Is an electric car worth it?
I take this post that I found on the net quoted by a very dear friend as food for thought to try to shed a little more light on this subject that for better or worse affects everyone.
The post in question is the following and I quote it in italics, while I will try to add my considerations in bold:
ELECTRIC CAR?
NO THANK YOU.
I have been the owner of a latest generation Full Electric car for a year: a Peugeot 208E with a 50 kWh battery.
I let myself be convinced by the lies told about the fact that electric cars would be much cheaper than those with a heat engine. Well, I can say with certainty, discounted on my wallet, that electric cars are a colossal rip-off.
The convenience of a purchase must be seen from many points of view and with the right perspective, starting from an important premise: as with any new thing, even the electric car is no exception on the need to be aware, after correct training, that changed the way of thinking and reasoning. In summary, I cannot treat the electric like the thermal, and inevitably the thermal habits are obsolete or wrong when traveling by electric. If you are not willing to change your habits, you are not ready to make the leap yet. After all, Darwin also said that the species that survives will be the one most predisposed to change.
The European Union, I have not quite understood with what logic and for what interest, strongly pushes for the total conversion of mobility from thermal to electric. The main arguments for convincing users to switch to electricity are the ecological choice and savings.
As for the ecological value of electric motors, I don't have the elements to say if it really exists but I have serious doubts also in consideration of the enormous problem relating to the disposal of exhausted batteries.
This is the first of many "hearsay" that in my book that You can also find the e-book version here I disassemble with data in hand. The hearsay treats batteries in the same way as common styluses, which most people throw away instead of recycling them, that is, as something to throw away when "exhausted". Which is not the case, given that the batteries are reused in other applications (see for example photovoltaic storage) and/or in any case recycled with procedures that currently allow for the reuse of the components in percentages close to 100%. Not yet 100%, but it's almost there. On ecology, make this small reflection: vehicles circulate in inhabited places every day in large numbers. Take an electric one at random, put it indoors in your garage, "turned on", and stay there, inside the passenger compartment, until the battery runs out, perhaps watching a film with the heating on.
Then try to repeat the experiment with any thermal vehicle, until the fuel runs out and, if you come out alive, tell me which air you prefer to breathe. If only for this, making the air breathable in population centers would be worth the expense.
As regards instead the absolute uneconomical nature of electric cars, and, a problem of no less importance, their exhausting usability, well here I have only certainties, achieved after a year of ordeal, both practical and economic.
Here we enter the field of preparation/training I mentioned earlier. I agree that the whole world is not rosy, we are practically still in its infancy, a bit like LPG or methane at the beginning of the rest, or petrol that was bought in pharmacies when horses were "abandoned". But I'd say that if you know what he's doing, and it's not the case with whoever wrote this piece, you can do just about anything. I myself have made and make daily trips of up to 1200 km and I travel approximately 70 km/year, all in electric. And my experience leads to totally deny what has been said. And, specifically, I travel not only in a Tesla, but also in a strictly electric 500.
First of all I want to say a word about the unworthy speculative bad faith represented by the cost charged to the user for the energy supplied by the public columns.
Here I can agree with the speculation that only in Italy it grows without ever declining, even if the situation is not as described.
Faced with an average domestic energy cost of €0,52/KWh, I had to find that a cost of €0,98/KWh is charged for recharging public columns, i.e. double.
I agree on doubling to 0,98, with a big but that I'll explain now. While 0,52 is not the average, given that today, with variable contracts, 0,25 - 0,28 euros/kWh are spent at home. It depends on the contract that one makes and on the attention that is paid to the search for the best in terms of convenience.
For public columns, the but derives from the principle that if the price, absurd, for consumption is true, there are matching tariffs on the market that allow you to top up at the same column at a price equal to the home price, approximately 0,28 - 0,30. XNUMX, even in Hyper Fast stations. So the numbers change and not a little.
