Even assuming that $930 saving is correct - which is unlikely since administrations always overstate benefits and downplay drawbacks -, the more important question remains: what does it mean for total cost of ownership?
Considering the expected service life of ICE vehicles (12-15 years or say 150k miles), extra fuel consumed over the life of a new vehicle:
At 34.5 mpg, 4350 gal vs. at 50.4 mpg, 2980 gal. So over the life of a new vehicle: +1370 gal for new standard.
At $3/gal, that’s $4,100 in extra fuel costs.
At $4/gal, that’s $5,500 in extra fuel costs.
At $5/gal, that’s $6,800 in extra fuel costs.
Unless I’m missing something, lower purchase price of new car seems to get really quickly dwarfed by higher fuel costs (within 3 years of ownership at 10-12k miles/yr). Wonder why that analysis was not included…
Don’t know the motives of the writers, but the consumables cost is only one of many factors that the market takes into account to decide the success of a vehicle. Even if the consumer cares about impact on the environment, it’s a complicated issue. Electric vehicles on average weigh about 500 kg more than gasoline powered vehicles. A large part of the difference is in the battery weight and the battery is manufactured from toxic chemicals that have to be mined and then disposed of at the end of life for the Vehicle. The commercial success of a vehicle depends on how well it meets the consumers requirements and should not be settled by government decree
You’re missing something that you could easily have filled in by asking your favorite AI. They don’t “have to” be disposed of. The 12V lead-acid batteries have a 99% recycling rate in the US. The EV batteries themselves are also highly recyclable (90-99%), but the economics are not in favor of this yet, because it’s cheaper to make a new one. Some jurisdictions, including CA, already have laws ensuring that certain percentage of new EV batteries produced in the near future are made from old recycled ones. This might make new cars more expensive, or it might not if an efficient industry develops around EV battery recycling similar to lead-acid recycling, or if the cost of obtaining virgin raw materials becomes more expensive than extracting them from old batteries.
At 34.5 mpg, 4350 gal vs. at 50.4 mpg, 2980 gal. So over the life of a new vehicle: +1370 gal for new standard.
At $3/gal, that’s $4,100 in extra fuel costs.
At $4/gal, that’s $5,500 in extra fuel costs.
At $5/gal, that’s $6,800 in extra fuel costs.
This is somewhat misleading… ICE cars were not going to 50% better gas mileage by 2032. The overall fleet EV + ICE was required to improve by that much. Those staying with ICE gas cars were likely to see little fuel economy improvements by 2032. That number was only going to be reached by producing more EVs, which of course was the goal.
Does it mean also that the $930 savings for average new car is also misleading if it means that the savings will simply be due to more people still buying cheaper to produce ICE vehicles instead of expensive EVs?
If the actual savings shows up in the MSRP of new ICE vehicles it is not misleading. Now whether A) there is truly going to be that amount of savings and B) Car manufacturers actually pass along those savings is another story.
The difference being the gas savings you referenced were never going to be realized by any individual using a gas powered car. The savings would only occur by those changing to an EV. Then those savings would be dependent on $/kwh vs. $/gallon in your situation among several other things.
No, the savings she calculated was based on the law that required FLEET-WIDE average mpg improvement from 34.5 to 50.4. So those are FLEET-WIDE average savings, not individual car savings. But the article stated $930 would also reduce average vehicle costs, so maybe they are apples-to-apples.
My assumption reading the statement of $930 average new car savings were that the prices of individual ICE car and EV car prices would remain the same roughly and that ICE cars would have an lower price than EV for equivalent models.
In that context, the fleet-wide savings of $930/car would come from the fleet containing a greater number of cheaper ICE cars than more expensive EVs compared to the previous mandate. Assuming the size of the fleet did not change and gas mileage of ICE cars did not change significantly, that’d mean that the overall fleet would consumer more gas since it included more ICE cars.
Hence why I used the difference in fleet wide average mpgs to reflect the higher total gas consumption that the higher percentage of ICE car in the fleet would cause and calculated the cost of that extra gas for the fleet containing more ICE cars than from the Biden administration mandate.
Even if some assumptions can be questioned in magnitude (constant gas mileages, constant relative purchase price difference between ICE and EV cars, constant fleet size), I think the methodology still is valid. And the size of the difference in fleet-wide gas costs should be sufficient to cover some of the uncertainty in some of these assumptions.
And that improvement is going to come from overweighting of EVs in the average, not from a base Toyota Corolia’s engine being improved to get 50 MPG instead of 30 MPG. An average car buyer wouldnt get much of an improvement, unless they choose to buy one of the new EVs.
The $930 is average savings, so considering the weight of the more expensive EVs in the average, the savings may be phantom since the price of the cheaper ICE remains the same (just removing the more expensive cars from the equation). Or the price of cheap ICE cars would’ve gone up to subsidize the volume of high priced EVs, and the savings are real.
I think that would only happen if manufacturers colluded on increasing the prices of ICE cars to subsidize their EV costs. Even then, how would that result in average savings if the price of ICE cars increased?
Because the lower standards means fewer EVs that need to be subsidized. Smaller subsidy expected from the ICE division means less costs the ICE car sales needs to cover.
That’d sound very hard to put a definite number on though, even consider fleet-wise average scale. If manufacturers increased ICE car prices to subsidize EV production, wouldn’t that also change the purchase decision (and breakeven time) for customers between ICE and EV and thus the composition of the fleet?