. Some can actually be profitable investments, but not normally.

I must be doing something right, 'cuz I'm not exactly living in the slums. I don't have to clean the sand out of my air conditioning, either. I think I'll just keep doing what I'm doing in the money end.

All the examples you gave, whether junker, Yaris, or Bentley... none will have zero emissions and virtually zero noise. None can be powered from a perpetual power source, the sun. A war is unlikely to result from sun power. The sun won't spill in the ocean.

The final verdict is that a new electric car WILL become cheaper to operate than a new gas burner. The only question is how many years is a reasonable pay back.

In the future, the cost will come down on the electric cars, due to the batteries getting cheaper. Gas cars will not.

Random thoughts about this not driving at any particular point.

*This car makes sense IF you meet its fairly narrow range of application conditions. Then it makes a lot of sense as you know. You need to have a limited cruising range with almost no danger of exceeding it within a 24 hour period. You need to have a dwelling where you can install one of those power docks in it, and a lot of people like me prefer to rent so it's very hard to get one put in there and the property owner would not pay for it anyway.

*Not sure why Jungle mentioned Bentleys unless he is trying to make the point that through wise investments you can own anything. I always refer to the old example of John Wayne and his basic Pontiac station wagon. In this day and age, that would be about equivalent to a Chevy Tahoe without the leather seats.

*A couple of years ago before electrics were a serious option I was considering a hybrid and I made an elaborate spreadsheet comparing low end hybrids with low end gas cars plus some beaters. Beater to me is not a dump truck, it can be one of these older Buicks my Dad is so fond of. Say, a 2005 LaCrosse, Camry or similar. And I came to the same conclusion, the beater is the way to go. I then went out and bought a new car, 4x4 truck actually. There is a bit of comedy in that, but at the time I was going 5 miles each way to work and was more worried about snow storms.

*The hybrids broke even in 5 years. My thought was, why should I buy a car that I have to wait that long for it to break even. I may want to sell it by then. The break even needs to be about 2-3 years. At the time there was also a lot of evidence that lithium batteries lose their reserve as the cars get old negating the savings of having a hybrid in the first place. It just didn't look very smart to me, more like an expensive fad.

*If you decide to get an electric or a hybrid, or for that matter a clean diesel, you immediately handicap yourself at the bargaining table. The dealers cannot stock any of these cars in comparison to gas models. You may still do alright on the finding and dealing phases of buying, but it stacks the odds against driving a hard bargain. And you may also have to wait to take delivery of it and if you are like me you wait until our last car is literally unrepairable until you start shopping, you need it now not in 6 months.

*I think I would try real hard to find a clean diesel if I were in the market these days for a new car. The technology is very good and there are several models on the market now. I would carefully shop for one and maybe even drive a bargain on it, then go out and get a new gas SUV like I did the last time. Am I being facetious? Well kind of, but SUV's make a lot of sense for most semi urban people as long as gas is anywhere near affordable. The proof is how well they sell with $4 a gallon gas.

Yes, the car has limits, as any machine does. I don't have the luxury of 250,000 electric stations in the USA, like there are gas stations. While the price of batteries will come down (and range go up), the electric stations will multiply. A lot. Not in Dubai, or western Kansas. But, in places where the current technology electric car makes sense, and where the bulk of folks live.

Japan already has a bunch of not just chargers, but the expensive, 480 volt DC quick chargers. We don't yet have those in the USA, but we will in the next few years, in major concentrated markets, like San Diego. You probably won't be surprised that China (an oil importer) is pushing for electric cars.

For your rental home situations, you actually do not need a dedicated "charger" (the actual charger is behind the rear seat in the LEAF) on the wall; just a modified extension cord looking device (EVSE) and a place to plug it in. But, you need the place to plug it in to, preferably 240 volts. In the short term, it's a problem. Longer term, I see something like the legislation that requires "acceptance" of satellite TV dishes. Something similar will probably happen in 20-40 years for rental places and condos and electric car plug-ins.

Besides limited range, expensive batteries, and limited charging places, the other major issue with current electric cars is refueling time when out on the road. Japan has the technology, in actual hardware, for a less than 5 minute fill up of my car. But, generally, the fastest is about 30 min. But, I really like just plugging in the car every night, and NEVER going to any gas station.



I specifically did not buy a Prius many years ago with those type of thoughts. The reality is that any electric cars that I know of has 7 or 8 year warranties on the batteries, just to alleviate those fears. Of course, batteries wear out as gas engines/ transmissions do, but I do not envision replacing the batteries in my car, and I fully intend to own it past the sweet spot of pay back... about 3-4 years in my usage at current gas prices.

Then, I'll trade it in for the next electric / fuel cell / hydrogen / CNG / anything other than oil car which will makes sense at the time for my needs.



Yes, that is true. It's wonderful that the demand is there for something other than 12 mpg pig-mobiles that send $ ONE BILLION $ per DAY overseas to countries that really don't like us that much. This singular issue is more than a simple economic one. It's a national security one.

The Prius is now a "main stream" car, with millions sold. If oil goes up, the same will be true of alternate fuel vehicles someday.



Clean diesel reminds me of clean coal. :eek: But, from an economic situation, they make great sense for somebody who drives more than 100 miles per day, or is otherwise limited from CNG or electric.

SUVs aren't good or bad. They can be powered by diesel, electric, fuel cell, etc. $4 / gallon gas is still cheap. It's about $9/gal when I was in Italy in March.

