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How to Explain That Electric Cars Cost More to Run Than Petrol Cars

by Mark Ellse
24 November 2023 9:00 AM

Joe had been distracted by the newspaper headline as he had drifted around the supermarket during the weekly shop. Over £17,000 for a Tesla replacement battery! It had made him think hard about the real economics of electric cars, ready to explain to Fred how electric cars conceal their costs and why they are inevitably more expensive than petrol or diesel cars. 

Fred: (Beckoning Joe over as he polishes his new car.) Hey Joe, let me tell you about my electric car. It’s so economical to own.

Joe: Is it really?

Fred: Oh yes! Much better than that petrol car of yours. How much is that to run?

Joe: I suppose a full tank is about £70 nowadays. And I do about 500 miles with that. That’s 14p per mile. 

Fred: My electric car’s much cheaper than that. I can charge it at home overnight with electricity at 16p per kilowatt hour. And since I can go four miles for each kWh, that’s only 4p a mile – tons better than your petrol car!

Joe: Gosh that’s really interesting. To be honest I need a new car. My Focus had to have a new petrol tank the other day. It was a pain to get one because they are so rarely needed. Cost me £100 on eBay – plus the labour – £300 altogether. (He pauses. Naughtily he asks.) Do you know how much a new battery costs for your Tesla?

Fred: I’m not sure I do actually. I guess it’s a bit more than that.

Joe: Go on – have a guess!

Fred: I’ve no idea. Do you know?

Joe: Yup. Near enough £18,000.

Fred: What?!

Joe: Exactly. But they won’t tell you that. It’s only when you have problems that you find out.

Fred: They are expensive but they do last the life of the car.

Joe: So do most petrol tanks. It’s only because my Focus is 20 years old. 

(Both stand quietly, obviously thinking.)

Joe: (Breaking the silence) Tell me Fred, how many miles do you expect your fancy Tesla will do over its life? 

Fred: I suppose it will be like any other car – probably around 120,000 miles before it gets scrapped. 

Joe: So, when you think about it, that Tesla of yours, with its £18,000 battery lasting 120,000 miles… that’s (doing quick mental arithmetic in his head) 15p per mile just for the use of the battery. 

Fred: I suppose you could put it like that…

Joe: (Interrupting)….plus the 4p per mile to charge it…

Fred: I suppose so..

Joe: 15p a mile for use of the battery and 4p a mile to fill it up – a total of 19p per mile. That’s more expensive than my petrol car at 14p per mile!

Fred: That does make it sound expensive.

Joe: And when you fill it up, when you’re not at home, how much does the charging cost then?

Fred: Mmm… It can be a bit more.

Joe: How much? Tell me!

Fred: Well, I did have to pay 80p a kWh the other day.

Joe: What! 80p a kilowatt hour? To take you four miles? That’s 20p a mile – on top of your 15p battery costs, that’s 35p a mile – more than twice what my petrol car costs.

Fred: I don’t often have to pay 80p. It’s more usually about 40p but I suppose that’s 10p for charging plus 15p for battery costs. Yes… 25p per mile when you think about it like that. A bit more than yours. 

Joe: A bit more! It’s nearly twice as much! (Joe pauses) Yours is a Model 3 isn’t it? The long range model?

Fred: Yup.

Joe: I looked it up. About £50,000, am I right? 

Fred: Yes it was about that.

Joe: When you think about it, that’s £32,000 for a normal car, plus £18,000 for the battery. That’s how it works. I know you don’t think of the £18,000 for the battery as running costs but that’s only because you’ve paid them up front, when you bought the car. 

Fred: Makes sense. 

Joe: And I’m thinking about a new Focus for £32,000 and at that price has the petrol tank included. 

Fred: Mmm…

Joe: And costs 14p per mile to run – not somewhere between 18p and 35p.

Fred: (Half turning away) But I am helping save the planet!

