List your miles and MPGe

[MrDRMorgan]

Hi Pawl,

I too would say do not get discouraged. I have had my 2015 Spark EV just 2 weeks and have put about 600 miles on it just to try and figure out how to drive it. I am also still trying to figure out what the charging efficiency of the onboard charger is at 8 amps and 12 amps so I can determine how many of my daily solar system kWhs are going to be used to charge the car. SAE Combo DCFC chargers are few and far between where I live so I have been figuring out how best to use the provided charger to charge my Spark EV.

I can say this is one heck of a vehicle and very fun to drive and I am having a great time just playing with it. FYI - I am almost 70 years old. I guess We "old" kids never grow up!

 

[SparkevBlogspot]

I don't know how you (or OnStar) calculate MPGe, but anything above 100 MPGe in SoCal seems way off. One should talk about actual electricity used to charge the car, then convert to MPGe(quivalent) based on current gas prices. Sure, you could get infinite MPGe if you exclusively charge from your excess solar, but even that uses excess that could've been sold to the grid, probably at baseline rate, so it cannot be infinite, nor above 100 MPGe unless going down hill.

Using conservative estimate based on actual electricity used, not the "100% efficiency" number reported by the car, following is what I find.

http://sparkev.blogspot.com/2015/05/spark-ev-miles-per-gallon-this-table.html

"This table quickly shows how Spark EV is doing with respect to gas car's MPG. Rows are $/gallon, columns are $/kWh. Reds are less than 50 MPGe; Prius will be better. Yellows are less than 75 MPGe; one can get this with 2001 Honda Insight. Stay in the clear, and no gas car can match the efficiency. The last column is $0.59/kWh, the rate charged by Blink for their DC fast charging."

With eVgo OTG plan (more than 2 DCFC a month), one barely gets 70 MPGe. Since I cannot do without DCFC, this is pretty much the maximum MPGe for SparkEV at today's gas prices.

http://sparkev.blogspot.com/2015/05/public-chargers-in-socal.html

Actual electricity used to charge SparkEV is much more than what's reported by the car.

http://sparkev.blogspot.com/2015/05/spark-ev-efficiency.html

 

[MrDRMorgan]

I will have to spend some time with the chart to understand how to interpret it accurately.

My 2015 Spark EV now has about 650 miles on it so I ran a charging test yesterday. The vehicle was driven mostly on the freeway with some city driving too. Total miles driven was 53. The previous evening the car was place on the charger and left on overnight after a full charge was achieved. At the end of the "test" day the car was put back on the charger and charged at a 12-amp rate over night. Full charge was achieved before 6 am the next morning and 12.86 kWh were used to recharge the car back to a full charge as measured by the blinking dash light.

NOTE: The 12.86 kWh was measured by a power meter at the wall outlet.

The 56 miles traveled and the 12.86 kWh used equals 4.12 mi / Kwh.

MPGe is calculated (per the EPA) as 3370 / kWh per 100 miles. For my test this calculates as : 3370 / (100 mi / 4.12 kWh per mile) or 3370 / 24.27 which calculates to an MPGe of 139.

I have solar on my home and all of my non-solar power is priced at about $0.17 per kWh. My non-solar power cost for this test is 12.86 kWh x $0.17 or $2.19. My wife normally drives her 2002 Honda Accord which get about 25 mpg for similar driving. Therefore, she would need 2.24 gallon of gas to cover the same distance. 2.24 gallons x $3.25 per gallon equals $7.28. She saved $5.09 for this outing alone.

I also have a full-size Chevy pickup truck which gets about 13 mpg in town. My wife and I are both trying to minimize the use of the Honda and Chevy truck by using the Spark EV. The total cost of fuel savings alone is quite significant.

I do have an NRG eVgo membership for which I pay a $15 per month membership fee plus $0.10 per minute of charging. I also have a GreenLots account for which I pay $0.22 per kWh. I will probably use both accounts one or more times per month as needed to get back home from trips that exceed a one-way distance of 40-45 miles.

I did an extensive cost analysis to support leasing my EV and, after all costs had been taken into account, I still came out way ahead with the EV.

