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Cost of Gas vs. Electricity - 2013 Tesla Model S Long-Term Road Test
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Cost of Gas vs. Electricity - 2013 Tesla Model S Long-Term Road Test
Comparing the cost of gas versus electricity needed to run the 2013 Tesla Model S.
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How many engines were replaced on the BMW vs the Tesla. Yes, I know that the tesla swaps were covered by warranty, but that warranty is not unlimited and eventually the apparent unreliability of the current Model S is going to result in some very expensive repairs that will likely more than exceed the fuel savings. On the other hand, trade or sell your Tesla before the warranty is up and you likely come out well ahead.
"And this is just the savings in money. Don't even get me started on how much time you save by charging while you work, or sleep, rather than standing there in the gas station, staring at the spinning numbers on the pump."
Are you actually trying to make an argument that owning a Tesla rather than an ICE car will save you TIME refueling? If you refuel once every 400 miles in a gas-powered car, and it takes you five minutes every time, you will spend less than 5 hours pumping gas. If, over that same 23,000 miles, you stop at a supercharger even five times, you will wipe out any time advantage you might accrue by charging at home.
Every road trip you people took in this car took anywhere from an hour and a half to over three hours longer than it would have taken in an ICE car, solely due to increased refueling time. Even using a totally off-the-cuff estimate, I have you Edmunds staffers spending in the area of 25 hours hooked up to superchargers while you've owned this car.
Your savings from charging at home start AFTER you pay for the high-power charger install, and last time I checked, installing solar panels on the roof costs money.
that time saving claim comes right from Tesla, in their promotional material. They used the time you saved by not pumping gas and multiplied it by your hourly salary and claimed that this was a legitimate way to calculate the cost of owning a Tesla. It's a ssssstretch!
Also, keep in mind that the 16 cents per kilowatt hour is both a) a seasonal rate and b) not typical of trends in pricing in the Los Angeles area where Edmunds lives. So really, the cost for 23,000 miles should probably end up being, on yearly average, more like $1700.
Still, NOT BAD compared to pushing that BMW barge around; however, this calculation is for the USA in May 2014. If you were running a Tesla on BMW's home turf, a KwH would cost you 2X the L.A rate.
My prediction? the cost of electricity will rise much faster than the cost of gasoline in the USA in the next 5-10 years. Wny? Because coal and nuke plants are going off line, meaning that solar and wind and thermal will have to take up some of that slack (the part that natural gas doesn't), and those forms of energy are expensive.
To Mr_Shiftright:
The cost of gas in Germany is 2x LA as well. The electricity cost cannot rise much, because it is capped by the cost of generation from solar, which is close to parity or cheaper (depending who to believe) in majority of warmer climates. With current financing infrastructure in place from companies like Solar City, there is little barrier to enter solar generation. Solar generation cost can go only one way, down. Unlike gas prices which have been volatile and trending upward in long term. What is currently lacking is solar charging infrastructure in workplaces. Because most cars are at workplace during daylight hours, so what we really need is solar chargers in businesses. I think the solution is a mandate to have solar in every new commercial/business development with incentives to install in existing locations.
@bankerdanny, although I thought the same thing as you. This is still a very new car, I would hope they have it sorted out to drastically reduce these issues in the near future (3-5 yrs) A used 2016/7 model s in 2020/1 will probably be as reliable of a car as the gas powered german counterparts (obviously this is all an assumed generalization based on zero facts but you get the idea)
I am very curiousto see how tesla handles failures with 2nd or 3rd owners when this is a $30K used car (i.e. how much they charge)
That is true---solar generated electricity might match current electricity rates in some parts of the country by 2018 or thereabouts. I was thinking more about the here and now, since we are comparing 2014 cars. However, I cannot believe that supercharging stations will continue to be "free" for very much longer, and of course, the infrastructure cost for the average homeowner to install solar charging is substantial. We must keep in mind also that the supercharger equipment for a Tesla is a $2000 option, so really, that should be added to the cost comparison (as should any solar installations in the home if they are done strictly for the car).
