The news outlets are buzzing today with General Motors' announcement that its electric car, the Chevrolet Volt, will get a whopping 230 miles per gallon in the city. Needless to say, owners won't be on a first name basis with their local gas station attendant. The catch, however, is the price. GM expects the car to start at $40,000. I was wondering how many miles you would have to drive in order for that to pay off, so I did a little math.
I used the Toyota Corolla (regular, non-hybrid vehicle) as my comparison, since it's popular and similar in style. According to Toyota's website, it gets 26 miles per gallon in the city and starts at $15,350.
I want to explain a few assumptions I used in my calculations to avoid confusion:
- I found that the national average of gasoline prices is approximately $2.647.
- Based on oil futures, I increased that 16% to $3.095, since we're talking 2011 prices.
- I similarly increased the price of the Corolla to take 3% inflation into account between now and 2011, making its price $15,811.
Okay, now for some math. The price difference in 2011 between the Volt and Corolla should be approximately $24,189. Next, I figured out how much it would cost to drive a mile in each car. That's around 11.9 cents per mile for the Corolla and 1.3 cents per mile for the Volt. Thus, it's around 10.6 cents more expensive per mile to drive the Corolla.
From this point, it's pretty simple. Just divide the price difference by how much more per mile it costs to drive the Corolla. That tells us that you would need to drive the Volt approximately 229,000 miles before you break even for paying more to buy it.
Clearly, my methodology takes a few short cuts. Each year you drive the Volt, the price of gasoline may continue to increase. So the number would likely be a little less. For example, if you assume $4 per gallon, then you'd need to drive around 177,000 miles to break even.
There's a little more help that Volt drivers will get -- from Uncle Sam. There will be a government rebate of $7,500 available when you buy a Volt. That lowers its potential price tag to $32,500, reducing the difference in 2011 prices between the Volt and Corolla to $16,689. As a result, you would need to drive approximately 158,000 miles to break even, based on my other original assumptions.
158,000 miles is still a lot. Unless the price of gas truly skyrockets well past the $3 level after 2011, then the argument for purchasing a Volt will remain based more on environmental ethics than economics. That is unless you drive cars for a really, really long time.
That's not to say that a time won't come when a car like the Volt won't be utterly essential. We all know that gas prices are doomed to rise drastically eventually, as we use up all our supply. How soon that will really happen, however, is unclear.
This also leaves the fate of the Volt a little fuzzy. Its success depends on the public's dedication to the environment, rather than its love of money -- unless GM decreases the price tag, or the government decides to increase the already massive credit for purchasing one. This analysis also suggests that the Volt might not be GM's savior in the near-term.
of course, of course.
Just wait for the second gen is all I can say.
Although, the more you go down this path of environmental sustainability, the more you come to my conclusion -- use a bicycle in urban areas :)
It's far more efficient to use a bicycle/public transit in urban areas, rent a car when needed, use a train for long-distance.
The Volt is a plug-in hybrid and when calculating paybacks you need to factor in the plug in part of the equation as well.
Which is to say that something like a Volt will never see a meaningful payoff over a traditional decent mileage car.
Which is also not to say that there aren't perfectly good reasons for using something like a Volt. It's just that those reasons are a little more esoteric, such as decreasing our usage of one specific type of fossil fuel (gasoline).
Good catch on the charging... I'd be interested to see the same calculation done, taking into account time plugged in and cents/kWh.
However, I definitely disagree with:
>Which is to say that something like a Volt will never see a meaningful payoff over a traditional decent mileage car.
The Volt is too expensive for its gas mileage to pay off. However, as the technology improves, you better believe that in the near future, something *like* a Volt sold for $20000 will provide a meaningful financial incentive for consumers to go green.
You're all missing the point of electric cars.
You can green up an electric car. Simply by changing the way electricity is generated, a certain sector of your fleet can be completely carbon free. You can't do that with gasoline.
Additionally, say 10M cars in LA alone are electric. And let's just say you have 10kW batteries in those cars. All of the sudden, you have a 100GW mobile source of energy.
Utilities have problems regulating peaks and valleys in consumption of energy. By having a distributed mechanism of energy storage, teamed up with a smart grid, this problem goes away.
Say you drive your car to the office and plug it in. It is 70% charged. It happens to be hot that day, but before it gets really hot, your car is charged to 100% (10kW). As the day wears on, the temperature rises. The utility starts to draw energy back from your car (and anyone else plugged in) to supplement the power it is using, thereby equalising its load-curve.
