He said "plus the cost of maintenance and electricity".
For equivalent range, a Model S would cost me $8 per "fill-up" instead of $74. The difference would be bigger if I drove a sportier car with worse gas mileage.
For many owners, it actually is free. A lot of these cars are being bought by Californians working at companies with their own electric car discounts and charging stations at the workplace. The car comes with free recharges at Tesla's superchargers for life as well.
The average cost of a kilowatt-hour is something like $0.11-$0.12 in the US (some places are much higher, some are lower).
The highest-capacity model with an estimated 300-mile range holds 85kWh. Tesla claims >90% charging efficiency, but let's just say 95kWh to charge.
95kwh * $0.12 = ~$11.40 per 300 miles.
Right now, a gallon of regular gasoline in the US averages $3.601.
300 / 50mpg = 6 * 3.6 = $21.60
300 / 40mpg = 7.5 * 3.6 = $27.00
300 / 30mpg = 10 * 3.6 = $36.00
300 / 20mpg = 15 * 3.6 = $54.00
300 / 10mpg = 30 * 3.6 = $108.00
As a point of troubling comparison, the Model S gets compared to a BMW M5 a lot, which apparently has a 16mpg/24mpg city/highway rating.
Another useful comparison is to a basic Prius, which has a 51/48 rating, but is substantially smaller, lighter, and less performant than the Model S and M5, but the Model S still beats it by a large margin.
When Tesla gets around to a Prius-like EV, the numbers are going to be even more ridiculous. The "fuel cost" of commuter EVs will simply be noise in the typical family budget.
>When Tesla gets around to a Prius-like EV, the numbers are going to be even more ridiculous. The "fuel cost" of commuter EVs will simply be noise in the typical family budget.
Or some of the European diesels, some of which are pushing 100 MPG.
>Or some of the European diesels, some of which are pushing 100 MPG.
Unless I'm terribly mistaken, you are thinking of vehicles that were tested on a different driving cycle with a larger gallon (imperial vs US). If compared on an EPA cycle with US gallons, those cars get closer to 50 mpg.
> If compared on an EPA cycle with US gallons, those cars get closer to 50 mpg.
It's worse than that. Diesel fuel has a higher energy density than gasoline, and is more expensive. Anyone trying to directly compare the two in terms of miles per gallon and cost without the appropriate adjustments is simply speaking nonsense.
It's a pity Tesla didn't lay out the costs in a calculator as you have above. Would've been far more honest ("am I really paying that much on fuel every month?"), and this whole silly debate would've been avoided.
There are other costs to consider as well, not just fuel: add in the monthly insurance cost as well as the daily commute cost - depending on where you live, you may be paying $5 per day in commute tolls and several hundred per month for insurance.
I know no safe driver with a monthly insurance premium in the "several hundred per month" range. Even fairly expensive cars rarely go much above $2k/year for full coverage.
I mean is electricity free in the US?