Driving an electric car doesn’t save money?

Driving an electric car does not save money

For consumers, the most direct way to perceive the superiority of a vehicle is the cost of use. Which model is cheaper to use, consumers will naturally prefer which model. Many companies regard the cost of use as a selling point when promoting electric vehicles. Needless to say, electricity is much cheaper than gas. But in actual use, is the comprehensive cost of electric vehicles necessarily lower than that of fuel vehicles? After buying a car, many consumers feel that it is far from the slogan they heard when they bought the car.

Explicit use costs have certain advantages

Many people who are new to new energy vehicles have this idea: “With such a budget, I can buy a fuel vehicle. "New energy vehicles have been the spokesperson of "flashy" for a long time, and even their subsidized prices are often looked at in a different light. So, is this really the case? Putting aside the purpose of purchasing electric vehicles, let’s take a real look at the cost of maintaining an electric vehicle.

Ms. Luo is a BYD Qin EV300 owner. Her electric vehicle has a relatively high usage rate and can run about 2,000 kilometers per month. According to reports, she usually uses private household piles for charging, and civilian electricity is about 0.6 yuan per kilowatt hour. Using Ms. Luo's car as a reference, her expenses on electricity, maintenance and insurance can be easily calculated.

In terms of charging costs, according to Ms. Luo, her car has a mileage of about 24,000 kilometers a year, with an average electricity consumption of 0.13 yuan per kilometer. By calculation, the annual charging expenditure for this car is 3,120 yuan, and the average monthly electricity bill is 260 yuan. In terms of maintenance costs, after using up the free maintenance provided by the dealer when purchasing the car, the average annual maintenance cost of the car is 680 yuan, which is maintained once a year. As an electric vehicle that does not need to pay vehicle and vessel usage tax, the average insurance cost of the Qin EV300 is 3,000 yuan a year.

Adding the electricity, maintenance and insurance costs, it can be concluded that the annual cost of Ms. Luo’s electric car is 6,800 without considering soft expenses such as parking and traffic violations. Yuan, the average cost of maintaining a car per month is 567 Yuan.

In addition, Ms. Luo also calculated an account. If she and her husband take the subway to and from get off work, the total cost of taking the subway every day is about 24 yuan, which is calculated based on working 22 days a month. The cost of the car is 528 yuan, and the cost of taking public transportation for a year has reached 6,336 yuan. Based on this calculation, the cost saved by driving an electric car is not much higher.

The annual vehicle usage cost of another Baojun E100 owner, Mr. Hu, is higher than that of Ms. Luo. In addition to daily charging fees and insurance fees, Mr. Hu also has to pay for it in the community and at work. Two parking fees, these two parking fees are as high as 5,400 yuan/year, and the charging pile he usually uses is also a public charging pile for commercial electricity. Based on this overall calculation, the annual cost of using his electric car reaches 9,000 yuan, and the average monthly usage cost is 750 yuan.

Hidden usage costs are easily overlooked

With the above actual usage cost data, it is not difficult to see that the usage cost of electric vehicles is not as low as advertised. At present, the industry compares the cost of using electric vehicles mainly based on civilian electricity and fuel prices. Due to state subsidies, residential electricity is much cheaper than commercial electricity. Residential electricity only costs 0.6 yuan, while commercial electricity costs 1.5 yuan. The gap between the two is very large.

In order to support the development of the country, in addition to fuel production costs, fuel pricing also includes value-added tax, urban construction tax and other surcharges. The proportion of these taxes to the fuel price is estimated to be as high as five percent. If electric vehicles become mainstream in the future, these additional fees may also be added, and the current cost of using electric vehicles may double.

The cost of fuel also includes the operating cost of the gas station, the construction cost of the gas station, labor costs, etc., plus the profits of all aspects of fuel operation, the fuel price will naturally rise. In the future, when charging stations become the main way to charge cars for daily use, this cost will of course also be added, so that the energy replenishment cost of electric vehicles will be almost the same as that of fuel vehicles.

This is only the energy replenishment cost of electric vehicles. In fact, the cost of using a car is not only the energy replenishment cost, but also includes depreciation and other costs, and vehicle insurance premiums have always been relatively high.

