Or, How I lost $1,000 plus per year by plugging my car in!

Note: this was a question from a buyer considering the same car I am currently purchasing – A Rav4, 2026, which is available in a Plug-in Version. Will they – or you – save $$ by charging a PHEV (Plug in Hybrid) at Home?

Here are some calcs.
I’m going to do it as if it were me.
I have expensive electric (so do many!), however you will see that the cost of Electric is not the deciding factor.

My own Situation…….below – which I calculated before I built the calculator.
Facts at Hand: The Plug-In version, including a basic charger at home (very basic) and extra Sales Tax, etc. will cost approximately $10,000 more than a lower Trim Level Hybrid.
1. Fact #1: Cost of Money – that same 10K earns 5% ($500 a year) in CD’s or 10% ($1000 per year in the Stock Market).
2. Fact #2: The Insurance Cost of the more expensive Rav4 will add about $200 a year to my insurance bill.
3. Fact #3: In MA, we have personal property taxes paid each year. It will cost me $200 or more per year more – the first year and also cost quite a bit more for a few years.
4. The Plug-In Model actually gets 2-3 MPG less than the Gasoline Version, so my car will cost more when running on gasoline.
————–
In total, the extra costs will be, in addition to the “sunk” money for the more expensive vehicle, in the realm of $1500 extra per year. When I sell the car used in 8-10 years I am very unlikely to get much of that 8K (extra car cost beside charger) back.

Now- Let’s see how much each mile driven on the gas – and electric – cost me.
https://theenergyprimer.com/compare-the-costs-per-mile-of-usa-passenger-vehicles-gas-or-electric/

Plugging it in at home (.33 a kWh) will cost me about .11 a mile driven. Buying gasoline at $4 (average over the years…it will probably be less!) will cost me 9.5 cents a mile. So I will LOSE Money on the plug in – beside all the extra money!

However, let’s say you pay 1/2 as much for Electric as I do and you drive 10K miles a year – 50% of them electric! You would then save $250. per year in fuel.

OK, so you get your electric FREE. You pay zero for the 5,000 miles, thereby saving $500. Congratulations- you lost only $800-$1000.

This does not include the lesser MPG of the Plug-in Model. It does not include any benefit you might feel if your Electric Grid is majority renewable (US Grid is less than 20% PV and Wind).

Also, it does not figure on future vehicles with Plug-in being available at a small or no up charge. If that were the case, it might provide a good “fuel insurance policy”, especially if a homeowner installed PV Solar on their own home.

In summary, however, the amounts of money being saved – in general – are not enough to offset the much higher costs of the Plug-In car being asked about (2026 Rav4 by Toyota).

How a bunch of Hippies combined with (and often the same as) highly educated Ivy League graduates just may have changed the world.

This is a story – in writing and audio – about the so-called “Prickly Mountain Gang” from the 1970’s.

From the article:
“Prickly Mountain became a caldron of entrepreneurial stew. Suddenly, everyone had a business. Norton, along with other Prickly residents Andy Palmer, Chris McCarthy and Michael Goldfinger, started a furniture company called Union Woodworks. They leased space in the old Bibbin Mill, now co-owned by Sellers. Others soon followed: Randy Taplin was already established as a furniture maker; his wife, Nancy, was a working artist; Serena Fox started a graphic design business; Pierre Moffroid started importing tankless water heaters; Mac Rood and Rob Bass started exploring the manufacture and sale of composting toilets. Sellers also looked to be employed. He was hired at Goddard College in Plainfield to teach a class in design and building. One of his students, Don Mayer, was interested in bringing back the windmills that years earlier had been a common source of renewable energy on farms in the Midwest. Lessons of the past; solutions for the future. “Sure,” Sellers told him. “We can make that happen.” Before long Mayer, with Sellers, founded the North Wind Power company. And then two others, Duncan Syme and Richard Travers, started woodstove companies. It wasn’t long before many of these businesses and enterprises began cross-pollinating with the ideas and skills of other residents of Prickly Mountain. A wind turbine soon was constructed at Dimetrodon. (“The worst wind power site ever!” says Norton ruefully.) The commonalities soon led to a unique blend of practical skills and unbridled creativity.”

One might even say I, with a 40+ year career in Alt Energy and Tech, was directly influenced by this “gang”.

(Opinion/Editorial)

Electrification may be the right destination but are we doing it in the wrong order?