 

[SparkevBlogspot]

The chart is based on 4mi/kwh. You can convert mi/kwh to mi/$ then to mi/gal based on current gas prices. You can read how I do this in my blog. Since everything's linear, you can scale to what you actually get. All the mumbo jumbo of MPGe don't mean squat if that doesn't correlate to what actually comes out of your wallet.

If you have OTG plan, your MPGe would be even lower. Max I get at lease miles is about 70 MPGe if I only use eVgo DCFC, far less if I use less (as low as 25 MPGe for 3 DCFC sessions). I cover that in my public charging blog post.

http://sparkev.blogspot.com/2015/05/public-chargers-in-socal.html

 

[MrDRMorgan]

Thanks. I will check out your blogspot.

Dennis

 

[Nashco]

...but anything above 100 MPGe in SoCal seems way off.

I think a big part of this is that you're using local energy/fuel rates, as you hinted (SoCal). My "green source" (renewable) energy cost in Portland is about 8 cents/kWh before taxes/fees, about 17 cents/kWh including taxes (with no TOU reductions). Our gas is about $3/gallon for regular gasoline, currently. I also get drastically better MPGe than you, apparently, as the only time I get anywhere close to 4 mi/kWh is when it's really cold and I'm using a lot of heater or of course when I'm racing. For example, this week I'm displaying above 7 mi/kWh, as my car seems to love the warm weather. Just providing an example of how significantly this impacts the mythical MPGe number.

For what it's worth, if you put your spreadsheet in a Google docs public document (protected from saving edits, of course) we could all play around with our own numbers.

Bryce

 

[SparkevBlogspot]

I think a big part of this is that you're using local energy/fuel rates, as you hinted (SoCal).

I think the problem is people use EPA (or other) formula that artificially boost numbers. One has to use local energy/fuel rates. Otherwise, MPGe number is some meaningless quantity that says nothing about reality. It makes you feel good to say you got 12345 MPGe, but that's not saying anything if there's no correlation to what you actually paid.

My "green source" (renewable) energy cost in Portland is about 8 cents/kWh before taxes/fees, about 17 cents/kWh including taxes (with no TOU reductions). Our gas is about $3/gallon for regular gasoline, currently. I also get drastically better MPGe than you, apparently, as the only time I get anywhere close to 4 mi/kWh is when it's really cold and I'm using a lot of heater or of course when I'm racing. For example, this week I'm displaying above 7 mi/kWh, as my car seems to love the warm weather. Just providing an example of how significantly this impacts the mythical MPGe number.

As I post in my blog, lucky you to be not living in CA. Around here, gas is about $3.75/gal. But your mi/kWh is wrong. What's reported by the car assumes 100% efficiency in charging. You have to measure outside the car at the outlet to know what is really used. It's about 70% to 80% efficient (for L1/L2), so you're probably getting 5.25 mi/kWh. The table I made assumes typical use with some AC and up/down hill. You're getting good mi/kWh for now, but that'll change with different driving conditions (eg. heater in winter, going up / down hills, forced to drive 80 mph in freeway)

In your case, you can look up in my table for $3/gal + $0.17/kWh to find 70.6 MPGe if you're getting 4 mi/kWh. To convert to 5.25 mi/kWh, 70.6 * 5.25 / 4 = 92.7 MPGe.

This assumes you don't have monthly fee like eVgo OTG plan. If you do, then you need to add $15 to electricity cost. At 800 miles per month (lease miles), that works out to about 70 MPGe for SoCal at 5 mi/kWh for best-typical case. You will get worse, because gas prices around your area is much lower (gas is ~20% lower while you drive only ~5% more efficient). See my blog post on public chargers to see how I computed.

http://sparkev.blogspot.com/2015/05/public-chargers-in-socal.html

For what it's worth, if you put your spreadsheet in a Google docs public document (protected from saving edits, of course) we could all play around with our own numbers.

Purpose of the table is so that you don't have to play around with the numbers. I suppose I can put a field for actual mi/kWh used, but I suspect people will erroneously use the number reported by the car (as you did), not the actual measured number, making the spreadsheet fodder for ridicule by gasbags (I call irrational ev hater gasbags)

 

[Nashco]

But your mi/kWh is wrong. What's reported by the car assumes 100% efficiency in charging.