With regard to the usability of electric cars, I would like to point out that new generation electric motors require batteries with a capacity of at least 40 kilowatts, which, due to the importance of this capacity, need to be recharged almost exclusively at fast charging points given that, with a slow recharge, it would take at least 100 hours to reach 14%.
This statement demonstrates, in order: 1) the vehicle's management incapacity; 2) the thermal mentality applied to electricity where the concept of "filling up" is wrong and useless; 3) 100% is not needed except on rare occasions and in any case, to take 14 hours, the author's car would have to remain connected to the house schuko to take that long. And it wouldn't even be wrong! Did you know that an average car spends more than 75% of its time STILL? The electric one stands still and can be recharged, slowly, while we sleep, work or do something else. We have 18 hours a day available for this media. And if we are travelling, there are the fast stations, created for this purpose, which allow you to top up over time for a coffee and a trip to the bathroom. The network is growing and fast top-up points already exist in many autogrills.
So the problem of the very scarce availability of public charging points is greatly exacerbated by the need to access only fast charging points, which are around 20% of the total.
See above. The speech makes no sense.
From this it follows that if you have to go on a trip, either you take two days to cover 400 km or you stop at least a couple of times to recharge at the fast recharge stations, with a wait of at least one hour for each recharge (unfortunately even the the story that 20% of the recharge is reached in 80 minutes is another lie: it takes at least 40).
Regardless of the fact that the car you buy must meet your needs, if you travel 400 km on a bicycle every day it is obvious that you have the wrong means of locomotion.
And if the fast columns are expected to reach 100%, it means that the first point is missing: training.
But it is a discussion to be addressed separately.
If it's not 20, the minutes will be 25, and in any case, even admitting that there are 40, between coffee and a bathroom (for example), 20 is often not enough. For example, in the little time I have left, I get on with my work by replying to emails and messages, which is forbidden while driving and which I should do when I arrive, for example.
Furthermore, fast charging points are very rare on the Italian motorway network, which means that every time you need to recharge you have to leave the motorway and sometimes travel several additional kilometers to reach the location.
A few years ago maybe yes. Now the motorway network is growing and allow you to travel from Benevento to Trento without particular problems with cars with 54 kWh battery without leaving the motorway. (Trip of a very dear royal friend, from 15 days ago). It can be seen that there are more motorway networks in Italy.
Basically a journey that with an internal combustion engine would take three hours, with an electric motor, if you are lucky to find the columns working and free, it takes at least six!
If one puts in the effort and stops to load in the wrong places, it can take up to 52 hours. But it's not the network or the car's fault. Rome Vicenza, a trip I often make, involves global loss of time, if counted honestly, of the order of minutes, not hours. With the difference that the time lost for example at lunch or dinner, for the electric one is optimized by the fact of recharging it while indulging in the right refreshment which often lasts longer than the time necessary for recharging.
We now come to the much-vaunted "cheapness" of electric cars.
Let's compare a small utility vehicle with a 40 kW battery and a range of 170 km (which is the real range on extra-urban routes respecting the speed limits, in spite of the 350 km range declared by the manufacturer), with the same utility vehicle with a heat engine petrol and LPG:
- A) a "fill up" of energy made by connecting to a domestic user costs € 20,80 (€ 0,52 x 40kw = € 20,80);
- B) a "fill up" of energy made by connecting to the public columns costs € 39,20 (€ 0,98 x 40kw = € 39,20);
- C) a full 40 liters of petrol costs €74,40 (€1,86 x 40 liters = €74,40);
- D) a full tank of 40 liters of LPG costs €29,44 (€0,736 x 40lt = €29,44).
- At my house I would have spent €10,40
- With season tickets I would have spent €12,00
I'll leave the calculations to you for the rest, but I remember that there are even free columns (few) and that the reasoning highlighted here to "fill up" does not take into account that the car is stopped for hours and hours for nothing. Thermal too.
In addition, many now also have photovoltaics and the accounts still change there. But let's leave out this detail.