At the end of the day, when you leave, it is hot, but your car is back down to 70%. To the user, nothing changed, but to the utility, they just saved a billion dollars not having to run to the spot market to get electricity. *cough* Enron *cough*
Electric cars and distributed electronics are proxy energy storage systems. You can't even put a value on that because the savings, the options they create, and the infrastructure they support are immense.
If solar runs only during the day and wind runs only at night (but is more powerful than solar), you can BANK that wind power in these electric batteries when people charge their cars at night, and slowly supplement the not-enough solar power during the day. This makes renewables viable, which they aren't right now because of storage problems!
In essence, you're all too myopic and missing the point. The Volt being 230 MPG changes the game. Now all the other companies are going to try to best that. The Prius started the crusade, and now the market will move better. GM isn't dumping R&D dollars into the Hummer H4, instead, they're using their limited resources to improve everything for all of us.
Arguing over 20,000$ misses the entire point. And, I'm frankly a bit disappointed with the original author of this for also being so myopic (and for saying gas will go up to 3$/gal when it was 4$/gal last year).
But it is to be expected when people can't see outside of themselves or see the big picture.
Open up! This is awesome.
Dream on. Like all arguments there are half truths told in response to the article.
Where does this '100GW' come from each day? Our good friend "clean coal". Now that is a real oxymoron.
Who pays for this expanded infrastructure in an already struggling power industry? Are we going to add this to the National dept like we are doing with the Volts rebate?
And there hasn't been a discussion of efficiency and range between Volt fill ups.
I believe mass transit (not bullet trains)needs to be revisited.
That bit of intellectual fantasy, is another foundational block supporting my not continuing formal education after my junior year in high school.
Do you have any idea of the infrastructure, hardware, data base, firmware, software, not to mention a dullard peopled culture's intelligent cooperation required to achieve even a portion of your fantasy?
I give that vision of utopian harmony the same chance as exploration of the future via time travel. If time was in fact a natural, measureable, and navigable dimension.
But, Hey ya'al PEACE OUT in the 'hood.
Also, how long do the batteries last, and what do they cost to replace?
The Volt starts becoming a better deal from a business stand point. Depreciating asset tax breaks and all that. Plus I don't think you should underestimate the benefits of fixed costs. The Toyota Prius doesn't really pay for itself either. However people buy it because you can budget much more easily for a car payment then wildly fluxuating gas prices.
This is good, but I have a feeling most consumers will want to see a bigger picture. What about the cost of the electricity to charge the Volt? Cheaper than gas, yes, but it has to be factored in. Also, what are the differences in maintenance and repair costs? Some of this info may not be available yet, but at least earlier hybrid models had some pretty significant maintenance costs, especially when it came to the batteries.
Also, on that $7500 government rebate somehow decreasing the price tag to $32500--yeah, right. That figure only means something if the actual sale price in the showroom is $40K--which it won't be. And even then, it only truly benefits the consumer who is paying cash for the vehicle. Since almost all buyers lease or finance their cars, they'll be paying a damn sight more than $32.5K for these things.
Beware of government BS. The EPA created a whole new mileage rating scheme just for cars like the Volt - making them look a lot better than they really are. They do this by HEAVILY weighting it towards all electric mode, short range, city driving.
According to all data from Government Motors, the electric range is 40 miles. The total range between fill ups is 340 miles. If the car has a very small 8 gallon tank that would result in average mileage of 42.5. If the tank holds 10 gallons it drops to 34 MPG. GM has said that, at best, the car will get 40 mpg when the batteries are depleted.
None of those mileage figures is all that much better, and even worse, than a Prius (51 city/48 hwy) for 22 grand or a Ford Fusion (41 city/36 hwy) hybrid for 28 grand.
Also, electric, for recharging batteries is not free so you have to factor that in to the total operating cost of the car.
It is nice that the Government would consider giving a HUGE, taxpayer funded, rebate for a car made by Government Motors - disadvantaging both Toyota and Ford.
You might as well perform a similar analysis looking at the lack of economic benefits of driving the BMW 7 Series vs. the Chevy Malibu. It's perfectly true that the Beamer will cost you a pretty penny, but for the most part, rational economic models have remarkably little to do with auto purchases.
There are two things, above all else, that auto consumers consider when purchasing a vehicle. The first is image. Chevy is positioning the Volt to be the new Prius - a vehicle for status-conscious early adopters, willing to shell out a premium. That'll get the car through its first generation, allowing economies of scale to kick in and start to lower the costs and render it a more economical choice. It will also function as something of a halo car for the Chevy brand, justifying the fact that the early Volts, just like the first-gen Prius, will be sold at a loss.
