Quote:
Originally Posted by Tr4ckD4ys
55$ for full charge without membership… I think that's a lot of money. If gas prices weren't so high right now, filling up your X5 40i or something would only be mildly more than that. Just curious.
|
That's basically the max charge for electricity, pretty much anywhere. The local average for gasoline here is consistently over $4.50, equivalently un-discounted. Filling up my 40i with gasoline to the max would be about $100. That's not mildly more, and that's per tank. Today. If I travel in my X5, the way I would with the iX, I could pay significantly more - the way I might be paying for electricity, at the mercy of gas on the road, to the tune of $ 5 or $6 per gallon - $120+ per fillup. Today.
If I "fill up" my iX at home, I pay less than .10/kWh. I don't get a deal like that filling up my 40i "at home," which will be 99% of my use of the iX. I get charged the same high-priced spread for gasoline a block from my house (I unfortunately, or fortunately, don't have a fuel storage tank in my garage) as I do 20 miles away. So fuel cost differences, gas to electric, are significant, wherever you get it, to the tune of double or more for gasoline compared to equivalent electric fuel traveling. Today.
Aside from travel, if you commute 300 miles or more per week here - easy to do - you'd pay about $85 for the privilege of driving on gasoline. Charging at home, I'd pay about $10 for the same range in the iX. Maybe the cost of gasoline will go down. Maybe electricity will go up. There would still be a substantial difference, and the extreme likelihood is that fossil fuel products will continue to increase in cost for the foreseeable future - and very probably at a steeper rate than we've ever seen. And be harder to get. Check the price of diesel in your area. Which, ultimately will drive up the cost of electricity, but not nearly as fast or as high.
So driving electric will always be more economical than driving gas or diesel. Maybe a lot, because there is potentially an unlimited supply, or maybe a little, because we might find vast reserves of oil we don't know about. Maybe. Enough to make up the cost differences in the vehicles? That, as they say, depends. I don't think we'll ever see $2/gal gas in America again. Ever. But it could get cheaper. Or the cost for producing electricity could get cheaper. Or either or both could get more expensive. As a famous American philosopher said “'It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." But the virtual certainty is that electric cars will be part of it for the next decade or more.