As for employers providing charging stations, I'm not sure a company would absorb those costs for hundreds of cars per day.
I wonder what it would cost to charge say 500 electric cars per 8 hour work day?
any time saved at the gas pump will be dwarfed by time spent at the tesla service center getting repairs done.
You know, the tradeoff for the Tesla is that refueling IS going to cost you a lot less than an ICE - I get that, although I don't know that I am down with these exact figures, and I don't know that I want an Edmunds staffer quoting Tesla numbers chapter and verse...that's that pesky journalistic impartiality thing again... It will cost less than a comparable ICE car. No doubt.
The time savings argument is...c'mon. That's a joke. Even if you spend two minutes per day hooking up and then unhooking the HPWC in your garage, that is probably more time than you will spend filling your ICE's tank once a week at a service station. Is it a big advantage for either kind of car? No - but we all own ICE cars, right? Do any of us see filling the tank as some kind of interminable chore as it's being present here? No.
What's really going on I think is that it's very difficult to add up all the factors in this "savings" debate. Okay, the Tesla costs you less to run per mile than the ICE----BUT......you don't take your Tesla to Jiffy Lube for service do you? You go to Mr. Dealer for everything. I don't think that's going to be cheap.
And what do you call a Tesla with a powertrain that fails out of warranty? You call it a paperweight. (And to be fair, the same is probably true for a V-12 Mercedes)
Beat me to it, two good points there. The time saved argument is completely bogus.
Solar power is not going to drop the cost of electricity in this argument until you recoup the initial investment. Even in California, I'd imagine that solar panels are more of a long term investment.
For the free supercharging from Tesla, it's actually not free by the way. There is a $2,500 charge if you don't spring for the 85kWh battery, and even if you do it's going to be built into the price. So, not free. A great deal? Yes, but not free.
There is a cost benefit argument to be made for an EV, but this one was superfluous and made some major assumptions. The main reason I'd consider it is actually not monetary but to help curtail pollution. It's actually a very similar argument to getting solar panels installed. A lot of money upfront, happy with breaking even years down the line, maybe a little money back even further down the line, but the big reward: reducing my part in society's energy needs.
Well, if you leave it to employers they won't provide health insurance and even pay the minimum wage. There should be some sort of mechanism to encourage them to do this. It doesn't have to be a free service, a landlord can install the solar charging infrastructure at the time of property development and recoup the cost by selling the electricity to employees within several years.
At this time in CA solar panels break even within about 8 years, but companies like Solar City provide financing, so there is lower initial cost. There are some subsidies/tariffs in place, but one can argue that similar subsidies at much larger scales are available for all energy sources, and the fact that any power generated for electric cars will replace imported gas is an additional benefit.
I've actually timed how long it takes me to plug and unplug my Chevy Volt, and it's only 8 seconds for each event. I park within a couple of feet of my EVSE, and it's just a matter of literally pivoting on my feet to move the plug to my cars's charge port and vice versa. I can't imagine a Tesla would take any longer. That means a Tesla owner with a setup like mine would spend less than two minutes per week (16 seconds per day, x7 days) per week charging their car.
A gas station stop is probably a little longer, but another thing is that gas station stops sometimes happens at the most inconvenient times. We actually stopped using my wife's car on weekends because invariably if we were running late for something her car would be low on gas, and we had to stop at a gas station, making us even later.
If you haven't lived with an electric car you just don't understand the convenience having a full tank every morning and not having to stop for fuel except on long trips.
I haven't owned an electric car but I don't see avoiding gas fill-ups as terribly valuable. During the week it's a short side trip. On long drives it's typically a much needed 5 minute break. Take a long drive with an EV and it's a 45 minute break. I'm happy not having to plan such longer breaks around my car's schedule.
It sure is nice having an electric lawn mower and never having to worry about having gas (or oil).