Electrification has become one of the principal answers to climate change in the United States. Replace your gas furnace with a heat pump. Replace your gas car with an EV (Electric Vehicle). Replace the kitchen range with an electric or induction model.

The intentions are good. In many cases the efficiency is higher. But are we putting the cart before the horse?

Consider where I live – Massachusetts. Our state is using substantial incentives to encourage homeowners to replace oil and gas heating systems with electric heat pumps – these “rebates” and grants are paid for in ALL electric bills. At the same time, Massachusetts has electric prices among the highest in the country. A 2024 Harvard study estimated that, at the electric and fuel prices then in effect, about half of Massachusetts households and almost ALL heating with natural gas would experience higher annual heating costs after switching to a heat pump.

Heat pumps themselves are not the problem. They are remarkable machines that can deliver two or three units of heat for each unit of electricity they consume. But efficiency and cost are not the same thing. A highly efficient appliance running on very expensive electricity can still cost more to operate than the supposedly less-efficient system it replaced. Our comparison calculator will illustrate this for you.

This raises a fair question: Why were homeowners pushed toward electrification before the underlying economics were put in place?

CLEAN ELECTRICITY FIRST

There is also the matter of where the electricity comes from.

In 2025, New Englands power plants generated about 13% of their electricity from renewables and another 6% from hydroelectric power. Natural gas is, by far, the largest fuel – in some states and regions providing 80% of generation.
The basic picture is clear: our regional grid is less than 20% renewable, similar to the USA National Figure.

Electrification can still reduce emissions, especially when an efficient heat pump replaces oil heat or an EV replaces an inefficient gasoline vehicle. But the benefit is not “electric equals clean” OR “Electric equals cheaper”.
An electric appliance or vehicle is only as clean and economical as the system supplying its electricity.

Perhaps we should put much more of our money and effort into renewable generation, transmission, storage, and grid modernization first. Then, as electricity becomes both cleaner and less expensive, accelerate the push toward electrification.

That would be an intelligent sequence rather than an ideological one.

THE EV PRICE LOTTERY

Electric vehicles present another version of the same problem.

An EV owner with inexpensive overnight charging may pay only a few cents per kilowatt-hour. Another owner may pay more than 30 cents at home, while public fast charging commonly costs around 50 cents per kilowatt-hour. In much of the country, this determines whether an EV is exceptionally inexpensive to operate or offers little fuel-cost advantage over an efficient hybrid.

Imagine if gasoline cost $3 per gallon in one state and $12 or $15 in another. We would consider that an enormous national problem. Yet we appear willing to build transportation policy around electricity that can vary almost as dramatically depending on where and when someone charges.

There is another difference. Most consumers have multiple gasoline stations competing for their business. A homeowner normally has one electric utility delivering power. Alternative suppliers may exist in some states, but the wires, delivery charges, and much of the bill remain under monopoly control.

Electric rates can occasionally decline, especially when fuel costs or special charges change. Over the long term, however, homeowners have good reason to expect that utility bills will rise as generation, transmission, distribution, storm resilience, and grid improvements are added to the system.

That uncertainty matters when government is asking families to make major investments in electric heating and transportation.

ELECTRIFICATION STILL MAKES SENSE FOR SOME

None of this is an argument against electrification – entire countries have moved successfully to Electrification with 100% renewables, in the process cleaning up their air and environment greatly. However, the USA is a massive land mass with a large population and legacy infrastructure. We can’t, at will, change to renewable and reasonably priced grid – doing so will take decades.

Some uses make sense now. An induction or electric range uses relatively little energy compared with heating a house or powering a car. It also avoids combustion pollutants inside the home. Even in a high-electricity-cost state, the difference in annual cooking cost is unlikely to determine a household budget.

A heat pump may be an excellent choice for someone replacing electric resistance heat, oil heat or living where electricity is inexpensive. An EV can be a great financial and environmental choice for someone with affordable home charging. The calculation simply does not come out the same for every household or every part of the country. Certain states and regions, California being the largest example, have substantial renewables to fuel your EV or Heat Pump.

That is precisely why one-size-fits-all electrification policies deserve more scrutiny.

PUT THE FOUNDATION UNDER THE HOUSE

The solution is not to retreat to fossil fuels. It is to build the foundation that widespread electrification requires.