No, it's NOT wrong, just displaying different data than you wish it displayed. The car's display is telling you how far you have driven (miles) per kWh of energy out of the battery (thus, mi/kWh). Just because you want to know the mi/kWh from the wall instead of the battery doesn't mean that the car is wrong or that I am wrong. I specifically said my car was "displaying"...never said the overall efficiency. The same goes for any gas car...the car's display only tells you MPG as estimated by the fuel injected into the engine and the miles driven, it doesn't account for evaporation, spillage at the pump, etc. that are a normal part of driving and vary greatly depending on the operating conditions.

You have to measure outside the car at the outlet to know what is really used. It's about 70% to 80% efficient (for L1/L2), so you're probably getting 5.25 mi/kWh. The table I made assumes typical use with some AC and up/down hill. You're getting good mi/kWh for now, but that'll change with different driving conditions (eg. heater in winter, going up / down hills, forced to drive 80 mph in freeway)

I've had my car for a year and a half and I assure you that I've driven it in more extreme conditions than you ever will (unless you also race your Spark EV ). I know what it takes to get 7 mi/kWh, 0.7 mi/kWh, and most everything in between. In my case, my typical commute is very efficient, so less than 6 mi/kWh is unusual unless I'm using the heater. I charge with L2 or with CCS. Charging efficiency with L2 is about 88% and about 78% with L1, no idea where you're getting 80% with L2 or 70% with L1. CCS is even more efficient (90%+) but that's been more difficult data to get with the Spark EV.

Anyway, that's all beside the point, my point is that your chart makes a base assumption of efficiency and only let's the user see the "crossover" point based on variable fuel and electricity costs, but in reality there's another variable...actual mi/kWh. It's your chart, so you can do what you want with it, I was just giving some feedback at the hangup I had (scale is skewed to very high energy prices and assumes a fixed efficiency).

I think the safe bet for somebody who hasn't driven an EV and is considering one is to assume L2 charging with EPA rating, which would be 4.4 mi/kWh * 0.88 efficiency = approximately 3.9 mi/kWh. Of course, many have proven that the Spark EV is rated very conservatively, but it's always best to use the EPA rating when doing broad comparisons as it's a consistent measurement method.

Bryce

 

[nozferatu]

I think a big part of this is that you're using local energy/fuel rates, as you hinted (SoCal).
I think the problem is people use EPA (or other) formula that artificially boost numbers. One has to use local energy/fuel rates. Otherwise, MPGe number is some meaningless quantity that says nothing about reality. It makes you feel good to say you got 12345 MPGe, but that's not saying anything if there's no correlation to what you actually paid.

Purpose of the table is so that you don't have to play around with the numbers. I suppose I can put a field for actual mi/kWh used, but I suspect people will erroneously use the number reported by the car (as you did), not the actual measured number, making the spreadsheet fodder for ridicule by gasbags (I call irrational ev hater gasbags)

I'm really not quite sure I understand your argument or spreadsheet yet.

Purely on the basis of mathematics, my car is VASTLY cheaper to run than an IC car and the cost of fuel would have to be far far lower than it is to make any sense cost-wise to drive an IC.

I don't even want to get into the benefits of the environmental impact that most anti-EV people try and make stick on EVs in general.

EV's simply use less oil. Period...at any point. Driving, sitting, parked, maintenance, etc. etc etc.

For the sake of calculations, my city charges .16c per kWh. I do not use any special rate for special times.

I have 19,300 miles on my car. I've leased it since March 2014. So I've had it for 15 months. I've driven the car 1287 miles a month. I would say around 10% of my miles have been charged for free at public stations. But let's say I paid for the whole thing.

I've averaged 5.4 miles/kWh over the miles I've driven and 5.6 miles/kWh over the last 7000 miles I've reset my trip. So let's use 5.4 miles/kWh for my total average.

So I'm consuming 238 kW per month...which costs me $38 per month to charge my car.

As a comparison, my wife's car is getting 28 MPG. The cost of fuel around here is $3.78 for premium which her car requires.