I'm a frequent stopper on road trips but I'd rather hit a McDonald's for the pit stop, a senior cup of coffee or Coke and maybe hop on wifi for a few minutes.
Range is still an issue with the EVs on the road though.
yeah but you go through two sets of very expensive tires in 23k miles in the tesla vs maybe going on to the second set in the BMW over the same time so the cost delta shrinks by another $1500 to 2000. The average person in a Tesla is not paying 16cents per kwh but is probably well into 20+cents per kwh as they are usually high income, heavy users well into tier 4 or 5. I believe the long term trend of pricing for electricity is going up according to most experts vs downward trend to stable for gas. The average person is not going to put on more than 10K miles per year on such a limited range car mainly used for daily commuting so to get to the 100k miles it will take around ten years at which point you might be paying 30cents per kwh or more for upper tier users. The unknown depreciation and reliability of a 100k mile+ Tesla with what by then would be an obsolete battery/drivetrain also complicates the value equation. Who would want to buy this car after 100K miles with the potential drivetrain failures at who knows what cost to replace. Also like any modern electronics that becomes cheaper to replace than fix after a few years due to rapid change in technology and lack of replacement parts that are only mandated to be carried by manufactures for 7 years, I really have no idea what it will cost to keep the tesla on the road after 10Ok miles. I guess you could mitigate the rising cost of electricity by going solar which should pay off faster if you use it to offset the cost of transportation as well. Last I checked for a 2500 sq foot house in my area in SoCAL, the amount of panels needed to be net positive will be in the $35K range not including a 30% tax credit.
I think the issue with your wife's car is that she brings it home with no gas in the tank. My wife tends to do the same. Invariably, when I am on my way out, I am in a hurry. Almost as invariably, when I'm on my way home, I'm not in a hurry. I fill my car up on my way home, so that it's ready to go the next time I have to go. Whether you have an ICE or an EV, if you don't take the steps required to make sure it's ready to go the next time you need it, the result is going to be the same - it's not something that is endemic to either type of propulsion system.
If you bring your Volt home low on gas, and the destination you have to reach in such a hurry is more than about 50 miles away, you're going to be in the same boat.
How can I put this? I'm never going to spend something just south of $100,000 for a car that on a very hot or cold day can't go more than 250 miles without a desperate search for a charging station. That's like driving a Lexus with a 10 gallon gas tank. If I won a Tesla in a contest I'd regrettably have to sell it, because it doesn't suit the needs of a person who makes their living visiting clients.
As a second car? That's another story. But that's a rather expensive second car unless you have a money faucet in the basement.
Nah, I usually keep at least 2 or 3 gallons in the tank, which will get me 100+ miles. In my local driving (including 120 mile round-trips that I take a few times a month - where I get to charge on the other end), I don't even use a gallon gas per day. So once I'm under 5 gallons, I can go a few weeks before filling back up.
Another convenience I discovered: Every couple of months we leave early on a Saturday morning to visit friends and relatives 180 miles away in PA (360-mile round day-trip). We live 10 miles from the PA border, where gas is about 20 cents a gallon more expensive than NJ. Every Saturday morning all the gas stations in our area are packed with people filling up before going to expensive PA - meaning 15 minutes at least to fill up. I realized in my Volt that I could easily fill up on any night during the week, and not use a drop of gas until I was deep into PA on Saturday. So, I get to spend 15 more minutes enjoying a friends and family than we used to with our pure gasoline powered cars.
Of course this is about Tesla and I couldn't use a Tesla yet, but they have a Supercharger planned in the area of my friends and family. But then we would be back to losing some time with them sitting at the supercharger for half an hour (15 minutes worse than a gasoline car), but of course we'd save 30 or so dollars for that time at the Supercharger.
If your wasting 30 minutes of your life trying to save 30 dollars then I don't think you should be driving a 100k dollar car.