The United States needs something approaching a Manhattan Project for clean electricity: vastly more renewable generation, storage, transmission capacity, and a modern grid capable of carrying the additional load from vehicles and buildings.

We also need regulatory policies that make electricity prices more stable and that allow ordinary consumers to benefit as renewable generation becomes less expensive. Otherwise, lower generation costs can be swallowed by rising delivery charges and grid expenses before homeowners ever see them.

Electrification is an important part of our energy future. But paying people to switch to a system that may cost them considerably more before making that system cleaner, more affordable, and more dependable is not sound energy policy.

Build the clean electrical system first. Make its benefits visible in consumers bills. Then the public will not need to be pushed so hard toward electrification.

They will choose it themselves.

SOURCES

Harvard Kennedy School, Heat Pump Adoption Not Cost-Effective for Majority of MA Households, Says New Study:
https://www.belfercenter.org/belfer-news/heat-pump-adoption-not-cost-effective-majority-ma-households-says-new-study

ISO New England, New England Power Grid Regional Profile:
https://www.iso-ne.com/static-assets/documents/100010/new-england-power-grid-regional-profile.pdf

Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Improving Interconnection to the Electric Grid:
https://www.mass.gov/info-details/improving-interconnection-to-the-electric-grid

This is a more complicated question than it first seems. AI doesn’t “think” things out – it goes and grabs a figure from Reddit, Facebook or Quora & quotes it. However, if the user prompts AI to research the topic – like “using sources like DOE and other engineering data, what is the Natural Gas powered grid to road effiiciency of an Electric Vehicle?” , you will get a more accurate answer.

As dad might say “Ask a Stupid Question, get a Stupid Answer” – it’s interesting that Media, the Public and therefore AI seems always biased in terms of the upsides. That is, it will easily make a mistake by saying “An EV is 40 to 50% (or even 60%) efficient well-to-wheels, but never make the same error on the downside, which would have to be “EVs are 12-18% efficient” to match the distance from the proper figures. I thought it might be instructive to give two examples of AI responses when it is properly questioned.

Example #1:
(AI says) “When accounting for real-world U.S. grid averages, transmission, charging losses, and vehicle operation, the true well-to-wheel efficiency of an electric vehicle powered by natural gas is 23% to 29%. Idealized engineering specifications that rely on best-case laboratory assumptions overstate efficiency, whereas factoring in operational averages properly brings the total below 30%”
(my notes: This one is very accurate– note it reflect our figures as Nat Gas Grid Example).

Example #2 – Chat GPT consistently reported number vastly higher – and used pages of calculation to “prove” itself.
(AI) “So roughly 38% well-to-wheels efficiency under that particular assumption.”
is an example of initial output. It even declared that Pessimistic! In another interesting slant, it tried to compare EV’s to Gasoline cars even though this was never mentioned or asked about. That’s a bias – and, of course, it was off on the upside with ICE vehicles also.
(AI)” The answer is approximately 50–60% WTW for a reasonable modern-grid calculation” is yet another of the wrong answers it returned.

So the question is why? The reasons are simple. AI doesn’t care about truth or accuracy at all. It will spit out wild numbers and back them up with math that isn’t needed nor relevant. It even admitted this:
“using actual U.S. average heat rates and losses, rather than the usual marketing-style” – WHAT? Of course, AI is going to reflect everything we do in the USA – and everything is marketed. It also states:
(AI) “The biggest problem is that people routinely quote the most favorable efficiency number from each stage without maintaining a consistent system boundary.“

In other words, people like PR and BS, if I might be blunt.

ChatGPT will eventually, but only if sources (like the Department of Energy and the Manufacturers of the Gas Turbine units, etc. are pointed to, give a number closer to reality:
“So is there an “upward bias”?

(AI)”I think there is a very real methodological bias, although I wouldn’t necessarily call it intentional“. (that is ChatGDP talking).
and, so – finally, ChatGPT can come to reality like this:

“If we’re asking the question you actually intended:

(AI)“Starting with the chemical energy in natural gas/coal, how much ultimately becomes useful mechanical energy at the wheels of a real-world EV operating on the U.S. grid?”
(AI) “I’d use ~28–31% as a reasonable engineering estimate“

(AI)”with something like ~30% as the central figure.”
(my comment = Close enough – but it takes a LOT to get the Chatbot to address the actual question).

A Temporary Report on EV Miles Per KWH averages and ranges which will be linked to from our upcoming calculators.