Photo: screenshot
Now that we know a 100 miles electric range is more than enough for your daily commute, a cheap electric vehicle to use during the work week doesn’t sound that awfully restraining. But still, which one will offer the most for the money?
Well, apart from apps that will show you charging locations and such, there’s this thing now that’s called Electric Vehicle Explorer, which is a web-based program that will guide you through purchasing what’s right for you.
How it works? Just enter your home address or drop a pin on the map, then you do the same for your workplace and the program will calculate the route for your daily commute.
You get a roundtrip miles counter and a graph showing you the annual vehicle energy costs for up to 4 cars you can select. You can put there anything you like, from gasoline-powered econo-boxes to hybrids and EVs.
Then, you can fine-tune the system with data regarding how often do you commute each week, if you have an electric charger at the destination, if it’s free or you have to pay to recharge, how much time the car stays parked as well as the charger type.
We’re not sure if the app keeps track of the traffic conditions when it calculates the annual energy costs for the cars you’ve selected, but in our hypothetic 16 miles commute example it turned out a Honda Civic will cost you $480 per year only in fuel, while a Mitsubishi i-MiEV electric compact takes it down to $88 per year judging that there is a free-to-use Level II charger at destination.
The $392 per year you save doesn’t seem a fortune, but to that you can add the tax exemptions you get for electric vehicles as well as the fewer maintenance jobs they need.
We can’t do anything else than advise you play with the program here and see what’s best for your budget.
How it works? Just enter your home address or drop a pin on the map, then you do the same for your workplace and the program will calculate the route for your daily commute.
You get a roundtrip miles counter and a graph showing you the annual vehicle energy costs for up to 4 cars you can select. You can put there anything you like, from gasoline-powered econo-boxes to hybrids and EVs.
Then, you can fine-tune the system with data regarding how often do you commute each week, if you have an electric charger at the destination, if it’s free or you have to pay to recharge, how much time the car stays parked as well as the charger type.
We’re not sure if the app keeps track of the traffic conditions when it calculates the annual energy costs for the cars you’ve selected, but in our hypothetic 16 miles commute example it turned out a Honda Civic will cost you $480 per year only in fuel, while a Mitsubishi i-MiEV electric compact takes it down to $88 per year judging that there is a free-to-use Level II charger at destination.
The $392 per year you save doesn’t seem a fortune, but to that you can add the tax exemptions you get for electric vehicles as well as the fewer maintenance jobs they need.
We can’t do anything else than advise you play with the program here and see what’s best for your budget.
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