In comparison, a "small detail" should be considered: with a full tank of energy you can travel a maximum of 170 km, while with a full tank of petrol you can travel at least 680 km (considering an average consumption of 17 km/l) and with a full tank of LPG 560 are covered (calculating a consumption of 14 km/l).
And here falls the donkey:
– cost per km of a domestic recharge = €0,122 (€20,80 ÷ 170km = €0,122)
Assuming the 170 km, which can be much more if driven as it should be driven (with the 500 I cover about 250 with a smaller battery) at my house the cost per km would be €0,0612
– cost per km of a public recharge = €0,217 (€39,30 ÷ 170km = €0,217)
Here instead €0,0706
– cost per km of a full tank of petrol = € 0,109 (€ 74,40 ÷ 680km = € 0,109)
– cost per km of a full tank of LPG = € 0,052 (€ 29,44 ÷ 560km = € 0,052).
So, summing up, a full tank of electric charge costs more than four times as much as a full tank of LPG.
Let's leave out the fact that LPG as at 30/01 (source https://dgsaie.mise.gov.it/prezzi-settimanali-carburanti) is 0,796 and therefore the correct bill would be €31,84. What is misrepresented, here as everywhere, is that kWh and liters are compared as if the unit of measurement were the same. And it is obvious that in this way the perception of reality is distorted. Assuming correct that with 40 liters of fuel you then cover those km.
An objective reasoning involves the use of the same unit of measurement which, empty for full, we can summarize as follows:
1 liter of petrol = 9,6 kWh so 40 liters of petrol would be 384 kWh
1 liter of diesel = 10,7 kWh therefore 40 liters of diesel would be 428 kWh
1 liter of LPG = 7,5 kWh therefore 40 liters of LPG would be 300 kWh
According to the author, the car in question travels 170 km with 40 kWh (and not kw, wrong spelling and wrong unit of measurement) therefore with about 0,24 kWh /km.
Assuming your assumptions on km/litre are correct, on petrol they are 0,57 kWh/km, on diesel 0,63 kWh(km (considering the same mileage) and on LPG 0,54 kWh/km
It means that with the equivalent of a liter of petrol, the electric car travels about 40 km/l according to his estimate, or 82,36 km/l according to the declared by the house.
In terms of efficiency, the comparison just doesn't hold up.
All this without considering that an electric car costs 30% more than an equal thermal model and that a thermal car can last up to 15 years while an electric car when the batteries run out (after no more than 7 years) is worth zero.
Another space dance. Who ever said that after 7 years a battery has to be changed/thrown away? The average warranty is 8 years, so if you had to change it to 7 it would be free, just to say. But there are original batteries with more than 1,5 million km and ten years of life still performing around. Speaking of data, my battery after 140 km and 3 years (calculating that it was stopped for almost 8 months in 2020 due to covid) has "lost" just over 5%. Which translated into longevity before the change means about 15 years of minimum duration before assuming the change.
And with the average I have it means about a million km. With practically non-existent maintenance costs or little more (against the "services" of the thermal) and engines made to make as many without batting an eye.
So much for the "ecological choices" for which we have been under pressure for years: that's easy, Pantalone pays a lot.
At this point we can reach only one conclusion: green is fine, respect for the environment, environmental ethics, everything is fine, but not at our expense, not forcing us to spend four times as much, and, above all, not speculating above because people aren't stupid when it comes to picking their wallets.
It's not all roses and violets, but nowhere near as reflected in the text.
Electric mobility is growing every day, together with technology, infrastructure and above all new recovery/disposal/recycling technologies, already leading to much better sustainability in the complete life cycle compared to a thermal vehicle and above all air in inhabited centers decidedly breathable compared to what we are now used to.
There is so much more to say, but I have wrote a book about it!
I invite you to browse through it and, if you wish, I am at your disposal for a constructive comparison, as long as it is based on more reliable sources and data than social media