Joe: (Joe remains quiet. He thinks he might have been too blunt. He ponders on the half ton of battery that Fred’s car has to drag around, the mines where they extract the rare battery chemicals, the impending piles of batteries needing so-called recycling all to ‘save the planet’. Out of respect for Joe, he tries not to snort audibly.)

Tags: BatteryElectric CarElectric vehicleHidden costsNet Zero

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85 Comments
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stewart
stewart
2 years ago

How naive I was until not so long, believing that the presentation of facts and evidence in a competent way was all that was needed to establish truth and debunk lies.

The ridiculous trial of Galileo was a story from the past, of how backward we were and how far we had come.

It turns out there is a powerful organisation and infrastructure in place which all but guarantees that facts and evidence alone are not enough to challenge official dogma and lies.

175
-1
JXB
JXB
2 years ago
Reply to  stewart

The real story about Galileo was not a dispute of the facts, because the Church’s own scientists knew Galileo was correct.

But the Church presented itself as God’s representative on Earth, so the Church’s words and directions were those if God.

The Church had always preached that the Sun revolved round a flat Earth. If they agreed with Galileo then either God was wrong, or they did not represent God on Earth. Since most would never believe God could be wrong, they would doubt the Church which would lose its authority and power.

It never was or is about facts, it’s about maintaining authority, power and control. Also why the facts about ‘climate change’ don’t matter.

100
-6
DavidDLM
DavidDLM
2 years ago
Reply to  JXB

Absolute nonsense. The Church did not preach a flat earth. The spherical nature of the earth had been known since ancient times and was widely accepted in the Middle Ages by most educated people, Thomas Aquinas mentions it in his Summa Theologica as an example of a well established scientific fact.

The Church initially supported the Ptolemaic system which had the sun and planets revolving around a spherical stationary earth. When Galileo’s discovery of the transit of Venus made that system untenable most astronomers, whether affiliated to the Church or not, adopted compromise models such as that of Tycho Braye, where some or all of the other planets revolved around the sun, which itself revolved around a stationary earth.

And they adopted such systems for valid scientific reasons. The evidence available at the time (notably the complete absence of observed stellar parallax) was strongly against any model of the universe in which the earth was not fixed. Galileo, despite his undeniable scientific achievements, was something of a fanatic in his support of the Copernican model, advocating it with a fervour that was not justified by the available evidence.

The Copernican model was not even strictly heliocentric. It had the sun moving in its own orbit around the empty centre of the solar system. It was frankly an ugly beast, even more than the Ptolemaic model. And of course it was wrong, as strictly speaking was Galileo. The correct model of the solar system was the elliptical heliocentric system of Johannes Kepler in which the earth and other planets moved in elliptical orbits with the sun at one of the foci. Galileo apparently knew of Kepler’s work but seems to have paid little attention to it.

It’s one of the ironies of history that Galileo is regarded as a champion of scientific rationalism, heroically fighting against the ignorance of blind faith, when the truth is actually closer to the other way round.

24
-2
ebygum
ebygum
2 years ago
Reply to  DavidDLM

LOL……case proven I would say…in relation to having a debate, or at least a question about whether someone’s point can be challenged with different evidence…
Thank you JXB and David for your comments, you have made me want to go and take a look at this myself….which is how it should work, and is a good thing…?

11
0
nige.oldfart
nige.oldfart
2 years ago
Reply to  ebygum

There is no certainties in science just a certainty of the uncertain.

3
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
2 years ago

If a “fact checker” cannot check the facts of a story through his own research and diligence then he is not really a fact checker. As Dr Tom Jefferson points out:

“We have done the tough work over two decades…”

“Our interpretation is one you can – and should if you want – challenge.”

However, to challenge effectively requires a degree of knowledge at least on a par with the author’s and these thicko second-rate hacks are a long way from such intelligence levels even if they had the work ethic required to complete the necessary research.

Fact checkers really are the lowest of the low, riding on the coat-tails of others for forty pieces of silver. Scum.

