[wjfyfe]

With our Oregon state government doing it's darnedest to force folks into purchasing an electric vehicle, I sat down and contemplated what it would mean for us.

As an example, we are traveling from Oregon to Montana, approximately 1000 miles, a trip which takes us approximately 16 hours driving time currently, a day and a half when figuring in restaurant, motel and pee stops. Now, let's use the numbers from the Chevy Bolt, basically 200 mile range, 2 hour recharging time, and .5 hours looking for the charging station, boiling down to roughly 6.5 hours per 200 miles conservatively. Take that 1000 miles and divide it by 200 mile range and that equals 5 legs. Now multiply those five legs by 6.5 hours and we get 32.5 hours driving time. When again adding in motel, restaurant, and pee stops we essentially went from a day and a half trip to now taking over three days. That simply is not practical.

Another example, with our Jetta it takes approximately a gallon of fuel to drive me the 60 miles per day to and from work. Let's just round that to $3.00 per day. Figuring a given average cost of $0.08 per mile for the Bolt, this calculates out to approximately $4.80 per day.

Shall we consider the purchase price of a new electric vehicle to being approximately double of a gasoline equivalent, or how about a towing vehicle? Naw, let's save that for a future discussion.

So, unless one plans on only using an electric car for short trips zipping about town, it just does not make any economical sense, at least for us?

Bill

 

[wjfyfe]

You make some valid points, CentexG2, but I believe that there is one point in which you forwarded that you did not intend, that being that we will now have to compromise by purchasing two vehicles in the future to replace our one Jetta TDI, which sure sounds like a step backwards to me, whether you are speaking from an enconomic, or conservation-al, point of view!

Bill

 

[wjfyfe]

Unless your life fits into the restrictions of an all electric car, they are not a viable solution. And to fit it, you have to really not drive much to begin with and when you do, fairly short distances.

Hybrids on the other hand make more sense, you can keep moving no matter what, but they are still not perfect.

The arguments can go on and on, but I wonder how 'Green' these cars really are. What happens to those batteries when they are worthless? And at the cost of those batteries how many cars just get scrapped altogether when the battery dies? Then there is the issue of the resources that go into making those batteries, and I've read that materials like lithium are limited long term.

I sat down and started playing around with figures again contemplating replacing our paid for Ridgeline for an electric vehicle. A future consideration will be that we will be doing frequent 250 mile round trip commutes through mountainous terrain, and no matter how I manipulate the figures I just cannot come up with any financial advantage to trading in our Ridgeline for an electric vehicle, or purchasing an additional electric vehicle. Throw in the necessity for having to take the time to do a recharge just adds to the impracticably?

Bill

 

[wjfyfe]

We own three vehicles, all paid for, including the Ridgeline. How do we justify purchasing an EV?

Bill

 

[wjfyfe]

If we considered an electric vehicle it would need to be relatively inexpensive, (under $30,000), have a "dependable" 250 mile plus round trip range by mountainous routes under cold wintry conditions and be large enough so to be able to carry our pet in a kennel, as well as additional room for other purchased goods, like a month's worth of groceries. As far as I have seen, such a vehicle is not available quite yet?
Bill

 

[wjfyfe]

There has been little accountability for the affect of speed? Towing our 5,000 pound trailer at 65 MPH and we get approximately 10-11 MPG. Lower that speed to 60 MPH gains us an additional 5 to 6 MPG or so. Now, translate that to an electric vehicle?
Bill