Author: Dennis

Back of the napkin math of last night’s fill-up of 328i vs. cost of ActiveE


After having read yesterday’s post.

One of my cousins asked me how much it would cost to fill up the new car and go 407 miles… (of course going this far would require at LEAST 4-5 charges of the car since the range is 100 miles…  Though, as aggresively as I drive, I’m closer to 80 miles)

Here’s the back of the napkin math. The fill up yesterday was super unleaded at $4.279 per gallon, filled up with 14.022 gallons for a total of $60.00. The range says 407 miles, since I zero out the odometer after each fill up, I know I did 322.6 miles since the last fill up. This is about 1 gallon of gas more than the last fill up (13.077 gallons previously).

So, I figure that my cost per mile (using Super Unleaded) is approx $0.1860 per mile.

On the ActiveE, I’m heavily subsidized… I fill up at many locations where the electricity AND parking is free, the only place it costs to fill up is at home. I do about 35 miles each way to/from work and I charge for free 3/4 of a mile from the office, assuming 10 kWh of energy at home that I fill up and pay for on the average (some fill ups more, some less) to get me to full. Last month I was on the Domestic Tariff for Electricity, which tops off at $0.31 per kWh, so that’s $3.10 per day of fill up, 10kWh is about 1 day in 70 miles roundtrip…

So my electric cost per mile last month is approximately $0.0443 per mile.

So, 407 miles would run $18.03 vs. $60.00 on the 328i… or 1/3rd the cost of a smaller recent 3 series BMW… Numbers look even better versus an X5, but that’s just ridiculous.

The other question he emailed me was to compare it versus a Hybrid. Luckily, I have one of those too. (again, not an environmentalist, it gave me MANY years of carpool access until the privilege was repealed July 1, 2011).  My cost per gallon on my civic right now is $4.109 (educated guess, (not sure what it is right now, haven’t filled up the hybrid since I went electric)) per gallon, 407 miles would probably be 10 gallons (doing average 40-41 mpg), so at $4.109 per gallon That’s $41.09 for 10 gallons and for  407 miles,  that’s $0.1009 per mile, when gas prices go down, the difference between hybrid and electric gets lower and the convenience of gas stations really kicks the butt of having to find EVSE charging stations..

Side note (updated 5/11/12), I have migrated to a Time of Use tariff that drops my cost per kWh to between $0.10 to $0.16 per kWh (depending on Tier 1 or Tier 2 of usage). So, this month’s cost is $0.01412 per mile.

Costco Gas Line

Costco Gas line 2 by dennis_p
Costco Gas line 2, a photo by dennis_p on Flickr.

Spent 10 minutes at the Costco Gas line today. One would think that I would be espousing the convenience of home fueling, etc. as an EV convert during this rant. However, that’s not the purpose of today’s post. It’s really looking at the fact that even with the inconvenience of a long wait to fill up, it’s still more convenient than my EVSE at home and the one 3/4 of a mile away from my work.

Considering that I got a a full tank of 407 miles of range. Gas cars are STILL so much more convenient.

On Easter Sunday, I did a drive that required me to stop at a Level 2 EVSE along the way between two of my destinations and it took 30 minutes at L2 to get enough charge for me to feel comfortable to continue on.  Luckily Stop 2 had L2 EVSE’s 0.7 miles away that I could use to get enough charge to get home… eventually.

L2 is a nice to have (for now), but really, a standard charger that can get a car full in 3-5 minutes should be the goal.  Even the upcoming “Fast” chargers at 30 minutes are still too long.

ICE – EV Parking counterattack

After 45 days of entering the world of EV drivers, folks have been discussing the challenges of finding EV Parking spots by public chargers.ICE or Internal Combustion Engine cars are often found by others in the EV spots taking up valuable space to get the charge needed to ensure that there is enough range to get to the next destination.

On Friday, at the Helms Bakery location in Culver City, I found this Leaf doing its best job assisting other EV Drivers use the EV only spot on the other side of the chargers. I like to propose that we follow his example of an ICE-EV Parking Counterattack.

There are enough ICE spots, by taking an adjacent ICE spot for EV charging, we can ensure that there is a counterbalance to the ICE problems that others have.

On a side note… I heard the funniest thing while I was sitting in my car reading and charging on this occasion… As I was getting a top up at Helms Bakery, A young guy asked me “Excuse me sir, do you happen to know where the nearest gas station is?” Needless to say, I was a little dumbfounded, but recovered quick enough to respond that I was probably the wrong person to ask and offered to look it up on the Navigation system for him.

Blog Day One, ActiveE Day 43


Finally decided to bite the bullet and jump in and start blogging about the ActiveE lifestyle..

I guess the biggest thing that I found out after 6 weeks of living with an All Electric ActiveE BMW is that the range is really unlimited, as long as you have ACCESS to charge AND the TIME to charge.

So far

Needless to say, I’m not really environmental. More mental than anything else.
I’ll be posting more eventually, but really this might just end up like my other cobwebsite (http://www.pascual.com/)

Dennis