I will start off by saying that I am not a dove or a greenie, and I also am guilty of burning gasoline for hedonistic reasons like light airplane flying, boating, etc. Also, this argument isn't directed to anyone in this thread.

I am always perplexed by the "it's gotta make financial sense" argument, especially amongst educated people who probably have a good idea of what is going on in the world around them.

Here we are as western countries, spending 100's of Billions of treasure on protecting our supply of foreign oil, and we're not going to buy a Leaf, a Volt, an iMev, a Prius, etc., because the squiggly lines on a chart say it will take X amount of years to "break even," with X usually being around 5 years. So people are basically saying, "Yeah I'd rather pay billions upon billions of dollars to tyrannical dictators in the ME, prop up their governments with petro dollars, give them money to build bombs, and send our youth off to fight in the desert because it saves me a few bucks." It makes absolutely no sense to me.

I don't think people realize that the amount of oil we (the US) import from OPEC is roughly the amount of oil we refine for gasoline, the vast majority of which is used for personal transportation. If everyone in this country slowly switched to electric/hybrid vehicles, it would have two very dramatic and positive effects. One, we could tell OPEC to go [screw] themselves, pull our troops out, and live on the oil that we, Canada, and Mexico produce. Two, it would take a huge chunk out of our trade deficit with the rest of the world, another unsustainable problem that we as a country will have to come to terms with someday. Oil prices, at the very least, would slowly collapse.

And yes, I put my money where my mouth is. My beloved high performance sports cars that I have typically owned are gone, and replaced with a Prius. When supply catches up with demand and prices come back down to earth, the other half of my garage will contain a Volt. I do not want either car. I would love to have a decked out Tahoe and a high performance sedan on the other side of the garage, but my conscience just doesn't allow it anymore, especially seeing all the soldiers I see wandering around the airports over the years. There is just too much blood and treasure being wasted for our "right" to drive a SUV or a crappy old car.

So I guess we as a nation will just continue down the path of wasted money, blood, maimed soldiers, and unsustainable trade and budget deficits until it "makes sense" to spend a few bucks more on an ugly Prius or a Leaf or whatever.

Tony

I am jealous of your Leaf and your solar panels. I put the $99 deposit down for the Leaf on day one, but our cold winters are going to have too dramatic an effect on range for my round trip drive to work. I am petitioning our airport authority for a few lousy 110 V plugs and a few designated electric car parking spots, but of course I am still waiting. I need a car that gets 100 miles of winter, cold weather range then I will replace my "gas guzzling" Prius with it.

Good points all, the Prius is as rare as hen's teeth in my neck of the woods, and electrics suffer from the cold and a sun that stays low on the horizon.

The reason I asked about the economics is to understand why these vehicles sell in such small numbers. To the average person 35k for a car and 20k for a solar plant is outside the realm of the possible. Especially since there are loads of perfectly good 10k used cars on the market

I was surprised to see that a large measure for their justification is bound up in somewhat dubious idealogical reasoning and what really amounts to our failure to develop our own energy resources. Interesting.

Perhaps electrics will cause a renewed interest in a viable nuclear energy industry in our country. After all, the conversion to electrics is going to need a very great deal of electrical generation from a grid that can barely handle the current load. The price of electricity is by no means static.

Same here (Wichita and more lately, North Carolina.) Hybrids are great for the additional gas mileage, but short in supply and always more expensive. Why pay $10k more for a car that does so little more than a 5 year old Camry.

In agreement here. I either get a 5 year old Buick/Camry or else a new car, and then only when I push the dealer past his comfort zone through weeks of negotiations. I paid less than invoice for my Nissan Frontier. It took weeks. My father cringed when I told him about the final deal, and then he reluctanlty said you had better pay it off this year or you are more of a moron than I thought you were. I paid it off in 24 months.

America has sent troops overseas in the last 25 years to obtain oil at a horrific cost in terms of human lives. If this is your thought then I agree in whole. This is also why I support the biofuel development. Whether or not biofuels can solve our long term problem as a nation, I do not know. But I feel strongly there is a need for something other than middle-eastern oil dependence as of now. I realize the commoner has to be given a workable solution, and unless there is one then no nuclear-supported, biofuel, tethered electric, or clean diesel vehicle will prevail.

Agreed. there are some serious problems with waste storage to be worked out though. In particular, national governments as we know them today are not stable and trustworthy enough to insure long-term storage of nuclear waste. The simple reasoning is this: if we solve our present energy sourcing problem and at the same time create another one that is even larger, namely long term nuclear waste disposal, then we have not done our job in the long term. This is why I favor gasoline substitutes.

Thorium, it would be great to see private industry run with a program to make the US energy independent. It is easily possible, but a lot of roadblocks are going to have to come down.

Whirlygigs and solar panels just are not going to get it, this is obvious to anyone who has bothered to do even a little number crunching.

These are not you grand dad's reactors. Oil is still needed for a lot of products besides fuel, but to replace all of the automotive energy needs is entirely within the realm of possibility.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle

The current LEAF is now equipped with battery heaters (mine is not). If you're driving 50 miles each way to the airport, and staying long enough to charge for the return, it would work. Otherwise, you'll have to wait for LEAF v2.0.

110 volt charging will work, of course, but at 12 amps / 120 volts (1.44kW), that will be a painfully long time to pump in 20-something kW's.