Fuel cost has been going down the past couple of weeks, and I filled up yesterday paying $2.92 a gallon. Today I had a nice round trip into our city and back, and averaged 79.2 mpg. That is close to my best round-trip result. Works out to 3.68 cents a mile. Not bad
Wow, 3.68 cent/mile is a little better than EV running costs with present electricity prices here in Australia.
Swaths of California, and many urban areas in the US pay 15+ cents a kwh. A car like the Volt run in a 4 season climate might average 2.5 miles a kwh, and thus pay 6 cents a mile. So while no one expects to get 79 mpg in a Prius year round, I think the exercise does point out that efficient gassers are far from old news. I wonder if I can manage year round 65 - 70 mpg in a Prius C.
We've had quite a large increase in electricity costs here in recent years. It's gone from about 13c/Kw-h a few years ago to my present rate of nearly 21 c/kW-h. At that price even an efficient EV would be about 4.2 cent/mile (based on a 0.2 kW per mile EV). If I did get an EV however I could opt (with my energy company) for "time of day metering" which could potentially make the EV costs considerably less, but at the expense of increasing the average cost for most of my other electrical loads. The current petrol price here is around $1.45 per L, and I'm averaging 4.25 L/100k, which works out to be about 6.2 cents per km (approx 9.9 cents per mile).
Don't talk about the Prius c. It's the only car coming out that could cause me to trade in my Genii and the girlfriend won't be happy. : p
Ahh ... Start sending her stories of the miserable diamond trade in Africa My wife loves to tell the story of the architect who gave his dear wife architecture magazines for her birthday, and received design magazines to celebrate his (I'll let you guess what her interests were.)
Everything that I have seen as far as EV pricing requires you to install a smart meter on your home. Which where I am moving they will do this for free. From what I read online, and talked with the representative on the phone the peak rates would be the same as everyone else. You would just get the discount for off peak draw effectively lowering my overall costs by participating in the EV program. I imagine though it depends based on the area, and what your particular electrical company is offering. Dominion is only offering the current program/rates until 2014.. After that I am sure it will go down the tubes.
