Quote:
Originally Posted by David70
Numbers should have depreciation in them it is one of the major expenses to owning a car. I thought you said you said you were only charging it once a week. Won't this take you 20 years to get to 200k miles? Serious doubts anyone will buy a new Bolt and keep it for 20 years. I also think you will be looking at severely reduced range or will have replaced the batteries at a pretty high price. Maybe a major repair on a Civic also but not sure and not sure if it would equal the batteries.
Also, they estimate the depreciation at year 5 as $2240 on the Leaf and $1229 on the Civic, it is going to take a number of years before they have equal depreciation.
In the above the Leaf is over $6k behind at year 5 compared to a Civic and the Leaf is saving about $500 a year on fuel.
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I drive 35,000 miles per year commuting. So, 200,000 miles is about 6 years of use, not 20 years. I didn't say anything about charging, but considering my commute is 160 miles round trip per day, I'd charge the Bolt at least once per day. The battery argument at this point is theoretical, or maybe academic... I spend $4,800 a year on fuel. Going electric, using numbers from my Tesla calculations from last year, fuel cost drops to $1,200 per year. Considering the Bolt is probably more efficient than a Tesla S, I would expect even greater fuel savings; call it $1,000 per year. So rough numbers in my head say price delta of a Civic over a Bolt is $12,000. $12K divided by $3,800 fuel savings makes pay back in about 3.2 years of fuel savings, or at approximately 110,000 miles (3.2 x 35,000) – like I said, rough numbers. Pretty sure a Bolt will go well past 110,000 miles on the original battery. So just a five minute exercise here and it looks like a Bolt makes economic sense for my commute (i.e. not the average person who drives 12,000 miles a year).