If she drives the same amount of mileage as I do (which she does not thankfully), her car consumes 46 gallons of fuel...which costs $174 per month.

That means it would cost us over 4 1/2 times more to drive her car as it would mine. Even at 90% efficiency, the EV still blows the IC vehicle out of the water. At 90% efficiency the cost of fuel would have to be .91c per gallon to be as cheap as the car I drive.

There is no where in the country that offers fuel for that low a cost. And I don't know of any EV that is averaging 1.05 miles/kWh either. So the argument to me is a tad moot.

 

[SparkevBlogspot]

But your mi/kWh is wrong. What's reported by the car assumes 100% efficiency in charging.

No, it's NOT wrong, just displaying different data than you wish it displayed.

It is WRONG regard to actual MPGe that matter, which is what comes out of your pocket. My point is MPGe we discuss should be about real money, not some nebulous quantity.

The same goes for any gas car...the car's display only tells you MPG as estimated by the fuel injected into the engine and the miles driven, it doesn't account for evaporation, spillage at the pump, etc. that are a normal part of driving and vary greatly depending on the operating conditions.

Evaporation, etc for gas car does not account for 20% loss, not even 5%. Comparing that to EV charging loss is BS, more ammo for gasbags.

I've had my car for a year and a half and I assure you that I've driven it in more extreme conditions than you ever will (unless you also race your Spark EV ).

I'm not questioning whether you know your EV. But using display data is just WRONG in making MPGe determination. Most extreme I drove was with AC / heat going up 2000 ft. in freeway. I got bit over 3 mi/kWh displayed; I did not measure charging, but I wouldn't use that number any more than 10 mi/kWh I got going back home as displayed by the car. They have to scale (lower) to account for charging.

I charge with L2 or with CCS. Charging efficiency with L2 is about 88% and about 78% with L1, no idea where you're getting 80% with L2 or 70% with L1. CCS is even more efficient (90%+) but that's been more difficult data to get with the Spark EV.

You can work with best case numbers (and get disappointed) or typical or worst case (and get elated when it turns out better). I got around 80% L1 charging when car is new. I haven't done so lately, but I suspect that could go down in time as battery ages. How low? Hard to say, but I throw out 70% as very pessimistic number.

http://sparkev.blogspot.com/2015/05/spark-ev-efficiency.html

costs, but in reality there's another variable...actual mi/kWh. It's your chart, so you can do what you want with it, I was just giving some feedback at the hangup I had (scale is skewed to very high energy prices and assumes a fixed efficiency).

I say this explicitly: I don't want people to plug in the WRONG number (ie, displayed number) and get false sense of "wow, SparkEV gets 123 MPGe!" And then they'd advertise that to be ridiculed by gasbags. If you had used 7.1 mi/kWh, it would be WRONG. But if you actually measured (or used conservative estimate 5.25 as I pointed out), then there's no room for gasbags; watch them squirm when you tell them "yes, I accounted for that and then some"; shuts them up real fast.

Scale is skewed to typical prices, not high. I don't think gas costs under $2/gal or electricity cost less than $0.11/kWh in CA/OR/MD. If anything, I should've added up to $10/gal and $0.69/kWh to account for Asia and DCFC when SoC is 95%+. Even so, one can simply scale by factor of 2 to get anywhere from $1/gal to $9/gal and $0.55/kWh to $1/kWh; mult/div by 2 can be easily done in head. For foreigners to envy and weep, I also provide L/100km table in my blog that cover their typical rate; there, they really get huge MPGe numbers (or low L/100km) due to high gas prices.

http://sparkev.blogspot.com/2015/05/spark-ev-miles-per-gallon-this-table.html

However, I do see your point that some may not want to do anything in their head. I will consider google doc with caveat in big bold letters and show both user and 4 mi/kWh numbers side by side (how? more homework for me...)

I think the safe bet for somebody who hasn't driven an EV and is considering one is to assume L2 charging with EPA rating, which would be 4.4 mi/kWh * 0.88 efficiency = approximately 3.9 mi/kWh.

