acensor
Well-known member
I certainly haven't done any systematic wall-to-wheels analysis.... let alone as detailed as you folks, so I can't give you any Kilowatt-hours per mile.
What I can say is ---
A) I purchased the car in April of 2013 and when I compared my total electric power bills for the year before that date and the year AFTER that date (for the whole year or month by month) I can't detect any significant increase in my electric power bill.
And my whole electric power consumption is only about $700 per year.
Note that our power cost here in Ashland Oregon is about $0.07 per kwh (I say "about" because it's a tiered rate, with your first kwh costing less that when you get into higher consumption.
Also note we put on only about 5000 miles per year on the MiEV
B) I can pretty much tell how much I'm saving per year in out of pocket compared to if we'd kept out 2004 Toyota Corolla by estimating how much we were paying and WOULD be paying if we were driving the Toyota 5000 miles per year.
C) Rarely use the heater or AC much so may be doing better than you folks in hotter and colder climates.
D) The two really interesting numbers, IMO, to most normal non-geeks are not the miles per kilowatt-hour from the wall to wheels but --
#1 Out of pocket costs converted to "miles per gallon equivalent cost."
For that I came up with about 330 miles per gallon (with the false assumption that it cost me only 16kilowatt hours to fully charge the MiEV, and an at that time a gasoline price of nearly $4 per gallon). Knock that down by a liberal factor of 2 for reality of charging inefficeinces AND the fact that gasoline is temporarily about $2.50 per gallon, and that's still an impressive-to-non-geeks equivalent out of pocket "fuel cost" of "getting about 160 miles per gallon."
I like to use that to talk to normal folk rather than the EPA figure which is not based on the out of pocket costs at all.
#2 Fully amortized miles per gallon cost equivalent after figuring in battery replacement.
Finally, if we try to amortize in the eventual battery replacement cost (which to be honest we need to for the per mile cost) it gets much fuzzier as we all know.... in that we don't know how long the batteries will last let alone replacement costs. I made some not unreasonable assumptions about those two numbers once (but ones I would not want to place any money bets on) and find it unlikely that my real miles per gallon equivalent cost could be any lower than 80 miles per gallon even after amortizing the battery in.
Too many unknowns though. If gasoline climbs to $6+ per gallon here (as it is in many parts of the world already) my "miles per gallon equivalent cost" looks better and better (as long my electric power doesn't climb proportionally to petrol prices.) and the big unknowns is battery longevity band replacement cost.
What I can say is ---
A) I purchased the car in April of 2013 and when I compared my total electric power bills for the year before that date and the year AFTER that date (for the whole year or month by month) I can't detect any significant increase in my electric power bill.
And my whole electric power consumption is only about $700 per year.
Note that our power cost here in Ashland Oregon is about $0.07 per kwh (I say "about" because it's a tiered rate, with your first kwh costing less that when you get into higher consumption.
Also note we put on only about 5000 miles per year on the MiEV
B) I can pretty much tell how much I'm saving per year in out of pocket compared to if we'd kept out 2004 Toyota Corolla by estimating how much we were paying and WOULD be paying if we were driving the Toyota 5000 miles per year.
C) Rarely use the heater or AC much so may be doing better than you folks in hotter and colder climates.
D) The two really interesting numbers, IMO, to most normal non-geeks are not the miles per kilowatt-hour from the wall to wheels but --
#1 Out of pocket costs converted to "miles per gallon equivalent cost."
For that I came up with about 330 miles per gallon (with the false assumption that it cost me only 16kilowatt hours to fully charge the MiEV, and an at that time a gasoline price of nearly $4 per gallon). Knock that down by a liberal factor of 2 for reality of charging inefficeinces AND the fact that gasoline is temporarily about $2.50 per gallon, and that's still an impressive-to-non-geeks equivalent out of pocket "fuel cost" of "getting about 160 miles per gallon."
I like to use that to talk to normal folk rather than the EPA figure which is not based on the out of pocket costs at all.
#2 Fully amortized miles per gallon cost equivalent after figuring in battery replacement.
Finally, if we try to amortize in the eventual battery replacement cost (which to be honest we need to for the per mile cost) it gets much fuzzier as we all know.... in that we don't know how long the batteries will last let alone replacement costs. I made some not unreasonable assumptions about those two numbers once (but ones I would not want to place any money bets on) and find it unlikely that my real miles per gallon equivalent cost could be any lower than 80 miles per gallon even after amortizing the battery in.
Too many unknowns though. If gasoline climbs to $6+ per gallon here (as it is in many parts of the world already) my "miles per gallon equivalent cost" looks better and better (as long my electric power doesn't climb proportionally to petrol prices.) and the big unknowns is battery longevity band replacement cost.
