How do you calculate EV fuel economy

[puddleglum]

I understand converting the cost of electricity to cost/mile and then to equivalent fuel economy. What I'm really wondering is if most of you include a value for battery depletion into your calculations. Since batteries have a limited cycle life, I would think they should be included as a fuel cost. I was reading an article from a guy with an EV Honda Civic that figured that, even though he only spent $40/year on electricity, when his battery costs were factored in, his cost/mile was actually higher as an EV than when the car was on gas. Just wanting to hear what your thoughts are.

[mora]

Originally I was planning lead battery pack for my conversion because of relatively cheap price. After I made a excel file that roughly calculates this "economy" thing I turned my head and went lithium way. I included current price of electricity and gasoline, expected battery life, average fuel/electricity consumption and total price of batteries for given size pack in these calculations. I also noted kilometers driven each year. Lead and gasoline were pretty much in the same level depending on price of batteries and gasoline. But if lithium cells lasted anywhere over 1000 cycles they won this comparison. If you drive a lot lithium pack pays itself back faster. Might take years though, especially if you don't drive much.

I believe what he says. Cost/mile can be higher but it depends from at least those factors I mentioned.

[Frank Lee]

I was just musing about that on the e bike thread...

[dcb]

Well the other thing to consider is that most people faced with a decision like "lead vs lithium" are considering building something, and it is going to be somewhat experimental in nature so they don't yet have a feel for how it will accelerate/etc. So since they don't even know if they will like the final result of their experiment yet there is a strong impetus to keep initial costs down, which favors lead to a large degree (including chargers and bms, etc).

As more EV's appear and people get more experience with what the numbers actually "feel" like, I expect that more will choose lithium style with confidence however.