The second factor is perceived efficiency. By this, I mean that consumers want to know how well a given automobile will meet their various needs, relative to its cost. But very, very few consumers pull out the cost-amortization tables to help them make that decision. They tend, instead, to look at simple metrics. So, for example, we know that consumers will respond more positively to a "cash back" incentive than to an equivalent reduction in price - one offers something for free, the other doesn't. We are, in Dan Ariely's phrase, predictably irrational. That's how the Volt has to be judged. Very few consumers are going to be installing a separate electric meter for the car, for example - increases in the electric bill will be largely subsumed within the monthly statement, and thus the juice will be perceived as a minimal expense. Consumers will take note of the triple-digit sticker out of proportion to the relative savings - that's one of the flaws with MPG rather than GPM.
It's clear that buying the Volt to save money on gas is a bad idea, but its success hardly depends on noble self-sacrifice or "the public's dedication to the environment." No, the car will sink or succeed based on its buzz-factor, and the quality of its design and engineering. If it looks better than the Prius and Insight (and so far, it wins that category hands-down), has a more sophisticated interior (not hard, but unusual for GM), is fun to drive (and remember the acceleration potential of electric drive, as demonstrated by Tesla), and does all that with a triple-digit MPG rating, I suspect that these cars will fly out of dealers' lots, and generate lengthy waiting lists. Buyers get to feel cool, sophisticated, patriotic, and virtuous. And at the end of the day, cars have an awful lot to do with self-image.
The biggest problem with the Volt, actually, is that it requires a house with a garage. I live in apt buildings/row houses which do not have garages. Lots of urban dwellers do.
I never thought about this, but this is so true. And its also one of the biggest demographics that Chevy will target. Can you imagine charge up stations around the city? I cant.
In the midwest (Madison, WI), the local utility is putting in publich charging stations this summer:
http://www.mge.com/environment/Innovative/EVCharging.htm
Untrue. Utilities aren't idiots. They will put charging stations on the street, like a parking meter. Swipe your card and you can pay upfront or you can link it up to your account and be billed at the end of the month.
No one uses their garage; everyone knows that.
I drive a Honda Insight and people made similar claims about my Insight. I'm skeptical of this type of analysis.
It rests on the idea that while a Cadillac STS and a Chevy Volt both cost $40,000 a Cadillac is a *real* $40,000 car, whereas a Chevy Volt is *actually* a $16,000 car. What on earth does this mean?
I guess the idea is that the *real* price is based off how quickly you go from zero-to-sixty, what sort of material your upholstery is made out of, how nice the trim is, the cost of the speakers, etc.
In what sense though is a BMW 7-series twice as valuable as a BMW 3-series? Is the upholstery *twice* as nice? Is that higher rate of acceleration twice as valuable? Is their double the utility to the enhanced steering? Of course not. Yes, they're better, but it's not reasonable to suggest cars are priced on any sort of fundamental utility or *real* value.
People value driving an expensive car in large part because it's an expensive car. A good part of the value of an $80,000 car is the fact itself that you are then driving an $80,000 car (it doesn't have four times the utility of a $20,000 car). In any conspicuous good, price is an inextricable component of style.
So it is with the Volt. You are not paying $40,000 to drive what's "actually" a $16,000 car. The claim has no meaning. It will likely depreciate similarly to any other $40,000 car, people who know about cars will know it's a $40,000 car. If you are seeking pure price utility in a new car then by a Yaris or whatever, nobody disputes that.
My feelings mirror yours. In 2005, I bought a Honda Civic Hybrid, which was around the same price as an Accord. I looked on the hybrid package as the feature set that I wanted, giving up a bit of extra room that the Accord would have provided. In return, I've been enjoying weeks between gas stops, and summer mileage around 51. The range of the car is typically around 500 miles, allowing for a comfortable 50-100 miles left in the tank. I paid for the feature set that I wanted, and I'm delighted with my choice. There is no point in comparing it to the cheapest, stripped-down Civic or Corolla. Others may choose horsepower and towing capacity, or the more expensive cache of a "sporty" model. Different strokes!
Also, if you're making a pure argument about cost -- you have to pay for that electricity for the battery part of using the car. Factoring in electricity prices, it would take even longer to pay off the price difference. (Electricity prices vary a lot more than gas prices, at different times of year and different times of the day, so I wouldn't really know where to begin guessing how much someone would pay for the Volt's electricity.)
