One aspect of “cost of ownership” with the Nissan LEAF

Today we are going to take a look at just one aspect of the ownership cost of the Nissan LEAF. Fuel cost.

I filled my car with gasoline the other day. It has a 20 gallon tank, and it took about 18 1/2 gallons. Those 18 1/2 gallons had propelled me 410 miles down the road, so I averaged a little better than 22 mpg overall. The 18 1/2 gallons of gas cost $61 or so, or about $3.29 per gallon of regular grade gasoline. This is a typical price for gasoline in San Diego currently. I have averaged right around 15,000 miles of driving each year for the past several years. Assuming the above givens, the annual cost of gasoline alone in this real-world scenario is $2,227. If I were to keep this car for ten years (or replaced it with another that returned similar fuel economy), my ten year cost of fuel would be $22,270, assuming no increase in the cost of fuel over the next ten years.

Electricity rates vary dramatically around the country, so I will just plug in the numbers that Nissan has provided in previous press releases to calculate fuel cost for the LEAF. Nissan has calculated an average electricity cost of around $.03 per mile. With any luck, Nissan will install a comparison calculator on their LEAF website so that anyone, anywhere can instantly see how much they would save vs. a traditional Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicle (Nissan – are you listening?). In any case, using the $.03 per mile Nissan cost factor, the LEAF would cost $450 to “fuel” each year. Over a ten year span (assuming level electricity rates) the cost would be $4,500. You will be driving something for the next ten years, won’t you?

$22,227. $4,500. Hmmmmm…