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To: brooklin
Top tier in Los Angeles is 30 cents an hour, add in contributions to lifeline power, local taxes, nuclear decommissioning, etc, and it works out to be closer to 45 cents an hour.

That's $6.30 to recharge a discharged Volt battery pack. Boy, look at those savings roll on in... Betcha that Volt will pay for itself in, umm, well, never at that rate.

11 posted on 04/02/2012 4:29:10 PM PDT by kingu (Everything starts with slashing the size and scope of the federal government.)
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To: kingu
That's $6.30 to recharge a discharged Volt battery pack.

Utilities offer special time-of-day rates for EV owners. If you do it just right then you can pay maybe 10 cents per kWh, and therefore your first 30 miles will cost you $2 to $3 - compared to $4.33 that I paid a few hours ago.

This would be great if the car itself is free or, say, is under $10K. But it isn't, and as result it will never be practical in financial sense, regardless of who you are and what is your travel pattern. If you drive a lot then you will be mostly burning gas (premium gas!) and if you drive a little then the car will rust and fall apart (7 to 10 years for batteries) before you reach the break-even distance.

In principle, an EV could be a good car for a city. But it has to be much, much cheaper than Volt and Leaf are. Perhaps they will become financially appealing if sold for under $10K. But that's not likely - the battery alone costs far more. We need better batteries before a pure EV becomes a viable option.

16 posted on 04/02/2012 4:49:43 PM PDT by Greysard
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