Oops, I see several commenters already had made this point.
http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2009/08/230-mpg.html
I see hidden charges down the road. No pun intended.
Is there not a cost to the carbon placed into the atmosphere with each gas-car mile driven?
Someday the price of carbon in the atmosphere will be exacted, no?
People (who aren't in those markets) love to ignore this fact. Carbon will be a major factor in our purchasing decisions very soon. Astute point, Dan.
Let's also bear in mind that $16,000 gets you a *very* basic Corolla. If you want a larger engine, automatic transmission, power windows and locks, cruise control, a CD player, navigation, and so on, you're going to be adding a few thousand onto that -- at least. I suspect very few people buy the lowest-priced Corolla without any options.
I assume we don't know yet what the Volt is going to come with, so it may have pricey extras, too, but in any case your numbers are perhaps rougher than you admit.
This car is a very good idea that has one fatal flaw. As mentioned in an earlier comment, the car owner needs a garage or some other secure location where the car can be recharged. Most city dwellers don't have garages or another secure location where the car can be parked while it is being recharged. The plug that goes into the vehicle's receptacle is a special plug that looks like it will cost a lot more than a 14 or 12 gauge extension cord. Running the cord for the plug out a window or across a sidewalk will be out of the question. This car needs to have an easily removeable battery (or series of batteries) that can be brought inside at night so that the whole "plug the car in" model can be scrapped. If the weight of the battery (or batteries) precludes this, then this whole idea goes down the drain.
A major factor you failed to figure in was the return on your savings over the cost of the Volt. Fiuring a 10% return on the $16,690 you would earn $1,669 to spend on gas. Using your $3.095 cost, you would be able to buy about 540 gallons. At 26 mpg, you would be able to travel 14,020 miles a year and not touch your prinical amount. The 14,020 is above an average city drivers annual mileage, and if they were to reach this, they would probably be driving some highway miles, which would increase their mpg. In other words you would never see a return on the increased cost of the Volt. Also, at the end of the cars life, you would still have almost $17,000 to buy a new car.
P.S. The cost for the Volts elctricity is about $0.88 for the battery's 40 miles, based on DOE average kw cost.
There are benefits outside of the strict price for gas. One was brought up in a previous comment - environmental. By decoupling the fuel and the car you open up alternative energy production methods. My Volt might be powered by the solar panels on my house, effectively, or wind or nuclear or whatever.
The second is energy independence. If all cars were electric powered (or largely electric powered, as in the Volt's case) then the need for foreign oil goes *poof*. If you don't see how that could cut your tax bill or increase your personal security then you just aren't paying attention.
These benefits are much harder to quantify than a simplistic analysis such as this one, but they are real and should be part of the decision.
Talk about not paying attention. Do you really think that your tax bill would go down? Since when do polititians give something back once they have it? They would just divert the taxes to some other pet project. Oh, and btw, most US electricity is powered by coal plants, so there goes your enviromental benifits. Not to mention the lithium hazard from the batteries. Which, btw, take longer an longer to charge and provide less and less power, an end up needing to be replaced. As far as security goes, it works both ways really, they become dependant on our money an dont want to see it shut off either. Not having us as a customer, it can be argued, gives oil producing countries no reason to remain on friendly terms with us.
Fine - maybe your tax bill won't go down, but think about the costs we have on military operations to support our oil consumption habits. That stuff don't come for free - most of the costs of oil are indirect like this.
And you are correct about having a coal-powered car, but I'll take a domestic coal powered car over a foreign oil powered car. Plus, we can then have the conversation about where to get our electricity and under the covers can move from coal to other sources - this is the beauty of abstraction, the end user doesn't even have to know the source of the electricity. In the current form where every car is directly linked to a particular fuel - oil - there is little you can do except dig deeper or pray that something like ethanol will save the day, and it doesn't appear it will.
Lithium is a problem, but it is a much more durable good than oil and there are better solutions for handling of it than we have currently. We pretty much have no plan to get off foreign oil at the moment, at least if our dependency is lithium we can figure out answers through technology, recycling, etc.
Security I do not buy your argument at all. Gobs of money sent into these countries directly fund corruption and problems. Having oil under your territory is a curse for all except the elite of that country.
How many batteries will you have to buy during that 177,000 mile break even drive. They are expensive, maybe a couple of thousand or more
@Evan - Nice comment about the hidden charges, but also don't forget about the sticker shock.
