AutoblogGreen

Ouch! I put in my current vehicle at $35K which gets 25-28 MPG and does 15,000 miles per year and the electric rate from my last bill ($.138/KWh) and the ROI for the SUT is 16 yrs and SUV was off the end of the chart past 20 years! Yes, I added up all the maintenance costs over the 3 yrs I owned the car. For my wife's vehicle which is even bigger than mine (but gets better mileage and has more room that the SUV, the ROI came out to 42 and 90 years!!!! Either their calculator is fried or their minds are!

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I tried the calculator and it's not broken. Take the difference in purchase price and divide by the yearly savings (fuel + maintenance) to come up with number of years till break-even. Using my subcompact, it came up with 46 years for the SUT. The SUT costs $34K more and saves $840 per year based on 10K miles and 30 MPG.

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I win! I got a 392 year payback for my Civic.

I still want one (or maybe an eBox), but it sure wouldn't be for economic reasons.

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It would take about 8-9 years to cover my ranger.

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I'd guess the calculator isn't figuring in the future cost of the difference between electricity and gasoline, which could be a constantly increasing number. So maybe just two hundred years or so years on that Civic. But then again does the calculator figure in a possibly pricey battery replacement?

But then again an electric car wouldn't even have a 'payback' timeframe if you bought one instead of a gas powered car you were already planning on buying, apart from the present cost different with a gasoline powered car.

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Um, where's the blank for the interest and inflation rates? It's not a fair calculation without that. Payback period is only accurate if you can assume no inflation and no interest.

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@6: I think the point we are making is the ROI is not reasonable. It would be nice if it were less that the effective life of the vehicle. They have a ways to go.

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It's the same old story.. Batteries need to not only give better performance but they've gotta be a heck of a lot cheaper.

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Who is the passenger in this video???

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If you factor in that this is targetted to replace fleet vehicles (trucks driving in cities all day long) guess what, they get an accelerated ROI. So yes it's unreasonable if you only drive 15,000 miles per year and you get decent mileage, but it's great for fleets

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Be sure to use the correct power rate when using the calculator. Electric vehicles are charged at night using a cheaper Time of Use rate. With PG&E this is $.055 KWh.

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