In terms of insurance premiums alone, as insurance companies increase insurance premiums for electric vehicles, the annual cost of electric vehicles may not be lower than that of fuel vehicles.

Insurance premiums for fuel vehicles often start to fall from the second year onwards, and can be reduced to about 40% off. However, electric vehicles rise against the trend. The difference between an increase and a decrease is about 4,000 yuan, which is spread evenly to each car. The monthly cost is 333 yuan. For a family car, adding more than 100 yuan will equal the cost of gas.

It is understandable for insurance companies to increase the insurance premiums for electric vehicles. In recent years, as the stock of electric vehicles has increased, the number of fire accidents involving electric vehicles has also increased. Some insurance companies said that if the insurance business of electric vehicles is separately listed, the insurance premiums of electric vehicles will not cover the compensation at all. It is for this reason that the insurance companies are prompted to increase premiums. In fact, this is not a hidden risk for car owners. The conclusion of the insurance company proves that electric vehicle damage accidents are higher than that of fuel vehicles.

The battery cost of electric vehicles is even more unaffordable. The service life of the battery is 3 to 5 years. After the battery life expires, the battery needs to be replaced. The price of replacing the battery is as high as 30,000 to 80,000. Yuan. Ordinary household fuel vehicles require an average monthly fuel cost of 200 to 400 yuan. If the electricity cost is half that of a fuel vehicle, the energy replenishment cost saved by electric vehicles in five years will be 18,000 to 36,000 yuan. The cost savings will still be Not enough to replace the battery.

The low residual value of electric used cars is also a factor that needs to be considered. After five years of use, fuel vehicles still have 40% to 60% of their value, and second-hand car dealers are also willing to buy them. But after five years of use, almost no one wants an electric car. Coupled with this loss, buying an electric car becomes even less advantageous.

Taken together, if the battery cost and the residual value of second-hand cars are taken into account, the cost of using electric vehicles is actually far higher than that of fuel vehicles. Now that insurance premiums are rising against the trend, electric vehicle owners only have to pay their annual electricity bills. The cost of insurance and insurance premiums has exceeded that of fuel vehicles, causing many car owners to complain.

There is a lot of room to reduce the cost of use

In recent years, with the increasing number of electric vehicles, the manufacturing costs and battery costs of vehicles have dropped significantly. After many vehicles use lithium iron phosphate batteries, their prices have dropped further.

For example, Tesla’s Model 3 and Model Y, with the dual support of local production in China and the use of lithium iron phosphate batteries, have reduced their prices to less than 300,000 yuan. But it is undeniable that with the increase in electric vehicles in recent years, the cost of use has begun to rise, and this part of the cost is the aspect most easily ignored by consumers.

During the National Day holiday, many consumers who drove electric vehicles encountered difficulties in high-speed charging. The problem that comes with it is that the incidental costs increase significantly. One car owner said that he was driving during the long holiday and waited for charging in a high-speed service area for 8 hours. During this period, he had to take his children to eat and shop in the service area. Because the charging time was too long, the sky was already dark after full charging. Late at night, he walked the distance that could have been reached in one day in two days. The accommodation and food expenses during this period were expensive, which he still remembers vividly.

There are many similar examples in the city. Some consumers said that one of the hidden costs of electric vehicles is the empty driving mileage, that is, due to the lack of power, electric vehicle owners have to search for charging piles to drive the distance, which involves empty driving mileage, return mileage and comprehensive expenses.

The previous slogan of drinking a cup of coffee while charging was a joke to many car owners. In some charging service areas, charging fees, service fees and parking fees are already quite high. If you include a cup of coffee worth 30 yuan, not every consumer can afford it, let alone every day.

Some insiders said that with the increase of electric vehicles, conflicts in the use process will erupt on a large scale in the future. Relevant departments should make overall arrangements to focus on solving the difficulties and pain points of consumers in the use process. Judging from the current sales of new energy vehicles, the contradiction between purchase costs has been greatly alleviated. The next step should be to work on the use process to reduce the pressure on electric vehicles in the use process to meet the needs of more consumers.