So well done Dr Tom Jefferson and I wholeheartedly agree with your stance.

217
0
JXB
JXB
2 years ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

Which is why instead of challenging the facts by setting out their own contradicting evidence, they attack the person with slurs, accusations and abstractions.

80
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
2 years ago
Reply to  JXB

Exactly.

28
0
DevonBlueBoy
DevonBlueBoy
2 years ago
Reply to  JXB

When you attack the person rather than the facts you have lost the argument

14
0
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
2 years ago

The whole concept of some definitive “fact checking service” seems to have arrived along with the death of free speech and the rise of censorship. I have no recollection of seeing such things in my youth – people simply voiced differing opinions and cited whatever evidence they could muster to support their position. The notion that where there’s a dispute about who is “right” can be resolved by a “fact checker” is utter bullshit.

138
0
waterbear
waterbear
2 years ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

It’s not about facts it’s about the unbridled rage and hatred that occurs when the mass formation is challenged.

21
0
Tyrbiter
Tyrbiter
2 years ago

Dr Jefferson gets my vote, the difficulty we all have is that turning a 300 page report into a single phrase means you have to have a good grasp of the problem, the research and the conclusion whereas the majority of modern commentators just want to be able to reinforce their particular audience’s prejudices.

I trust Dr Jefferson to do this, I don’t trust the commentators. Simple as that.

90
0
JXB
JXB
2 years ago

As a basic principle, never engage with somebody who is ‘reaching out to you’ (rather than contacting or writing to you), they are submerged in the lingo of Clown World and have limited intellect.

128
0
TonyRS
TonyRS
2 years ago

Fact checkers should be looking to find out what the facts are and report them impartially. If someone sets out to confirm a pre-judged outcome, and perhaps even ignores evidence that doesn’t confirm their intended outcome, that isn’t fact checking, it’s propaganda.

50
0
For a fist full of roubles
For a fist full of roubles
2 years ago

In the good old days, peer review was all the fact checking that was needed.
It was known as peer review because the people who did the checking were of equivalent status to the author(s) of the original paper. These were the people who were deemed to have the requisite skill and specialist knowledge to fully evaluate the work.
Whereas fact checkers are qualified how?

40
0
DomH75
DomH75
2 years ago

The quoted correspondence reads exactly like every other fact checker letter I’ve ever seen quoted. They clearly write according to a script.

17
0
Hound of Heaven
Hound of Heaven
2 years ago

The Daily Telegraph published an article, “Why fake news travels fast” in its Saturday 4/2 colour supplement. It condescendingly describes the gullibility (my word) of people who believe manipulated news. The techniques are Discrediting, Emotion, Polarisation, Impersonation, Conspiracy Theories, and Online Trolling. A perfect description of what the ruling elite has done to the public over the last two or three years. Except this is a description of how Conspiracy Theorists operate. People are working at Cambridge, the Cabinet Office and the WHO to develop computer games to help people spot fake news (Bad News and Go Viral!). There is particular emphasis on controlling the thoughts and opinions of young people. People who do not believe the official government line are labelled “hardcore deniers” and have to be deprogrammed. The expert sighs and says this takes a long time to do – “you just have to be patient”.

I am in no doubt that the new WHO Constitution will regard “hardcore deniers” as suffering from mental health issues and in need of sectioning or treatment. “Young people are the future citizens and leaders of the country; the point is not to tell them what to believe but to inoculate them against these techniques” (listed above). All the language is continually analogous to immunization.

I highly recommend people read this article if they want to know how fact-checkers and experts in “cognitive anti-bodies” are claiming a monopoly on their version of the truth.

6
0
JeremyP99
JeremyP99
2 years ago

https://brownstone.org/articles/studies-and-articles-on-mask-ineffectiveness-and-harms/

“More than 170 Comparative Studies and Articles on Mask Ineffectiveness and HarmsBY comment imagePAUL ELIAS ALEXANDER   DECEMBER 20, 2021″

2
0

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