I actually estimated 3.5 mi/kWh before I got the car, and 4 mi/kWh is measured in typical driving with L1 (see my post). Display showed 4.8 mi/kWh. 4 is a good conservative real-world estimate to use. It's easier to do math in head, too. Am I showing my age by keep insisting on doing things in my head? :mrgreen:

Of course, many have proven that the Spark EV is rated very conservatively, but it's always best to use the EPA rating when doing broad comparisons as it's a consistent measurement method.

If you want to compare marketing hype, EPA may have some value (or not; marketers do all kinds of BS). But to keep honest for real users, EPA number is just WRONG; EPA number will disappoint and give more ammo for gasbags.

 

[SparkevBlogspot]

I'm really not quite sure I understand your argument or spreadsheet yet.

I saw many outrageous MPGe numbers in post, and I wanted to clarify. MPGe in some nebulous sense means little. It only gives irrational gas car idiots (aka, gasbags) ammo to say that EV drivers are crazy. What's important is how much electricity in money is used to operate the car, and convert the money to gallons of gas to get MPGe(quivalent)

EV is not superior to gas cars in all cases when it comes to MPGe, and that's the purpose of the table. For example, if you use Blink at $0.59/kWh and current gas prices are $3.50/gal, you're effectively paying as if you're driving 23.7 MPG car. Obviously, your situation is different. That's why the table is made. Stay in clear and you're better than any gas car, provided you don't have monthly cost like eVgo OTG plan. I discuss that in my public charger post.

http://sparkev.blogspot.com/2015/05/public-chargers-in-socal.html

Regarding your 5.x mi/kWh; is that displayed by the car or measured outside the car? If it's displayed by car, you have to rate it down depending on your charging method to account for charging efficiency. Good conservative rule of thumb is 80%. See my post on how to scale MPGe for your actual mi/kWh value.

http://sparkev.blogspot.com/2015/05/spark-ev-miles-per-gallon-this-table.html

 

[MrDRMorgan]

The way I drive my Spark EV will never be the same as someone else drives their Spark EV. As a "newbie" Spark EV pilot, I really appreciate all of the comments, suggestions, etc. I find on this website. They have been extremely helpful to me in learning how best to drive this car along with making me aware of potential concerns. But, there is still much more I need to learn.

My major point of interest is how much does it cost me to charge my Spark EV and go from point A to point B and back. To do this, I need to know how many kWh I need to supply from my home and what that cost will be. I know there are charging losses the car consumes that do not buy me any additional miles. That is why I use a power meter at the wall outlet. The power meter tells me ALL of the kWh the car has used. The ODO tells me ALL the miles I traveled between charges. That is all of the info I need. I calculate the cost of the kWh used and compare that to the cost I would incur if I used one of my gas burners.

This is what I have found so far with respect to charging levels as they apply to my "current" Spark EV driving:

A. DCFC (60 mile fwy trip - DCFC charge at two different locations): 5.13 mi / kWh

B. Level 1 home charger at 12 amps charge rate (96 miles: fwy and around town with A/C on most of the time): 3.48 mi / kWh

What I really would like to see on this blog is a section dedicated to real-life ways Spark EV drivers have found to most efficiently drive a Spark EV.

My goal is to significantly reduce or even eliminate my gasoline usage for in-town driving which constitutes about 85-90% of all of the driving miles my wife and I do. That is where I am going to save real money and that is why I leased the car in the first place. The fact that it is really FUN to drive is a big plus.

Thanks so much for all of your collective suggestions and comments.

 

[nozferatu]

I'm really not quite sure I understand your argument or spreadsheet yet.

