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Tesla Model 3 Costs More To Charge Than A Gasoline Car

Anton Wahlman

Investors who take it for granted that electric cars are cheaper to run, need to think again.

A comparison between Tesla Model 3 and the three leading hybrid cars of calendar year 2018 from Toyota, Honda and Hyundai proves otherwise.

At the current typical Supercharger price of $0.24 per kWh, a Tesla Model 3 is $0.06 per mile. At the current gasoline price of $2.65, the 50+ MPG hybrids are $0.05 per mile.
Then you have to add that the Model 3 has at best half the range and takes at least 10-20x as long to recharge that inferior range.

Of course, the Model 3 also costs twice as much, and you have to assign an approximate $1,000 per year to battery depreciation, alone more than driving on gasoline for a year.

Most people know the cost of driving a car that runs on regular gasoline. You take the price of the fuel per gallon, and divide it by the Miles Per Gallon (MPG) number that your car yields. The resulting number is the “cost per mile” in variable fuel cost terms.

So far, in the switch to electric cars, the cost of electricity per mile driven, has not been the subject of much discussion. It’s just somehow assumed that an electric car costs less to drive than a gasoline car. There are at least two reasons for this:
  • Many early adopters don’t care about the cost of the fuel (electricity) because all they want is to try the new technology. Trying new technology is, after all, cool in and of itself – especially tech for sports cars.
  • Many early adopters pay literally nothing for the electricity. Why? Because they charge their cars almost exclusively at one location: Their office, during the day, where the electricity is provided free-of-charge. You just can’t beat 100% free.
However, most of the world does not look like the parking lot at Alphabet’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) headquarters, or many other larger companies in Silicon Valley. Most people in the world don’t live in houses with safe garage space, and most people don’t work at large Silicon Valley companies, where EVs make up a disproportionate share of the employee car park.
Dead

Spontaneous combustion, driver and family killed

Dead, after blowing up then crashing