With a commitment to electric vehicles (E/V), the charging stations would start to reappear. They were sprouting up all over the place when there was the initial E/V rollout 10 or so years ago. They just disappeared when the E/V's were all killed.
Yes, the Chevy Volt works fine if you use it for local commutes, but what if you go on a road trip? Will the hotels allow you to run an extension cord to the vehicle? Well if there was enough demand, then the hotels, and restaurants, stores, etc would begin to provide charging stations, and perhaps they would install some solar panels too.
The Volt is a hybrid, not a true electric car. You CAN go on a road trip - the engine kicks on and you can drive on using normal gas forever basically.
Your argument is very valid for true electric cars like the Nissan Leaf, which might arrive at the same time or just after the Volt.
Hey folks: It's still a GM car...and GM means Get a Mechanic! Do you really believe these people? For years, Detroit fought the government any standards, on mileage and safety, spending millions on lobbying and obfuscating, rather than investing in developing what was mandated. It was these same companies that fell in love with the term "planned obsolescence" rather than the term "quality". The folks at Toyota and Honda went another way and are reaping the rewards today.
Getting electricity to the vehicle is not simply a matter of running an extension cord to the vehicle as you might do when Cousin Eddie Griswold shows up with his mobile home. The Volt (and all future E/Vs) will use a five-pin Society of American Engineer (SAE) standard plug to plug into the vehicle for battery recharging. This standard plug isn't going to be cheap. I seriously doubt that hotels, motels, campgrounds, or Clark Griswold is goint have these plugs available. At best, the Volt owner will need to bring along a spare plug (more expense) and hope there's a secure area where he or she can run the cord to the vehicle. If you go on a road trip, you better plan on forking out the money for gasoline after the first 40 miles. That's the first 40 miles period, not the first 40 miles per day.
True, since it is going to take 23 hours to recharge the battery. So even for the local commute, your place of business had better provide a recharge outlet, since it will be parked there for over 9 hours. Figure in rush hour delays on your 20 mile commute (40 round trip), there goes almost another hour, leaving you only 14 hours of at home charging time.
23 hours to recharge the battery? Where did you come up with that. This is NOT an all electric car, the 40 mile range is actually pretty small. I've seen 6.5 hours published - source http://gm-volt.com/chevy-volt-faqs/ - for 110 volts.
The key to the article's analysis is the price of gas, and the assumption that we will have stable gas prices for the period you own your car. The article assumes a price of gas in 2011 of $3.09 and THEN ASSUMES THAT PRICE IS STABLE FOR THE LIFE OF THE CAR! [Actually, to be completely fair, the article assumes gas prices will increase at the rate of return on the auto price savings if you buy the Corolla]. If we assume a purchase price difference of $16,500 after government incentive, and a price of $3.09 per gallon of gas, the fuel cost is roughly 12 cents per mile for a Corolla and 2 cents for the Volt (I am using totalcostof's electric cost here), 10 cents difference. Thus you need to drive 165,000 miles for the fuel savings to equal the extra purchase price (16,500/.10).
But if the average cost of gas over the life of the car goes to $4, the operational fuel cost difference increases to 13.3 cents (I assume that the price of electricity also goes up by 33%), and the break even miles goes down to 124,000 miles (16,500/.133). If gas goes to 5$, the break even goes to 99,000 miles. If gas is $6, the break even is 82,500 miles. Personally, I would say that there is a greater chance that gas prices will average $5-6 per gallon over the next 10 years, vs. $3.09.
totalcostof makes a good point that the auto cost is immediate, while the fuel savings is spread over time, thus you should figure in investment return, or the time value of money. But thinking that you are going to generate a regular 10% return on the car price differential, that is only if you invest with Bernie Madoff. I am hoping to get 1% on money these days. There are also other factors, like repairs,etc. that need to figure in here.
But using just fuel savings vs. cost, the Volt could be a good deal over the long haul if you think that the price of gas will increase dramatically.
All electric/Hybrid cars leverage batteries that overtime lose their efficiency. This will eventually reduce the miles you will be able to drive on electricity.
The batteries also have a life that will eventually require a large repair to fix/repair them. This makes the cost over the life of the car even more.
Both of these factors would need to be considered as part of the cost comparison of owning the Volt or other electricity based car.