I saw many outrageous MPGe numbers in post, and I wanted to clarify. MPGe in some nebulous sense means little. It only gives irrational gas car idiots (aka, gasbags) ammo to say that EV drivers are crazy. What's important is how much electricity in money is used to operate the car, and convert the money to gallons of gas to get MPGe(quivalent)

EV is not superior to gas cars in all cases when it comes to MPGe, and that's the purpose of the table. For example, if you use Blink at $0.59/kWh and current gas prices are $3.50/gal, you're effectively paying as if you're driving 23.7 MPG car. Obviously, your situation is different. That's why the table is made. Stay in clear and you're better than any gas car, provided you don't have monthly cost like eVgo OTG plan. I discuss that in my public charger post.

http://sparkev.blogspot.com/2015/05/public-chargers-in-socal.html

Regarding your 5.x mi/kWh; is that displayed by the car or measured outside the car? If it's displayed by car, you have to rate it down depending on your charging method to account for charging efficiency. Good conservative rule of thumb is 80%. See my post on how to scale MPGe for your actual mi/kWh value.

http://sparkev.blogspot.com/2015/05/spark-ev-miles-per-gallon-this-table.html

I get what you're saying but when you're stating that EVs are not always as good as gas cars, you're taking the extreme negative case for EVs and comparing it to what is now the standard for IC cars (economically that is via prices of electricity and fuel).

What I am saying is that for an EV to worse economically to drive/fuel up/charge as an IC car, the cost of fuel has to be going back to 1980's or 70's prices. OR you have to charging at a ludicrously high rate as you mentioned in your post above.

A 20% reduction in efficiency is far too conservative IMO...particularly for an L2 charger as Bryce pointed out and if you want to really compare apples to apples, you must apply that same loss to IC cars as well via many factors associated with driving those types of vehicles. Even with the uneven comparison and a 20% loss (which I do not agree with), I'm still saying 3 times more money over my IC vehicle.

I've never paid for external charging except once in Ventura. I paid I think 0.50 cents per hour or .16 cents / kWh to charge up.

I think your table is interesting but definitely needs to be tweaked.

BTW...the amount of money I am spending on increased electricity is spot on with how much I calculated via my on-board trip used multiplied by the price I pay. So the correlation is very very accurate. I forgot to mention that since you stated it's how much money we spend that is the real measure.

 

[nozferatu]

As it happens I went back and looked at my electricity bill that is now electronically measured and recorded by my city. It's interesting to see variation during the seasons due to A/C, etc etc...but the jump from when I had no EV to when I did is evident and consistent because the increases over time are very consistent.

Prior to getting my Spark EV, I was running at about 300 kWh per month. After getting the car, I have been running at around 560 kWh per month.

That means my car has increased electricity usage by 260 kWh per month. I measured 238 kWh per month based on trip computer measurements. I've been averaging 1286 miles per month. That equates to 4.94 miles / kWh.

The difference between 238/260 = .915. Or another way to compute it is I get 4.94 miles/kWh when calculating how much electricity I consume for my EV.

Again, I'm FAR better off driving an EV than a regular car by a very very wide margin...and that gets worse if I charge for free.

 

[SparkevBlogspot]

As it happens I went back and looked at my electricity bill
...
That equates to 4.94 miles / kWh.

Aha! It's great that you looked it up. I saw gas prices at $3.20 today, using my table at $0.17/kWh, you get 75.3 MPGe at 4 mi/kWh. Since you got 5 mi/kWh (let's make math easier), you're actually getting 75.3*5/4 = 94 MPGe. Pretty damn good! There is no reason to make up bogus number like 140 MPGe using some formula when SparkEV is doing great in dollars to dollars comparison against gas cars.

Again, I'm FAR better off driving an EV than a regular car by a very very wide margin...and that gets worse if I charge for free.

Wide margin for some, such as yourself. However, if you use eVgo OTG plan, and only charge 3 times using their DCFC and no other charge, you'd get 25 MPGe. You can check my math in my blog post. If you drive 140/mo lease miles and only use DCFC, you only get about 70 MPGe at 5 mi/kWh (also depends on high gas prices in CA ). Membership fee takes about 1/3 of the cost ($15 out of about $45). It's still good, but old Honda Insight in freeway miles could beat it. It probably can't beat SparkEV overall, but the margin is pretty close, probably only about 10% better for SparkEV.

This is not to prop up gas cars. Completely opposite, this is to showcase how SparkEV can beat gas cars even with lots of real-world considerations. But we have to be honest; we can't use Blink all the time or charge at home with Tier3 rates and telll people we're getting 140 MPGe.

Even with the uneven comparison and a 20% loss (which I do not agree with), I'm still saying 3 times more money over my IC vehicle.

