AutoMotiveBlog - 19/04/11
To start with you need to look at the capital cost of just buying the vehicle, then you have to look at cost of ownership and cost per mile. Finally you need to look at depreciation and resale value.
A hybrid car typically costs about 8-10% more at present than its conventional equivalent and a fully electric car is normally about 80% more than the petrol or diesel engine model. This actually has little to do with cost of manufacture but is most a result of low demand. As demand rises so competition will increase, supply will increase and prices will come down in comparative terms. As with most things it doesn’t pay to be an ‘early adopter’…but since January 2011, as part of the UK government’s drive to increase the number of electric vehicles, owners will be eligible to receive a grant on the Plug-In Car Grant scheme, this is where the government will provide a subsidy that aims to slash the differential between conventional car cost and low emission vehicle purchase price.
Article continues ...
Electric Cars v Hybrid/Gas powered cars – which is cheaper?
Moderator: Peak Moderation
-
Aurora
Electric Cars v Hybrid/Gas powered cars – which is cheaper?
Rubbish!This actually has little to do with cost of manufacture but is most a result of low demand.
Batteries are expensive, all a car battery is is a load of mobile phone batteries stuck together.
But a diesel can do 80 mpg.A hybrid car typically runs about 25% cheaper on fuel costs than a conventional car so if a petrol car does 35 to the gallon that works out at around 15pence per mile whilst a hybrid will usually run at around 11.5ppm.
There is simply no real world in which a Nissan Leaf is better than a Seat Ibiza Ecomotive. The London Congestion Charge might qualify, but thats merely because thwere is a mentaly challenged government involved.
I'm a realist, not a hippie
Of course, and we shouldn't expect it to be! The first commercial incarnation of a new technology is unlikely to better the old technology after a century's R&D and mass market adoption.DominicJ wrote:There is simply no real world in which a Nissan Leaf is better than a Seat Ibiza Ecomotive.
I'm fairly confident that the Leaf is better than the Ford Model T was in 1908.
The real world in which the Leaf is better than the Ibiza is one several decades from now where most electricity is from low carbon sources and oil is far too valuable to burn in an internal combustion engine car returning less than 100 mpg.
The Leaf is just one of the early steps on the electric vehicle R&D path - it's not the final destination!
I watched the last episode of Filth last night with Dan Snow. He drove a 1908 electric car through the streets of New York, and it was still a practical vehicle. The model T beat it into extinction on 2 grounds - range and price. The latter was due to Ford's mass production integrated factories, not the fundamental cost of the car. Of course, lead for lead batteries is a finite resource.