SHOPSMART AUTOS – CUSTOMER INFORMATION – NOVEMBER 14, 2021-1
EV vs GAS WHICH ONE IS MORE COST TO OWN EV aficionados will tell you thatelectric vehicles
are cheaper to fuel and maintain, so that means they must be cheaper to own and operate. EV skeptics will counter with the premium pricing of many EVs, something that’s quantifiable when a brand sells both a gas-powered and full EV version of the same vehicle. So are EVs really less expensive over the long haul of ownership? Sort of. Sometimes. As they say, it’s complicated. To investigate whether an electric vehicle truly is cheaper than its gas counterpart to own and use as daily transportation we chose two models in the US market that are available with both powertrains: The
Hyundai Kona
and
Kona Electric
, and the
Mini Cooper Hardtop two-door
and
Mini Electric
. We compared as much about their running costs as we could dig out from credible sources.
Three-Year Cost Analysis
We decided on an examination of the first three years of overall ownership cost. And we stuck with the numbers we could pin down. For the purposes of the clearest comparison possible, we are not including either financing costs or insurance premiums. How you choose to finance your vehicle—the term of the loan and the interest rate, or whether you decide to lease—can have a significant impact on your total costs. And insurance costs are widely variable as well, depending on your state, your driving record, and the coverage you choose. Our journey starts with the straight base price of the most basic model of each subject vehicle. Any applicable Federal tax credits for the two EVs are figured in later in the calculations. The cars’ purchase prices (including destination charges) are as follows:
Mini Cooper Hardtop
: $24,250
Mini Electric
: $30,750
Hyundai Kona
: $21,440
Hyundai Kona Electric
: $38,330
Miles Driven
For annual miles driven, we went with 15,000—the de facto average mileage stat for U.S. drivers for decades. Even the Mini Electric, with its EPA-rated 110 miles of range, would hit that mark if someone’s daily commute was 30 miles each way. The result was a three-year mileage count of 45,000 miles.
Maintenance Costs
To calculate maintenance costs, we used AAA’s 2019
Your Driving Costs analysis
. It determines how much you pay per mile in maintenance to drive a vehicle. The costs are placed into market segment silos (sedan, SUV, Pickup, EV) for service items like tires, brakes, oil changes, and repairs over a five-year period. Yes, that’s longer than our three-year timeline, so in this case the number might inflated beyond what you would likely experience with these cars in three years. And these maintenance costs are higher than we experience in our long-term 40,000-mile tests. But AAA’s data gives us a solid baseline to build from, and all the subject cars are treated equally. As expected, without oil changes or other engine maintenance, the EVs are cheaper to maintain. Maintenance costs per mile and over the full 45,000 miles are as follows:
Mini
: $0.0853 per mile/ $3,839
Mini Electric
: $0.066 per mile/ $2,970
Hyundai Kona
: $0.0909 per mile /$4,091
Hyundai Kona Electric
: $0.066 per mile / $2,970 This is where things get a little weird. Both
Mini
and
Hyundai
offer free maintenance for three years or 36,000 miles (whichever comes first). We’ve chosen to disregard those deals for this comparison because our goal is to find the true (as true as we can pull together) three-year cost of owning these vehicles. So we’re going to pretend like this isn’t a feature and we ask you to do the same for the sake of math.
Energy Usage
To calculate the energy usage of both types of cars we used the EPA’s gallons and kWs used per 100 miles. For both of these units, the lower the number, the more efficient the vehicle. As you can see below, the Mini Hardtop gets better gas mileage than the Kona, but the Kona Electric is more efficient than the Mini Electric.
Mini
: 3.2-gal/100 miles
Mini Electric
: 31-kWh/100 miles
Hyundai Kona
: 3.3 gal/100 miles
Hyundai Kona Electric
: 27-kWH/100 miles
Gasoline Costs
For gasoline costs, we used the
national average price of gas
in February, 2020: $2.44 for regular and $3.11 for premium (the Mini requires the higher- grade fuel). Because of the
pandemic and trade issues
surrounding oil prices right now, recent gas prices are an outlier. This is our way of saying we won’t be stuck at home forever, and when we’re allowed out into the world, gas prices will likely go up. Here is the cost to drive the gasoline-powered Kona and Mini for 45,000 miles.
Mini Hardtop
: $4,478
Hyundai Kona
: $3,623
Charging Costs
Charging costs are a tougher to determine. First off, most charging stations charge per minute instead of per kW—the latter equating to gallons of gas. This way of charging can be frustrating for EV owners. Fortunately, there are changes coming. Beginning in 2023, all California-based charging stations will charge drivers on a per-kW basis. But for now, we’re using the average charging per min rate sans membership of
Electrify America’s up to 75-kW stations
which is $0.22/min. We then averaged the charge rate to 50 kW to account for slow stations and lowered rate of charge once a battery hits 80 percent. To determine at-home charging costs, we took the
average kW rate of $0.1282/kW
in the United States for February, 2020. Electric utility rates in the United States vary wildly. Louisiana pays only $0.0897 per kW while Hawaii electric rates are a wallet-busting $0.3244 per kW. So the price of charging at home is dictated by where you live.
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