The Clean Energy Age by BF Nagy

Author:BF Nagy [Nagy, BF]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2018-07-24T16:00:00+00:00

After you drive one, you will want one, and you will ask, “How much does this car cost?” The manufacturer’s suggested retail price for a Nissan Leaf is US$25,000–US$30,000, and for a Chevy Bolt and Tesla 3 it is US$35,000–US$40,000. But many states and provinces right now give purchasers very generous incentives, reducing these prices by $5,000–$10,000 and making them extremely competitive with pricing for gas cars. This is the main reason that now is the time to buy. We won’t have these government incentives forever. They are temporary, designed to attract attention to cleaner technology.

If your state doesn’t have an incentive, you might have to pay a few thousand dollars extra for an electric car than the equivalent gas car, but you will recover this money in the first or second year due to reduced operating costs.1 With an electric car, you save about $18,000 on fuel over the life of the vehicle and perhaps $2,000 on maintenance because there are far fewer moving parts.

The Monthly Picture

Most people don’t buy cars for cash. Usually, we make car payments of $200 or $300 per month, and if we drive to work, we spend about $200 on gas each month. With an electric car, instead of buying gas for $200 each month, you buy electricity for about $30–$40 each month.

At one time, people made a big deal about overnight charging, but that has changed. Most people drive thirty to forty miles per day. On a single overnight charge, a Leaf goes 150 miles, a Bolt goes 238 miles, and a Tesla 3 goes 310 miles (241, 383, and 499 kilometers, respectively). You quickly become accustomed to plugging it in just like your phone. Also, you can upgrade your home charger to make it work faster. It’s actually convenient because you always wake up with a “full tank.”

Charging

About 10,000 public chargers are being added all over the United States each year, and they are the kind that provide fast charging. One of the leading companies, ChargePoint, reports that it is adding about 600 every month. With a little planning, by using one of the charger websites, you can now drive across the country, stopping for one-hour meal/charging breaks with very little trouble.

By 2018, there were about 20,000 charging stations in North America, with an average of about two to four charging cables at each. This compares to about 120,000 gas stations. In the past few years, the number of charging stations has grown by more than 25 percent each year. The U.S. government has been providing incentives to encourage the installation of charging stations.

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