I've been reading and talking to people in the "car" business for three years now about the Volt. Its not much closer today to production than then. I built our Current 144 vdc, 80 mph, 40 mile range car in 6 days, and can't even get air time anywhere. Electric vehicles have been running around the world for a hundred yrs and now everyone is spending billions of the tax payers monies to develop one? Give me a break, or should I say the tax payers a break. I use off the shelf parts and a body from a manufacture, much like Zinn, and have the Nitsa approval for hiway use. I can even convert your car or truck to run at hiway speeds and get 110 miles per charge for less than you can buy a Volt.
Wake up out there. We're getting screwed and no-one is watching.
You can follow the progress of the Volt easily, GM has been very open about their process. I recommend http://www.gm-volt.com. I've been following this car for a year or so and they are making progress right along the schedule they've stated all along. Your statement that it is no further along than it was three years ago is blatantly wrong - if that were the case we wouldn't be having this discussion cause they would not have published the mileage numbers.
It takes a while to get a new mass production car built, especially one with non-standard technology. Comparing to a home-grown car is apples and oranges.
What is the Coralla going to be worth when you can't get gasoline for it. That day is coming.
What is the Coralla going to be worth when you can't get gasoline for it. That day is coming.
If you buy it now and drive it for 10 years, then is when you can worry about the availablilty of gas. IF it makes sense, then you can by an electric car (one that has most of the bugs worked out, an at a much lower cost). But for anyone alive now to worry about gas running out is ridiculious. Three trillion in reserves, an 80 million a day in consumption, the supply will last for 100 years at least. Will it run out? Most definitely, it is a finite resource. Should we be working on replacing it? Absolutely! But to base current buying decisions on the belief that gas will not be around is not the way to go. Ten years from now, you can reassess the situation and base your buying decisions on the then current enviroment.
Like the people of Easter Island that cut down the last tree and then decided what to now that there are no more trees?
Oil is not going to flow at 80 million a day and then just stop. One day it will be 79m and later 78m. When that starts happening, people will freak, prices will spike, economies will crash, and though there will still be plenty of oil left in the ground, there will be shortages of gasoline. This could easily happen in the life of your next car.
I doubt there will be enough electricity for everyone to run to and fro like we do now on fossil fuel, but a battery can be charged from a number of energy sources, so it has a future.
Just looking at the environmental aspects of this situation, and making some pretty big assumptions, this car is better than even the best conventional or hybrid vehicle. The first assumption is that burning 100 gallons of gasoline produce one ton of CO2. The second is that 1.5 MWh of electricty from the power grid also produces one ton of CO2.
From the investigation I've been able to do, driving the Volt 40 miles will consume 8.5 kWh. This works out to about 175 charges per ton of CO2, for a distance of 7000 miles. A gas burner would need to get better than 70 miles/gal to match this.
If your electricity comes from source other than the power grig, your environmental impact goes down even further. But beware of photovoltaic sources, as they are notorioulsy inefficient.
People who are paying 40 grand on a car for prestige live in the 'burbs, and therefore have a garage. They use their minivan/SUV or other secondary vehicle for commuting when they're not flying.
(purposefully flip)
We really need to figure out a way to talk about the electric cars in a way that acknowledges existing issues while appreciating their ultimate promise.
Silly boosterism can do as much damage to the prospects of this excellent and exciting technology as being overly negative and condescending.
In particular, it's disingenuous to claim that driving Volt on pure electricity is free---it saves gas money but you still have to pay for the juice. Here's a decent estimate, showing that it still costs $2.64 to travel 40 miles on pure battery power, which happens to be the same as per-mile cost of a 40mpg car:
http://gm-volt.com/2007/08/14/what-will-it-cost-to-drive-a-chevy-volt/
I think the electric cars will gain significant market share in 5-10 years and will eventually become the standard design, just like the hybrid diesel-electric rail locomotives, but the components that we have today are really rudimentary. Battery and motor weight and volume needs really to go down significantly.
przemek - your cited article was corrected to show a cost of $1.32 per 40 miles, or 3.3 cents for electric fuel to operate the Volt. I used 2 cents, per totalcostof's calculation. Using 3 cents rather than 2 cents increases the break even miles by less than 10%.
I think you make some valid points though.
If gas prices rise or fall, electricity prices will broadly follow, so the cost per mile of running a Volt will always be high, given its purchase price. The only way to change that is to buy electricity from a renewable-source generator.
But where will all this electric power for recharging come from ? When the fleet is small, no problem, but if there were millions on the road a few years from now then how many new electricity generating stations would we need, how many new transmission lines, how many re-wired houses ? Or will we just accept the brownouts and blackouts that would come from this huge added demand ?