20% is L1 charging, which many people use at home. But that's beside the point; you should use actual mi/kWh, not the inflated number reported by car. My F350 gets about 7 miles per gallon while my Prius got 50 miles per gallon. Elantra gets about 35 miles per gallon, so you're probably getting bit less then 3 times better than Elantra. (Did I mention that's pretty damn good?)

I've never paid for external charging except once in Ventura. I paid I think 0.50 cents per hour or .16 cents / kWh to charge up.

Unfortunately, many people including myself, cannot live without DCFC, which means eVgo OTG membership fee. DCFC rate is about $0.17/kWh, but it's more efficient, so it's better than L2 rate. This is also explored in my blog post.

I think your table is interesting but definitely needs to be tweaked.

I suppose it could have provision for membership fee like eVgo OTG plan, which is not simple linear operation from current table. That would be separate table, and MPGe values would be even lower. I am curious, though, what percentage of SparkEV drivers have eVgo OTG plan.

 

[nozferatu]

Aha! It's great that you looked it up. I saw gas prices at $3.20 today, using my table at $0.17/kWh, you get 75.3 MPGe at 4 mi/kWh. Since you got 5 mi/kWh (let's make math easier), you're actually getting 75.3*5/4 = 94 MPGe. Pretty damn good! There is no reason to make up bogus number like 140 MPGe using some formula when SparkEV is doing great in dollars to dollars comparison against gas cars.

Wide margin for some, such as yourself. However, if you use eVgo OTG plan, and only charge 3 times using their DCFC and no other charge, you'd get 25 MPGe. You can check my math in my blog post. If you drive 140/mo lease miles and only use DCFC, you only get about 70 MPGe at 5 mi/kWh (also depends on high gas prices in CA ). Membership fee takes about 1/3 of the cost ($15 out of about $45). It's still good, but old Honda Insight in freeway miles could beat it. It probably can't beat SparkEV overall, but the margin is pretty close, probably only about 10% better for SparkEV.

This is not to prop up gas cars. Completely opposite, this is to showcase how SparkEV can beat gas cars even with lots of real-world considerations. But we have to be honest; we can't use Blink all the time or charge at home with Tier3 rates and telll people we're getting 140 MPGe.

20% is L1 charging, which many people use at home. But that's beside the point; you should use actual mi/kWh, not the inflated number reported by car. My F350 gets about 7 miles per gallon while my Prius got 50 miles per gallon. Elantra gets about 35 miles per gallon, so you're probably getting bit less then 3 times better than Elantra. (Did I mention that's pretty damn good?)

Unfortunately, many people including myself, cannot live without DCFC, which means eVgo OTG membership fee. DCFC rate is about $0.17/kWh, but it's more efficient, so it's better than L2 rate. This is also explored in my blog post.

I suppose it could have provision for membership fee like eVgo OTG plan, which is not simple linear operation from current table. That would be separate table, and MPGe values would be even lower. I am curious, though, what percentage of SparkEV drivers have eVgo OTG plan.

I don't see how I'm getting less than three times your Elantra's mileage when I've actually calculated real road mileage as 4.94 mi/kWh with losses. That's 145 MPGe real world. That's over 4.5 times what your Elantra gets real world.

If you want to get philosophical and factor in the real cost of using IC vehicles and the horrendous social, economic, and environmental costs of oil associated with it, it makes paying for the eVgo membership fee rather minute.

 

[SparkevBlogspot]

I don't see how I'm getting less than three times your Elantra's mileage when I've actually calculated real road mileage as 4.94 mi/kWh with losses. That's 145 MPGe real world. That's over 4.5 times what your Elantra gets real world.

If you want to get philosophical and factor in the real cost of using IC vehicles and the horrendous social, economic, and environmental costs of oil associated with it, it makes paying for the eVgo membership fee rather minute.

You can live in delusion of 145 MPGe or you can use 95 MPGe which reflects actual dollars you paid.

EV is not some magic that makes you fart roses. You still have social, etc problems with EV. While EV can get energy from multiple sources, including oil, nat gas, hydro, solar, it is by no means panacea. I stay away from such nebulous topics, but argue with real tangible dollars and sense benefits that comes out of one's wallet.

