Electric VS petrol and diesel - without taxes...

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I've heard people say on the forums the only reason electric cars are cheaper to run than petrol diesel equivalents is the high taxes on fuel. I've been wondering about this for a while, so have taken a look at how much tax is on fuel and what difference it would make (as I'm a nerd and like spreadsheets).

Here's my working out if you are interested:

From http://www.petrolprices.com/the-price-of-fuel.html

In pence per litre:

Petrol	Diesel	Description
47.85	51.97	Product
57.95	57.95	Duty
22.15	22.98	VAT
5.00	5.00	Retailer/delivery
132.95	137.90	Forecourt Price

So taxes proportions are:

52.85	56.97	Actual Costs
80.10	80.93	Tax Cost
1.51	1.42	Tax as a proportion of the costs

Making petrol about 151% tax on the base cost, and diesel 142%. Ouch.

So with no taxes it would cost

47.85	51.97	Product
5.00	5.00	Retailer/delivery
52.85	56.97	p/litre

A quick glance at some current cars MPGs tells me 50mpg is a typical figure for midsize petrol cars and 60mpg for Efficient diesels.
So to convert MPG to £/miles…

Diesel	Petrol	Description
50	60	miles per gallon
4.546	4.546	litres per gallon
10.998	13.198	miles per litre
0.090	0.075	litres per mile
12.088	10.448	p/mile taxed
4.805	4.316	p/mile no tax

Now to compare that to a car charged on totally green electric...

I've chosen Good Energy to show that it is possible to run a non fossil fuel based car - cost competitively. They cost tiny bit more than the Big 6 - but not in all cases. Good Energy still need to make a profit, but they only buy their electrons to stick on the grid from renewable suppliers 99.4% of which involves not burning anything (Solar, wind, and water power). Only 0.6% is electrons made by burning biogas to power a generator.

http://www.goodenergy.co.uk/switch/where-our-energ...

Taking an i3 and assuming a worse case 0.35kWh/Mile (official is 0.3). I'm assuming you'll buy one that isn't just inside your daily commute range so you can use the heater and put your foot down and nip through amber lights once in a while.

From http://www.goodenergy.co.uk/switch/our-tariffs/goo...

These are the average figures across all of the supply regions from Good Energy... (noted how hard it is to get actual standing charge and unit rates from the big 6!?)

Inc VAT (@5%)

p/kWh	p/mile
15.97	5.59	Peak Rate
8.30	2.91	Economy7

Exc VAT

p/kWh	p/mile
15.22	5.33	Peak Rate
7.91	2.77	Economy 7

The executive summary is that with current taxes cars running cost in pence per mile is:

Petrol	Diesel	Economy 7	Peak Rate
12.1	10.4	2.9	5.5	With Fuel Taxes
4.8	4.3	2.8	5.3	Without Taxes

So electric cars are cheaper to run without any fuel taxes but Economy 7 would be a must have to remain cost competitive.

Whilst we still have fuel duty (and presumably always will) it's still cheaper to charge a car using peak rate electric than buying petrol or diesel.
But you'd be foolish to do this regularly as it doubles the cost of your electric. It does mean that if you need to commute 80 miles each way and charge at work, it's not a deal breaker compared to buying a diesel.

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isleofthorns said:

16p/kwh seems pricey... Think I'm on about 12incl vat.... My ev is on 0.3/mile.... My last 3l diesel was meant to do 40plus mpg, but we struggled to get 27 average.

You're not taking into account the fact that most ev use is relatively short distance local trips..... My use is several 3-5m trips during the course of a typical day.

Your normal ice car (especially modern turbo diesels) are poor on fuel over these distances.... I rarely got better than 30mpg in a ice car over these distances. Ice engines only really get the 50-60 mpg if driven over much longer distances, or on motorways etc.

So... Please refresh using 12p/kwh and 30mpg.... That would be more representative of my situation, and probably the same for a lot of other ev users.....

I specifically chose Good Energy as I know they are not the cheapest - they are "worst case" assuning you want a carbon free motor. If not and saving money rather than CO2 is your goal you'll be even better off.

Noted - I messed up the 2nd table. I spotted the table feature on the forum after I pasted the raw text in from Excel. It looked naff so tidied it up with the tables.

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Mr Taxpayer said:

If more people started using your green tariff, two things would happen
1. There wouldn't be enough energy to go round
2. The company would get bigger bigger and cross the threshold whereby it starts having to pay the green levy to fund the subsidies it recieves. This would increase the cost of the electricity to you.

As an aside, why not compress the biogas and put in my LPG-powered Impreza?

I used Green electric in the original calcs as it costs more than standard already l. I was looking at the worst case cost in the current market place. You can get nuclear mostly nuclear electric from edf if you ate near the interconnection or any other combination both cheaper than green electric tariffs.

So my point still stands. Even without fuel duty an green subsidies it is still cheaper to run an EV.

If you start adding what if scenarios and it gets too complicated. I could day what if they cut all green subsidies bur started putting a carbon tax on non green electric. Or what if russia fell out woth the EU cut the gas supply causing a price in the spike of electric generation so that renewables actually were cheaper without subsidy. All possible but not in the current market price.

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bonus99 said:

I will burn fuel in my other cars at the weekend and days when i get bored

I don't even bother with the car. I just put it in a dustbin and set fire to it. :-)