Well, I have a Chevy Volt which is $28,000 after I got my tax refund. But to your point about spending 30 minutes to save $30, in my situation if I were to get a Tesla it would add 15 minutes of time over a pure gasser because it's a 15 minute stop in NJ at the mobbed gas stations on Saturdays near PA because of the price differential. So, the Volt actually saves me the most time (and money). I will be tempted if Tesla makes a car similar in price to the Volt. The silent smooth power of an electric motor is rather addictive, vs. the drone of a gas engine on long trips.
I wish our electricity was .16 per kwh. Once you hit their super low "baseline" that isn't anything other than a random number they set it jumps up to around .25 per kwh.
I leased a Volt for 3 years and, as trivial as it sounds, the "not buying gas (often)" benefit was great. The once-every-two-years oil change was great. The low operating costs were great.
None of these things are the reason to own a Volt any more than they are to own the Tesla, they are just nice bonuses.
Wow! I'm billed 0.037 kWh in Arkansas.
So does the 7 Series require premium gas, or were you just trying to further skew the results toward the Model S?
This is something people often misjudge about electric vehicles. They take one glance at the average charge time of "several hours", and they check out. However, it isn't like you have to stand there by your car watching it charge for those few hours and do NOTHING ELSE. This need to monitor the refueling process is gas-pump-thinking.
Like charging your mobile phone or laptop, the majority of EV charging can be accomplished while you eat...or sleep...or do any number of other activities. The car will be fine without your constant supervision. When looking for the latest smartphone, how often is your first question "How long does it take to charge"?
What about when the gas stations are busy? Around me when the gas is going to be going up everybody are at the stations filling up. Often the same happens when the gas price drops a lot. Everybody want to fill up at the low price. It is a major pain in the rear when you are not there just to top off and need to be somewhere. I have sat waiting a half an hour to get my 5 minutes at the pump. I feel a 5 minute average is a pipe dream.
to bankerdanny:
Teslas are more reliable, by and large, than the average ICE car, not less. And though I don’t know the specifics on the reliability of the BMW in question, I do know that they are approximately 30% mechanically simpler. You haven’t provided an analysis here at all; you’ve based your comment on anecdotal information and general statements: “…eventually the apparent unreliability…” Care to quantify that adverb, adjective, or noun, or shall we just assume that you generally might know what you’re talking about but have an equal probability of not?
to fordson1:
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No, he isn’t just trying to make that argument, he’s making it. From experience. Notably, an experience I’ve shared. As a Nissan Leaf owner, I *DO* spend less time fueling, with the rare exception of long trips. Which I still occasionally make.
First off, if you refuel every 400 miles in a gas-powered car you are an outlier point. The clear majority of people refuel weekly—at between 200 and 300 miles of operation. In fact, the majority of cars don’t even have a range of 400 miles—with the average US fleet economy hovering at about 25 miles per gallon and most fuel tanks SMALLER than 16 gallons not greater than or equal to.
Secondly, it will almost never take you just 5 minutes to fuel your car to full. Sadly, you haven’t factored in the entire comparison time—which includes 1) diversion of your route to a gas station (both ways), and 2) the full period between your slowing your speed, potentially waiting in line, getting out to pump, swiping your credit card or other payment method, *PUMPING (the part that you underestimated)* and then returning through that sequence until you’re back up to speed in your vehicle. A full analysis, my friend. Find a pump that dispenses the requisite 16 gallons of fuel and which you can accomplish your stated feat in 5 minutes and I’ll pay for your next fill up (read: it isn’t going to happen.)
Thirdly, when you park your car at home, you plug in. A process that takes no more time than opening or shutting your car door. Effectively the same amount of time as opening your car’s fuel door and placing the pump into it. You walk away, into the house, and you realize that the average American vehicle is parked fully 95% of the time (which is to say that it is moving—in operation—roughly 8.4 hours per week.) Electric vehicle drivers DO save on fueling time—at least the smart ones do—because they realize that refueling time with an EV is time they can actually be doing something else, whereas with many or most gas pumps, standing there with one hand on your pump is compulsory.
