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I believe this is the total cost of ownership calculation.
https://afdc.energy.gov/calc/
https://www.caranddriver.com/shopping-advice/a32494027/ev-vs-gas-cheaper-to-own/
OMG, my 0.99 L gasoline car is still a lot cheaper than any of the electric options I could come up with. I guess the year of the electric car isn’t here yet. Then again, I couldn’t even charge the car at home, so there’s no hurry to switch any time soon.
For people who don't have access to charges at home, like apartment dwellers. Owning an electric vehicle becomes a lot less convenient, cuz you're not getting the efficiency from solar panels, or late night charging. You're at the whim of the price of fast chargers.
But the math is constantly changing, it's good that it's a viable option for a lot of people. I look forward to a more sustainable future.
To put on my engineers hat for a minute, I honestly would prefer that we switch over to hydrogen fuel cars rather than electric battery powered cars. Batteries are more e-waste, not recyclable, unlike hydrogen.
But that's a pie in the sky dream
Car batteries last more than 10 years in cars, have a second life as static storage for likely much more than 10 years, and we currently have the ability to recycle over 95% of battery materials into new batteries.
Hydrogen used in fuel cells has a round trip efficiency of around 30% (compared to 90%+ for batteries). If the hydrogen was generated from solar power, we would need 3 times as many solar panels to drive hydrogen cars vs battery cars.
Most (98%+) of all hydrogen is currently made using fossil fuels. The most common method is methane steam reformation. The methane (natural gas) is combined with high pressure, high temperature steam. The methane reacts with the steam to produce hydrogen and carbon dioxide.
The carbon dioxide is usually vented to the atmosphere (some places capture the CO2, and use it to pump oil out of the ground where the CO2 is also released into the atmosphere).
The hydrogen also contains less energy than the methane that was used to make it.
You're absolutely right. But hydrogen is the only path for steady-State totally renewable mobile power. Batteries are consumables, yes the time horizon is long. But they are consumables. Hydrogen is totally renewable. Yes hydrogen manufacture today is usually not renewable, but it can be. We have all the Lego pieces to do it
What's your definition of consumable?
I would have thoughy that recycling almost 100% of a battery into new batteries would be considered renewable.
95% of the nickel and cobalt. But batteries are more then just the expensive metals.
https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-well-can-electric-vehicle-batteries-be-recycled