There is no longer a federal tax credit to purchase an electric vehicle, though Pennsylvania still offers an Alternative Fuel Vehicle Rebate. But how do you know if owning an electric vehicle could save you some money in the long run?
Coltura, a nonprofit focused on the transition from gasoline to electric vehicles, has a new online tool. The Allegheny Front’s Kara Holsopple talked with Janelle London, co-executive director at Coltura, about their EV Cost Savings Index.
LISTEN to the interview
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/media.alleghenyfront.org/AF050826_KH_EVcalculator.mp3
Kara Holsopple: You’ve created this EV cost savings index. Why now?
Janelle London: Because we are seeing gas prices skyrocket thanks to the war in Iran. We wanted to make sure that people could really see on a weekly basis, as gas prices change, what that means in terms of their potential cost savings by switching to an electric vehicle.
Coltura’s co-executive director Janelle London said the more consumers drive, the more they can save in an electric vehicle. Image: Screenshot Coltura site
Kara Holsopple: How does it work when people go to this site?
Janelle London: We think people understand their gasoline consumption in various ways. Some people meticulously track how much gasoline they’re using per month or per year. Other people think about it in terms of savings per mile. We wanted to provide the savings calculations every which way from Sunday so that everyone, no matter how they think about their gasoline consumption, can really see what the savings are by switching to an electric vehicle.
Kara Holsopple: What kind of information do people enter?
Janelle London: People can determine their savings based on their vehicle type, whether it’s a car or it’s truck or an SUV, and then they can look at just their fuel savings, or they can also see their fuel and maintenance savings combined. They can see this by putting in how many miles they drive per year, more or less, and see what their total annual savings would be.
For instance, in Pennsylvania, if you’re a big driver and you drive, say, 25,000 miles a year, you’re looking to save $3,378 per year on fuel and maintenance overall driving any sort of vehicle.
Kara Holsopple: How are these estimates calculated?
Janelle London: We take the average electricity rate for the state, and we subtract from what you would have spent on gas, what you will be spending on electricity. The electricity rates are updated monthly, and they typically have about a two-month lag.
Electricity rates change fairly slowly, and they are heavily regulated. Your electricity rate cannot just jump up on a daily basis like gas prices can.
For instance, in Pennsylvania, the average residential utility rate right now is 20 cents per kilowatt hour. It’s been that way for many months. If it does go up, we of course reflect that in the calculator, but it has stayed steady while gas prices have just skyrocketed.
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Kara Holsopple: What else should people know about the tool?
Janelle London: People should know that this is something they’re going to want to visit weekly because we update it every week as gasoline prices change. Their potential savings today might be very different from their potential savings a couple of weeks from now. And they can see that what their savings would have been saved before the [Iran] war.
Before the war, they’d be saving on average of eight cents per mile by switching to an electric car, which is still not nothing. Today it’s 13 and a half cents per mile, which is a lot. It’s anyone’s guess what will happen to gas prices, but historically, gas prices spike every time there’s a major event in the world.
I think one thing that this tool really points out is that gas prices are very volatile and electricity prices are largely stable. Yes, people may notice their electric rates have gone up, but it has been very slowly over time, much slower than gas prices.
Kara Holsopple: So the more you drive, the more can save?
Janelle London: It’s a critical point that the more you drive, the more you’re going to save by switching to an electric car. If you drive a lot, if you have say a 100-mile commute, that’s a much more compelling case to switch to an electric car than if your car mostly sits in the driveway.
One thing I wanted to point out is that we also have a savings calculator per trip. So for instance, in Pennsylvania, if you drive 100 miles, you’d be saving $24.02 if you were driving those 100 miles in an electric car instead.
Kara Holsopple: From your perspective, what are the other benefits of going electric beyond cost?
Janelle London: Cost is a huge one, again, especially if you’re a big driver, but there’s also the convenience for people who can charge at home. I know not everyone can, but a lot of people can. For people who could charge at home, you never have to go to a gas station again. It is so simple. You just plug it in when you come and park your car, and then you wake up in the morning to a full charge, a full tank, as it were.
It’s clean, you’re not breathing exhaust. You’re not making anyone else breathe your exhaust. And EVs are very quiet. Once you’ve driven an EV, going back to a gas car feels super weird. It’s noisy, it’s stinky, it’s terrible. You can just hear all that combustion happening.
For a combustion engine vehicle, it’s a bunch of tiny explosions that are having to happen before that vehicle can ever move forward. With an electric car, it’s like flipping on a light switch. You just turn it on, and it immediately moves forward.
Kara Holsopple: Earlier, when we were talking about the mission of Coltura, you mentioned fairness in the switch from gasoline to electric. Can you say a little bit more about that?
Janelle London: We’ve looked at the data and found that the people who are having to drive the most and spend the most on gasoline tend to be people who are lower income, people of color, and they’re really stuck doing this driving.
They’re having to live where housing is affordable, for instance, and driving to a big city where the jobs are, or they’re living in a rural area where it’s more affordable to live, but distances to everything are far. We recognize that these are the people whom we can help the most by helping get them into an electric car.
Kara Holsopple: And how are you guys helping with that? Because electric cars are not cheap and people sometimes have to hold onto their cars a little bit.
Janelle London: First we’re helping people do the math. There are people driving 40 to 50,000 miles a year. And it’s crazy to not be in an electric car for that kind of mileage. Most of them are doing no more than maybe 150 or 200 miles a day, so they can easily go all day without having to stop and charge because current electric vehicles have ranges of at least about 280 to 300 or more miles.
We’re also working on helping people understand that there are used electric vehicles out there right now that will absolutely meet their needs and their budget.
Also we are pointing out and working towards policies that will target and help the people who are most, what we call gasoline burdened, the people that are having to spend the most on gasoline. We think EV incentives should go to those people first. That will save the state the most carbon emissions, and it will save individuals the most money.
We’re also working on helping people understand that there are used electric vehicles out there right now that will absolutely meet their needs and their budget, and they could get into those used electric cars and start saving immediately.
Right now, there are probably a million used EVs coming on the market. It’s a very special time and there’s never been so many used EV’s out there. These prices are unreal. They are so good. For instance, you can pick up a used Tesla from 2023 for about $25,000. That is a car that is going to have a lot of battery life left in it. It’s gonna be like driving a new car, and yet the cost is going to be a fraction of what it was new.
Kara Holsopple: Why are there a bunch of EVs about to be on the market?
Janelle London: Because when the federal incentive was there, dealers were really pushing EVs hard, and a lot of manufacturers were making a lot EVs. It was before the federal government had really tried to squash the EV market. It was kind of a boom time. A lot people did a three-year lease around 2022 and 2023. Now all these leases are coming back into the lots, and dealers want to sell them.
Janelle London is co-executive director of Coltura.