Saw a Fifth gear clip on this car recently, seemed quite impressive.
Combined cost to make both fuels + mpg from an electric car and a petrol car was 3 - 5 times less in the LEAF's favour. Never mind the savings at the pump, the running costs minus an engine would be a sizeable saving no?
No.
Bear in mind that 70% of the fuel cost for the petrol is tax that the government will still take from EVs. They don't at the moment because hardly anyone has one so the loss of tax revenue is almost nothing, but if EVs become anything more than a hugely expensive novelty political statement they will be taxed as much.
Look at the actual costs:
Leaf does about 3 miles per KWh. 1KWh is about 11p, so that's about 3.7p per mile.
A small petrol car could get 60mpg. Petrol is about £5.70 per gallon, so the apparent cost is about 9.5p per mile.
However, almost 70% of the petrol cost is tax, so the actual cost is about 2.9p per mile.
So...if the government wants to maintain its tax revenue from driving, which of course it will, then the fuel cost of running an electric car will be
more than the current fuel cost of running a petrol ICE car.
Other running costs...yes, most of the would be lower because an electric motor is much simpler than an ICE. However, battery replacement costs are currently very high. I very much doubt if you'd get change from £5,000 for the battery in the Leaf and the continuous drop in maximum charge (and thus range) would bite hard very quickly. At the very least, you'd be looking at a new battery every 100,000 miles. Range would be down to about 45 miles by then and you'd really notice that restriction. So there's another 5p/mile in running costs for the Leaf.
If you compare like for like, it's clear that electric cars are currently more expensive to run than ICE cars (diesel or petrol, let alone cheaper options like vegetable oil). Advocates of EVs simply obscure the costs and rely on nobody checking.
