To EV or not to EV — calculator helps work it out

by Paul Murrell One of the challenges about deciding whether to go electric is just how much money you might save. And if your maths skills...

by Paul Murrell

One of the challenges about deciding whether to go electric is just how much money you might save.

And if your maths skills are anything like ours, it’s almost impossible to calculate.

Fortunately, there’s a new online tool that calculates just how much swapping from your current petrol, diesel or hybrid vehicle will save you.

The electric vehicle savings calculator has been launched by Macquarie Bank and it gives motorists the opportunity to compare estimated financial costs and emissions reductions between traditional internal combustion-engined cars and EVs.

It isn’t foolproof, however. Quite a few current cars are not on the database, due to insufficient data, and you’ll need to do some homework to input such details as annual insurance fees, registration fees and servicing.

You can even input any available state and federal government subsidies to get a comprehensive comparison.

Naturally, some variables are unavoidable, such as the future price of petrol (or diesel) fuel and electricity prices.

As we all know, the upfront cost of an EV is usually higher than an equivalent petrol, diesel or hybrid car, but EVs are generally cheaper to run because electricity costs less than petrol or diesel, and electric vehicles have fewer moving parts than internal combustion engines and so require less maintenance.

If you can pair your EV with rooftop solar and household charging, even more savings can be made.

It is estimated that EV running costs can be as low as 60 cents per 100km and up to 93 percent cheaper than petrol cars.

The Macquarie calculator even tells you just how long it will take for you to break even.

The comparison we carried out pitted a Mercedes-Benz A-Class against a Tesla3 and the calculator estimated that the break-even point would be reached in 10.4 years (we applied the same insurance, registration, roadside assistance, maintenance, repairs and service costs to each vehicle, which may have skewed the results a little).

The calculator came up with total savings of $8174 (not including the car price or any government rebates) and a reduction in emissions of 4.62 tonnes.

 

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