RUNNING THE NUMBERS FROM MY EV ROAD TRIP

This article was originally posted on Ecova. By Chris Calwell For the last several weeks, Ive been blogging about my road trip in my electric vehicle (EV). If you havent been following my updates, I encourage you to check out post one and two for all of the details!

After 3,115 miles and 16 days on the road to California and back, my electric vehicle road trip recently came to an end as I returned to our garage and plugged it back into our solar panels. So, whats the damage and what are my key takeaways? I used 10 percent more energy per mile on this trip than I typically do in Colorado315 vs. 287 watthours/mile. Why? I was driving much faster on I-40, I-5, and I-8 than I normally do in the mountains of Colorado. I drove through snow, rain, 90 degree sunshine, and high winds, and spent the majority of the trip pretty close to sea level, so I faced more wind resistance and need for air conditioning and heating. I also learned that I use about seven extra miles of range per 1,000 feet of elevation climbed in the mountains, but I only get about 6 miles back on the downhill with regenerative braking. Theres that pesky physics at work againthere is no free lunch! On the bright side, going wine tasting in Sonoma and Lodi and bringing home my favorite bottles was a whole lot easier when I was in my own car than if Id tried to do it with a combination of flights and a rental car! Its also clear that just counting the electricity drained from the battery misses about 12 percent of the energy use the losses between the charging station and the battery. So my total energy use on this trip was probably closer to 353 watt-hours/mile, or about 1099 kWh altogether. At todays national average price of 12.4 cents/kwh, thats about $136 worth of electricity, or 4.4 cents/mile. My actual out-ofpocket cost was only about 0.2 cents/mile or $7 total, because the electricity at Teslas Superchargers was free. I was able to charge at friends houses and hotels for free too, so I only paid for electricity at campgrounds in Merced and Oakhurst. I came close to my goal of doing the whole trip on free electricity, but didnt quite make it.

A typical gasoline-powered car of similar size and features would get about 22 miles per gallon (mpg) in combined city and highway driving (the worst average 13 mpg and the best average 31). At the 2014 national average gasoline price of $3.44 per gallon, I would have used about 142 gallons of gasoline on this trip, at a total cost of $487, or 15.6 cents/mile. So I saved about $480 on gas, which feels great! Even taking the whole trip in a 50 mpg Prius would have left me burning about 63 gallons of gasoline at a total cost of $217, or 6.9 cents/mile. Thats more cost effective than my Tesla, but every year the advantages of going the EV route are getting more and more compelling as batteries, chargers and power plants improve. Its clear from the research done by the Union of Concerned Scientists and others that we still have a long way to go improving the generating stations that charge our electric vehicles. In my home state of Colorado, the electricity comes primarily from coal, so a typical electric vehicle is no better than a 34 mpg gasoline car from a greenhouse gas emissions perspective. Thats why I put solar panels on the roof to power as much of my local driving as possible with zero emission sunshine. But other states are much further along. In California, the electric grid is much more heavily powered by solar, wind, and hydro sources, making an electric vehicle there the equivalent of a 78 mpg gasoline car. Arizona and New Mexico are in-between, with an average of about 49 mpg. Given the regional mix of charging I did on my trip, a reasonable average might be 55 to 60 mpg-equivalentnot too bad! What about convenience? In a word, it matters entirely whether you have easy access to Superchargers. If you dont, youll either be staying close to home and charging slowly at night, or taking road trips that are typically no more than 200-400 miles per day. Even then, youll need to plan your travels around regular access to public chargers with 30 amp service or campgrounds with 50 amp service. These are the main electricity sources fast enough to charge a big electric vehicle battery overnight or during the day while you are sightseeing on foot. If you do have access to Superchargers, the level of convenience is quite high, with charge times ranging from 10 to 75 minutes depending on how depleted your battery is when you arrive and how full you need it to be when you leave. I had days of 500-600 miles, which is totally doable with Superchargers. My average Supercharger charge time was about 35 minutesgiving me plenty of juice to get down the road to the next Supercharger, and a much-needed excuse to stretch my legs, see the neighborhood, visit the restroom and pick up a snack. It seems like the real limit on car range between stops these days is bladder capacity rather than fuel tank capacity anyway!

I made a total of 18 Supercharger stopsGallup, Holbrook, Flagstaff, Kingman, Barstow, Tejon Ranch, Atascadero, Gilroy, Fremont, Vacaville, Harris Ranch, Tejon Ranch, Yuma, Quartzsite, Flagstaff, Holbrook, Gallup and Farmington. If that list sounds like a familiar Route 66 song, just wait another year, and they will be so widespread that we will no longer need to meticulously plan our travels around them. I cant wait!