You can buy a Toyota Corolla that gets 35MPG and you'll pay about $15,000 out the door. At 100,000 miles, your cost in gasoline will be about $12,000 at $4 per gallon. At then end of 100,000 miles, your Corolla will still have about 150,000 miles of life on it and if it is like all the Toyota's I've ever owned, it will likely not need any major drivetrain repairs.
At 100,000 miles on your Volt, you will likely need to replace the batteries, which will cost you $10,000. So even if you got the electricity for free, you would only be saving about $2000 and since you paid $40,000 for the car, you will have lost about $30,000 in value on the car (nobody is going to buy a used electric car). So effectively you are throwing away about $28,000.
But since (by your calculations) you are going to have to pay at least $2500 for the electricity to charge your batteries, you are not going to save a nickle by buying the electric car and driving it 100,000 miles. In fact you are going to pay about $500 more than the gasoline equivalent and you are going to lose about $30,000 to $40,000 in depreciation costs.
Get down to the Volt Dealer, my FRiend. Go buy one. We've already paid for it through our tax dollars. Good luck getting your money out of it.
P. Marlowe says:
“At 100,000 miles on your Volt, you will likely need to replace the batteries, which will cost you $10,000.”
Wrong. I don’t know where you pulled that figure from, but GM is providing 100,000 mile warranty on the
Lithium-Ion battery. Engineering tests project great confidence with that battery’s life.
Mr. Marlowe also declares:
‘you are going to lose about $30,000 to $40,000 in depreciation costs (on the Volt)...a Corolla will still have about 150,000 miles of life on it and if it is like all the Toyota’s I’ve ever owned, it will likely not need any major drivetrain repairs.”
The Volt does not have a drivetrain. And with a warrantied replacement battery, the depreciation will be significantly less than your fantastic projections.
These two flaws in your argument, sir, make it, (to borrow your term), moronic. I’ll let the others decide if that term applies to the author.