My Mum’s car has 32,000 miles on it. Well, that’s lovely you say - she must be enjoying her three year old car.
It’s 20 years old.
Now, my Mum lives in England, so it’s not common, like it is here in the U.S., to drive 90 minutes for dinner, but still…..
If my Mum were to switch to an electric car (when she’s ready for a new car - say, in about 67 years, when it finally exceeds 100,000 miles), even she would reduce her emissions of CO2 by about 1,250 lbs a year.
But wait! You say. Electricity is still mostly produced by fossil fuels, so she’s not reeeeaaally saving that amount, she is just charging it with electricity that also produces emissions.
True, but the UK already produces about 43% of its electricity from renewables, so it’s around half as polluting to switch, and the percentage of renewable electricity generation is increasing. The goal for the UK is 100% renewable electricity by 2035.
But wait! You say. There are practically no charging stations anywhere - what if your poor mother gets stranded!
Well, we’ve already established that my Mum drives her car about 1600 miles a year, so if she did get stranded, I guarantee it would be in the Sainsbury’s1 car park2, and she would be easily retrieved before her frozen peas could defrost.
But also, most of her trips are going to be less than 6 miles (Sainsbury’s and back) or around town (10 miles or less round trip). So she can go at least 20-35 trips before she’d run out of juice on say, a Nissan Leaf.
Also, the UK has an EV strategy that mandates vehicles sales to switch to electric only by 2030, and aims to eliminate all emissions at the tailpipe by 2035. So motorway3 service stations4, shopping centers, downtowns, are all scheduled to increase charging stations. (I still feel like numbers like ‘2030’ are a long way off, but it’s less than eight years from now. How is that possible?! Didn’t we just have Y2K?)
But even today, I just looked it up and there are well over a dozen rapid-charging stations already in her area - a relatively rural part of southern England.
But it’s so expensive to buy an electric vehicle, and you still have to pay for the electricity!
If my Mum were to have to use one of these public charging stations in the nearby town, they charge about 49p/Kilowatt Hour (KWh), or about $0.62. This is expensive relative to what it would cost at home - more than twice the UK household cost per KWh. But get this, even at the expensive charging station, it is cheaper than filling up with enough gasoline to take you the equivalent mileage.
For example, a Nissan Leaf will take you about 225 miles on a full charge - that is the equivalent of about 6 gallons of gas at 36 mpg. A gallon of gas in the UK right now, is about £6, (or about $8….yes, America….$8). So it would cost:
£36+ in gasoline to go 225 miles, or
about £30 in electricity (for a 62 KWh car like a Nissan Leaf). At home, that charge would be less than £15.
So to run a car on primarily home-based electricity in the UK, it is less than half as expensive as gasoline. From what I can see, the new car prices are about equivalent too - gas vs electric cars. Of course, this will change as most cars become electric. I imagine the price of petrol (gas) vehicles will go down dramatically - but it will be because you won’t be allowed to drive them anymore!
My Mum is obviously an unusual case because of how little she drives (UK villages have everything you need! The pub, the village store, the church, the doctor’s office, and some very entertaining characters to inspire plenty of neighborly gossip. Why travel?!)
But if she were to drive more, it would be even more economical, not less.
So, my advice to my Mum is to sell her pristine 20-year old, very low mileage car soon, while it still has value, and enjoy the savings that she will earn from an electric vehicle.
End note: There are WIDELY varying estimates out there about how much better/worse electric cars are for your wallet and the environment, and some of these estimates clearly have a political point, or an angle to sell you. So these are my own calculations based on information I could find about chargers, electricity costs etc. Sometime, I will do the same for a US scenario.
But bottom line, even if the cost is a wash, we send less pollution and fewer pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere, even if you only drive to Sainsbury’s and back.
One of the main supermarkets in the UK. I live in the U.S., but I still have a packet of Sainsbury’s sage and onion stuffing in my pantry.
Pretty sure you figured this out, but ‘parking lot’. (Even after 25 years in the U.S., I still feel as though ‘car park’ is nicer to say…)
Freeway, highway. On busy motorways in Britain, say the M25, this can often be interchanged with definition #2.
A highway rest stop with gas stations, coffee, and lunch options. It’s very civilized. Less green and grassy than US rest stops though usually.
Or if your Mum can get to Bellingham, she can use the charger in our garage. :-)
I loved this SO much! Thanks for crunching the numbers and making it accessible for us.