Beauty of SparkEV is there's not much more excuse for gas bags. It's quicker, cheaper, more fun, and range of 80 miles (about 1.5 hours driving) with DCFC is longer than the bladder can hold after tall Starbucks coffee. There's no need to make up fantasies like 145 MPGe.

By the way, Leaf sucks.

 

[SparkevBlogspot]

I think I found the problem with 145 MPGe fantasy. Long ago when MPGe was first computed, electricity was lot cheaper, and it was based on $0.10/kWh and gas at $3/gal. If you look at the table, you find 109.1 MPGe at $0.11/kWh. It's 10% higher, so you'd get 109.1 * 1.1 = 120 MPGe.

Table is for 4 mi/kWh, so for 5 mi/kWh, you'd get 120*5/4 = 150 MPGe. Well, maybe they assumed slightly lower gas prices or higher electric prices.

Indeed, my electric rate just a year ago was $0.14/kWh. I don't have records from 6 years ago, but I suspect it was lot lower. Still, it doesn't make sense to post MPGe data based on assumptions no longer valid.

Which brings another infuriating point. Electric rate jumped by over 25% in one fell swoop? And they are proposing to increase it even more by reducing number of tiers? They're treading in gas company territory in terms of screwing us over.

 

[MrDRMorgan]

Since 2009 I have been tracking PG&E's constant rate increases and changes. Now, as they move towards two tiers, tier 1 and tier 2 have moved up significantly since 2009. As of the last rate hike on March 1 of this year, the tier rates for my area - Schedule E-1, Baseline Group S - have increased follows:

Tier 1: 41.75% currently $0.16352/kWh
Tier 2: 42.38% currently $0.18673/kWh
Tier 3: 11.30% currently $0.27504/kWh
Tier 4: -5.44% currently $0.33504/kWh
Tier 5: -18.38% currently $0.33504/kWh

I have a PV solar system on my home and annually produce about 500 kWh more than my home uses. I estimated I will drive the Spark EV about 8000 miles per year and that will require an additional 2200 kWh. 500 kWh of that will be covered by the excess solar and I will pay for the remainder at tier 1 rates. At current PG&E tier 1 rates, that amounts to $278 for the year and 8000 miles. This averages out to about $0.035 per mile for power. My Honda averages about $0.14 per mile and my Chevy truck averages about $0.27 per mile for the same 8000 mile distance (calculated using gasoline @ $3.25 per gallon). My Spark EV cost model shows my total cost per mile to own and operate the vehicle is $0.182 per mile (includes insurance, license fees, additional power costs, NRG eVgo membership, etc.) and also assumes almost all charging is done at home.

If I look at the cost of gasoline alone for my Honda, gasoline would have to be $4.20 per gallon to break even with all of the costs incurred to lease the Spark EV. My truck is a different story. Gasoline would need to drop to $2.19 before I would break even. I have seen gasoline prices reach both limits in just the past few years. Needless to say, my truck is not getting used much.

 

[SparkevBlogspot]

Since 2009 I have been tracking PG&E's constant rate increases and changes.

Do you have data from 2009?

Now, as they move towards two tiers, tier 1 and tier 2 have moved up significantly since 2009.

Yeah, and that will suck for low energy users like myself and those with solar who have to draw from grid at night. It's like they are encouraging high energy use.

This averages out to about $0.035 per mile for power. My Honda averages about $0.14 per mile and my Chevy truck averages about $0.27 per mile for the same 8000 mile distance (calculated using gasoline @ $3.25 per gallon).

For your situation, SparkEV wins hands down as long as you avoid Blink and other high cost providers. That's where my table is useful. But general comparison should be made to Spark gas or comparable; they get about 35 MPG overall, so 70 MPGe of SparkEV with best case DCFC lease miles is about 2x better, less if one's not optimizing OTG plan.

Basically, you can't assume SparkEV will be better than gas cars without knowing the true cost. My point is assuming inflated numbers like 145 MPGe with faulty assumptions don't do any good for anyone. I think you get it, but I hope other readers here understand, too.