victorian electric vehicle trial mid-term report - Department of Transport

4.2.4 How much does it costfor an average household torun an EV?Although there was significantvariation across the vehicleassignments, the average cost for atrial household participant to run theirelectric vehicle on renewable energywas between $7 and $10 per week.This is about half of what it would costto run an equivalent petrol vehicle, withnone of the emissions.Analysis of the data obtained from thetrial household participants providessome insights into the average drivingdistances and energy economies –refer to Table 4. These values havebeen segmented by vehicle type dueto the statistically-significant variationin energy economy recorded for thetwo vehicles.Electricity costs have assumed aresidential tariff of $0.25 per kWh thatincludes a premium for GreenPower(renewable energy). Althoughhouseholds varied significantly interms of their GreenPower and/or solarPV take-up, the former Departmentof Transport has accounted for allelectricity used by the trial vehiclesfor reconciliation with an equivalentamount of renewable electricitysupplied by AGL (DOT 2012d).For the purposes of comparison acalculation was made for the Mazda3 SP20 – Australia’s highest sellingmotor vehicle and a direct sizecompetitor to the Nissan LEAF inparticular. Although differences wereobserved between the vehicles, the EVtransport energy cost saving is around50 per cent even allowing for ‘zeroemissions’ driving.Limitations with these calculationsinclude:• Gaps in the trial data-set, limitingthe number of vehicles from whichan average electricity economyfigure can be derived• Wide variation in the dailydriving distances, reducing themeaningfulness of the averagedistances used for the calculations• Functional mismatch betweenthe Mitsubishi i-MiEV and theMazda 3 SP20, reducing themeaningfulness of the comparison• Assumed fuel economy for theMazda 3 SP20, which may notreflect reality (for example, citybaseddriving would increase theEV savings; DOT 2012f)• Assumed energy costs for bothelectricity and petrol, which canbe expected to change over timeindependently of each other(AECOM 2011).A separate limitation relates tocalculation of operating costs forthe Prius PHEVs. As these vehiclesutilised both electricity and petrolfrom external sources, significantchallenges exist in obtaining reliabledata and/or accounting for missingdata. These issues have been setout more clearly in the GreenPoweraccounting report released by the trial(DOT 2012d), along with an operatingcost analysis method for PHEV drivers.Based upon the electricity usefigures obtained, it is clear thatsignificant variation exists in theextent to which individual PHEVusers rely upon electricity. Possibleexplanations for this includemismatches between driving needsand charging opportunities, or a lackof awareness or understanding of howto access the cost savings provided byelectric-operation.Attribute i-MiEV LEAFAverage daily driving distance (km/day) 26.4 31.6Average energy economy (kWh/km) 0.150 0.183Daily electricity cost ($/day) 0.99 1.45Weekly electricity cost ($/wk) 6.93 10.12Saving relative to Mazda 3 SP20 (%) 56.1 46.4Table 4. Renewable electricity operating costs for the trial household i-MiEV assignments (n = 45) and LEAF assignments (n = 31);GreenPower tariff assumed to be $0.25/kWh, Mazda 3 SP20 fuel economy = 6.1 L/100km, petrol price $1.40/L.CREATING A MARKET 41