DOE's eGallon doesn't take low-cost, overnight charging rates into account
 

Filed under: EV/Plug-in, USA

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The Department of Energy's eGallon is intended to let plug-in vehicle drivers know how much they're saving per mile compared to motorists in gas-powered rides. It's not perfect (the numbers behind the methodology need to be updated, for starters) but it does attempt to give the average driver an easy-to-understand price tag to look at. Turns out, says the Northeast Group, a Washington, DC-based smart infrastructure market intelligence firm, even the low number that the DOE provides isn't accurately low enough.In fact, the Northeast Group says that charging your car can be, on average, 34 percent cheaper than what eGallon says it is. In a new press release (available below), the Northeast Group says that despite the average nationwide eGallon cost of $1.14, the real number for many should be $0.93 per gallon equivalent, since some electric utilities offer lower EV charging tariffs. The 93-cent number comes from a new study called "United States Smart Grid: Utility Electric Vehicle Tariffs (Volume III)" that includes numbers from the 24 utilities in the US that have a special EV tariff. Those utilities are in 13 states, and if you average out the regular eGallon cost there, you come up with $1.40, hence 34 percent. As a bonus, we now know that Michigan and California are the two states with the highest number of EV-friendly utilities. Ninety percent of Michiganders, and 80 percent of Californians, live in a place where they could get discounted EV charging rates.

In earlier editions of the annual EV tariff study, which have been released in early July in 2011 and 2012, the Northeast Group found that electric vehicles cost a lot less to refuel than gasoline vehicles (Volume I) and that only six percent of US utilities offer electric vehicle tariffs (Volume II).Continue reading DOE's eGallon doesn't take low-cost, overnight charging rates into account

DOE's eGallon doesn't take low-cost, overnight charging rates into account originally appeared on AutoblogGreen on Tue, 09 Jul 2013 07:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.



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