For quite a while I have wanted to build a website/source to be able to show some real world numbers to owning and operating an EV(Electric Vehicle) verses an ICE(Internal Combustion Engine) vehicle. Lots of times people claim numbers or think they are close to the data they present, sadly it doesn’t always pass scrutiny. I suspect people go by the gauge on the dash telling them their numbers but they have to be off in some instances. When I owned my VW TDi Jetta, I would carefully monitor my fuel consumption and I was averaging about 47mpg or around 5litres/100km. When I would share this with others they would try and convince me that their ICE car was doing about the same. A gasoline engine does not work to near the efficiency of a diesel engine, just the nature of the combustion methods and the fuels. Even 750km on 50 litres(impressive) is not 50mpg or 5litres/100km.

Knowing that people aren’t always correct in their assumptions or calculations I thought when I tell people it costs me about $0.02/km I better find a way to confirm and prove that information so I have over a years worth of data and the cost for each charge session. The one thing to note is I am on BC Hydro and using their offset discount hours program that brings my energy on Tier 2 down to about $0.09/kw from 11pm to 7am which is when I do all my charging and not the standard $0.14/kw.  Oh, and I also like the measurement of Cost/KM or Cost/Mile. Some people might thing, “yeah yeah big deal, $0.02/km its only $0.06/km for me.”, well if you times that by your annual driving costs and that is a huge difference. And the $0.06/km just went away for a while with the current war in the middle east and the impact on fuel costs, which I suspect are just about to increase “bigly”.

I am still working on the site and the Combustion Cost calculator appears to be working as I was hoping. I brought it down to cost per $0.000/km because in the summer I get about $0.017/km and the winter about $0.022/km so I wanted to assist in providing detailed data for people. At the time of this writing, I have not yet made a calculator for annual or particular long trips calculation. I also want to add one for EV users to track trips using a combination of low cost Level 2 charing and the more expensive DCFC(Direct Current Fast Charging). That definitely changes the overall cost but for most EV users, we do probably over 90% of our charging at home. For myself, if I was to throw in some solar and battery storage I could probably drop my cost/km even lower. Also note, for myself I obviously drive a lot and the cost of charging vs gas is how I make the pay for my EV, as many might say “they cost more than an ICE car” but take a new ICE vs a new EV and then factor in your fuel costs and you might end up at a cheaper monthly cost also at the end of your payment cycle you are still making the savings, unlike with petroleum products. I might do a calculator to help with that as well. I am still working on the best set up for my real world spreadsheets, hence the two different presentations of them.