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Mr_Shiftright
I can hardly answer a response which supposes that ELECTRICITY will rise in price much faster than the cost of gas (oil) in the next 5 to 10 years. The claim is nonsensical in the extreme. Here’s why:
Electricity is a common energy currency, meaning it can obviously be made using virtually any other energy source, and quite frequently is. Electricity is also, almost by definition, a limitlessly renewable energy—it can be made from the near-limitless energy of the sun and in fact IS being made that way. Solar technology is improving, battery technology is improving. Oil, on the other hand, is becoming progressively harder to access and progressively dirtier (e.g. so called “fracking”—which poisons ground water and may encourage earthquakes for the short term gain that you posit: keeping the price of oil down.) Electricity will certainly NOT rise in price “much faster” than the cost of gasoline in the US in the next 5 to 10 years, and EVEN IF IT RISES IN PRICE AT THE SAME RATE (much more likely, considering past history) it will undoubtedly do so related largely to big government kickbacks to oil companies through pocket-lining—which essentially costs taxpayers more, but distributes the costs where they’re harder to see.
The point is that wedding our society to yesterday’s fuel (oil, gas) is ruining our planet and the majority of intelligent people realize this. The people who half pay attention and don’t put the details together critically are likely to buy into Big Oil marketing—such as the patently ridiculous commercials supporting “clean” fracking.
to metallurgist:
Right on. Particularly this part:
Solar generation cost can go only one way, down. Unlike gas prices which have been volatile and trending upward in long term. What is currently lacking is solar charging infrastructure in workplaces.
Mr_Shiftright:
You’ve got it wrong again. Solar panels in the home “should be added to the cost comparison” ? Whhaaaat? If the person was so daffy as to install the solar panels SOLELY FOR THE CAR—which they would only reasonably do if the energy production that was made with the solar panels *could only be used by the car* (obviously not the case.)
The utter FACT is that solar panels are a great investment in most areas—almost regardless of the climate. They have reached the level of durability and output where they are a POSITIVE RETURN ON MONEY INVESTED. This as contrasted to electricity that represents a continuous cost. Thus, “factoring the solar panel installation into the cost comparison” would only be sensibly done if it IMPROVED THE COMPARISON IN FAVOR OF THE ELECTRIC VEHICLE. In fact this is why many people who are financially savvy and can afford the upfront price of the panels install them: because they MAKE THEM MONEY in addition to, in this case, rendering their vehicle fuel’s cost to be zero.
s197gt:
Cite evidence, don’t make blind assertions. Of course, we could make these comparisons:
*How much time does a Tesla spend getting smogged vs. an ICE car?
*How much time does a Tesla spend getting an oil change?
*Blown radiator? Water pump?
If you don’t like the company, and you’re upset that the performance of a Tesla far exceeds a comparable ICE car, please just say that. The evidence-free assertions don’t serve you.
Follow through with the analysis, and MAKE IT ACCURATE. You say:
The time savings argument is...c'mon. That's a joke. Even if you spend two minutes per day hooking up and then unhooking the HPWC in your garage, that is probably more time than you will spend filling your ICE's tank once a week at a service station.
But it’s NOT a joke. Not at all. A Tesla owner (or even a lowly Nissan Leaf owner, like myself) plugs in when he arrives at a place he’s already going: home. Two minutes? No. Not hardly. Less than ten seconds from the time I’m parked to the time it’s plugged in. I’m getting out of the car anyway, right? I hit the button, I get out of the car, I plug it in. Less than ten seconds, and a similar amount of time when I unplug it. At my range—about 70 to 80 miles, though sometimes as high as 100 (record: 130)—I plug in five or six times a week, and unplug as well. That’s two minutes TOTAL in the week. It does not take less than eight minutes in aggregate fueling your car at a gas station. It simply doesn’t. You have to get there. You sometimes have to wait. You pay, you wait WHILE it is fueling. You might easily spend four times as long gassing your car as I do filling my battery, and I’d put that to the test. You’ll spend EIGHT times as long as a Tesla owner would, because the battery capacity is more than twice what I have, and thus fueling frequency is half. You lose in an ICE car. 7 minutes per week, six total hours in a year. Tesla owners (generally $50+/hr wage earners) would rather have that $300 yearly in their pocket—even if it’s productivity and not money.
