While I so want to do something on all our commercial buildings and our home, I'm dealing with 20 year paybacks still and now a state changing the rules on fuel buyback by FPL.
However, we are now buying all hybrid cars for our businesses. Trucks and other still waiting. However, here's an interesting article on auto comparisons for the average commuter.
Sun Sentinel compared costs of running the various vehicles types at a Vehicle Cost Calculator website operated by the U.S. Department of Energy.
These comparisons confirmed what consumers might suspect: Fully electric vehicles are cheapest to operate.
Using the Vehicle Cost Calculator, we compared the cost to drive four 2021 sedans, each rated slightly more than 200 horsepower, in city conditions for a week. To keep the comparison simple, we assumed that gas would cost $4.30 a gallon and that none of the travel would be on highways. We assumed that each car would travel about 200 miles, or 28.6 miles a day.
Also, we assumed that the vehicle would be charged at home at prevailing residential utility rates (currently about 12 cents per kilowatt hour). Using charging stations located along highways can be much more expensive and significantly increase costs.
Here are the results:
The all-electric Tesla Model 3 Standard Range Plus rear-wheel drive was by far the cheapest vehicle to run, with an annual fuel (or electricity) cost of $281 a year, or $5.40 a week.
A plug-in hybrid, Honda Clarity, was second-cheapest, with an annual electricity cost of $363 or $6.99 a week. Because this plug-in hybrid can run on electricity for 47 miles before switching to gas-engine mode, no gasoline was consumed in our example.
A traditional hybrid, Toyota Avalon XLE Hybrid, cost considerably more to drive. The Avalon used 4.7 gallons of gas, or $20 worth, each week, increasing the annual fuel cost to $1,041 for 242 gallons. Still, the electric motor helped the Avalon achieve a stellar 43 mpg.
Finally, the gas-only Lexus ES 250 consumed eight gallons a week, or $34.40 worth. Over a year, that’s 416 gallons at an annual cost of $1,791. Fuel efficiency fell to 25 mpg, still better than many of the cars, trucks and vans on the roads today.
Now I'll convert to our choice on Honda's. I'll compare Clarity to Accord Hybrid to Accord Gas.
Clarity starts at $33,740. Using numbers above $363 per year for fuel.
An Accord Hybrid starts at $27,320. Using the numbers, the Accord gets 47 mpg in town would use slightly less gas in the example, for annual fuel of $970.
An Accord Gas starts at $26,120. It gets 30/38 mpg so in the same scenario would use $1,500 of fuel.
Now, clearly distances change things. However, the scenario above matches our business use well. That says for about $600 for hybrid (more items standard so less than the $1100) we save $500 a year on fuel. We could spend another $4000 or so and save another $600 a year. Since we keep company cars only 5 years we don't do that. That's why we're buying Honda Accord Hybrids and Honda Insight Hybrids which are smaller and get 55/49 mileage.
In actual use, we've reduced our gas consumption by nearly 50%, even including employee's personal use of the cars, so doing better than the above numbers. To me, this is a big breaking point where electric is making sense both ecologically and financially. Bring the Clarity price down by $2200 or so and we'd be using them.
Ford is doing amazing things with their E-Transport and other vehicles, if they could only get the parts to produce them. Mercedes a bit behind. We have delivery vans and would love to see electric make sense for them.
So many people yelled it would never happen when it just wasn't happening yet. However, when we get serious, we slowly make progress. Now need to speed it up. Our first great example was catalytic converters and better fuel economy and had we not made those moves, most of our largest cities would be nearly uninhabitable from the smog today. The auto switch is happening. Trucks next. Boats later. And I'm so hopeful we'll hit the magic to make solar on every home and business practical. I'm pleased to see some movement on large retail stores. We do have a couple we're putting them on.
The stat said 500,000 pounds of the earth has to be dug up to get enough lithium, nickel, copper, etc. for a single Tesla battery. Probably exageration but there is still a point in there somewhere.
