How much is an EV going to cost me?

How much is the Nissan Leaf? How much is an EV to operate?

Last week I brought the Nissan Leaf to your attention, and left some of you wondering what the price will be. That will depend on whether or not Nissan decides to lease you the battery pack. You see, the most expensive part of the car is the $10,000 – $20,000 Lithium-Ion cell pack. Seeing as how you’ll want to consider swapping your battery pack out for a new one after 10 years or so when you can no longer quite make it home on a single charge. In the Leaf’s case, Nissan will probably strive to make it available in the low to mid $20k’s. Whether or not that will include full ownership of the battery pack is yet to be determined. There are definate advantages to leasing the expensive batteries separate from owning the car itself. Battery replacement costs and residual values are something to consider. Imagine spending $40k on an EV and after 5 years when, hypothetically, your battery warranty is up, you try to sell your vehicle. Instead of being worth $25k after 5 years, it’s only worth around $15k because of the expensive cost of replacing the aging battery. At the moment you can factor in the $7,500 tax credit you’ll get for purchasing an EV, which will also help increase public interest.

Then there’s the cost of fuel. Right now the cost of Crude Oil is nearing $80/barrel. In the Washington, DC area, regular gasoline is about $2.65/gallon. Nissan estimates a full charge for the Nissan Leaf EV will cost you around $3 if you charge it up at home during off-peak hours (You can set the charge time.) The full charge will take between 4 and 8 hours on a 220V home charging unit and get you around 100 miles. Alternatively, at one of the quick-charge stations being built in Tokyo, an 80% charge could occur in just 26 minutes. What if you park in your apartment complex’s garage and want to plug in and charge? -Well at the moment, you are stealing electricity so as more people get caught doing this, rules & enforcement will follow.

Lastly, there’s the big bad tax man. Right now in the US, about 15% of your gas money goes to the government. That money helps fund road projects and maintain current roads. If we all start switching to EVs, we will be using the government built roads without contributing to their costs. How will the increase in infrastructure spending to beef up our electric grids be paid for? There have been several proposals about how to replace that revenue. If there’s one thing politicians don’t like to be known for, it’s imposing taxes. Some options include a per-kWh tax for charging your vehicle. Another possibility is some kind of GPS mileage tracking tax rate. The state of Washington is considering imposing a $100-per-year registration tax on Electric Vehicles. That flat tax rate seems pretty made-up, but determining a fair tax system for EV users is going to stir controversy this year. Please leave your comments about taxation ideas in the comments.