Plus gas stations are dirty, or didn’t you realize that?
You don’t see it as a chore going to them and feeding at the Big Oil trough because you haven’t tried anything else. Inexperience leads to a bad conclusion—very similar to the way that people who don’t have kids think they’re the grand experts on raising them.
Mr_Shiftright:
No, you don’t take your Tesla to Jiffy Lube. Missed the memo? There are no oil changes.
quadricycle:
You’ve engaged in Three-Card-Molly here. Your analysis is a non-analysis. “Factored into the price of the car” as an argument? When you’re comparing two vehicles which are comparable in price? Come again?
“There’s no savings until the breakeven point” ? Whhhhaaaat? Um, no. If you have a solar system that generates X kilowatts of power, and it cost you $10K to produce, the first kilowatt, by your logic, costs $10K. “Enough said, dumb investment.” Let’s look at the other card, shall we?
1. We know that over N years based on our current usage pattern (as well as the addition of a vehicle that consumes 1 kWhr per 3 miles traveled) we will use Q kWhr of electricity. We know that at current rates, this will cost us N * yearly consumption (kWhr/year) * rate ($/kWhr) = Q. Since we plan our system for N and Q, we DO NOT BUILD A SYSTEM THAT WILL COST MORE THAN Q TO PRODUCE LESS THAN N. Thus, our power cost trends downward the longer the system remains functional (factoring in maintenance.)
2. Corresponding to the analysis in #1, we know that if we have installed a solar system, the cost of our power is necessarily better than regional power costs, factored over the duration, and thus we are engaged in a predictive analysis of what we expect based on sensible financial calculations.
Essentially, you’re governing your analysis on fear rather than on math. Glad you tipped your hat to the pollution “side point” however. That should be among our first considerations, and is the reason why it’s so ridiculous to keep using ICE cars when electric cars are superior when used sensibly.
Jim_nj:
You echo my experience exactly. A person who has not experienced an electric car cannot begin to process on the difference. Period.
darthbimmer:
Planning for the exception rather than the rule is costing you more money, and it’s all due to an inability to make the paradigm shift on your part. The average American (excluding fleet drivers) makes FEWER THAN two “long” trips per year in their car—as defined by 300 miles distance or greater. At this rate, and the savings you necessarily experience using electricity as a fuel versus gas, EVEN IF you don’t have two or more cars (which the evidence shows is the majority of families, and one of which is almost certainly going to be a gas car) you STILL would be better off simply renting a car and paying for it out of the savings you made driving electric versus gas. The fact is, electric cars meet NINETY FIVE PERCENT of the usage requirements for Americans, and the series of comments here abundantly indicate that the barrier to adoption is neither the price nor the convenience. It’s a mental barrier. An inability to make a paradigm shift that will be obligatory once more “conclusive proof” of global warming is found. Because 2996 of 3000 studies examining it and affirming it are not enough—even though the final four were funded by special interest groups.
I can’t believe how wrong you are, Mr_Shiftright. A Tesla would never, will never, and IS never going to be someone’s “second car.” It would be the first option, ALWAYS. The cheap gas guzzler would be the second one.
You drive more than 250 miles without stopping on a daily basis? Either you’re an out lier or an out and out liar. Those are the two options, you can choose, I make no accusation.
The net of all your posts is that you haven’t experienced electric driving and can’t speak of the benefits. Because you only see the costs, and you can’t see the benefits, you are NOT QUALIFIED to make any reasonable analysis. Your opinions are duly noted, but they are necessarily viewed as limited based on the lack of knowledge you clearly have about both use cases.
Electric vehicles will, no doubt, command 30% of the market in the next ten years, 60% in the next twenty, and virtually the entire market in thirty. You read it here first. Bookmark it.