The American economic consulting firm Anderson Economic Group released a report last week, titled "Comparison: The Real World Costs of Electric Vehicles and Diesel Locomotives," which compares the actual cost of electric vehicles and fuel vehicles. , And concluded that: driving an electric car is not cheaper than a petrol car, and in some cases it is even more expensive.

The study has four main findings:

1. In addition to electricity, electric vehicles have four additional costs: household charging pile costs, commercial charging costs, electric vehicle taxes and "empty vehicle mileage", that is, the mileage wasted in vain when searching for charging piles all over the world.

2. For now, the charging cost of electric vehicles is higher than that of fuel vehicles, and the latter's fuel consumption is more reasonable.

3. The difference in charging costs in different regions is greater than the difference in gasoline prices.

4. It takes a lot of time to find a reliable public charging pile, and it takes at least 30 minutes to charge from 20% to 80%.

Patrick Anderson, the founder and CEO of Anderson Economic Group, is also an electric car owner and bought a Porsche Taycan electric car last year. He said: "Part of the advantage of this analysis is that we show the real costs faced by electric car drivers. You usually have to use commercial charging piles, and commercial charging piles are twice, three times or four times higher than household charging piles. Times."

In addition, there are "empty vehicle mileage" consumed by car owners in order to find commercial charging piles. Even charging with a Class 1 or Class 2 charger at home is time-consuming and expensive.

Anderson said that, taking all these factors into consideration, the conclusion is that the "fuel" cost of electric cars is higher than that of gasoline cars, and the fuel consumption of gasoline cars is more reasonable. It all depends on how the car is used and how much commercial charging is involved.

The study found that based on the gas price of US$2.81 per gallon, the total cost of a mid-priced internal combustion car that travels 33 miles per gallon for 100 miles is US$8.58.

But a mid-priced electric car, such as Chevrolet Bolt, Nissan (10.26, 0.04, 0.39%) Leaf or Tesla (1018.43, -6.43, -0.63%) Model 3, if you count those that are mainly charged by commercial charging stations Cost, the cost of driving 100 miles is $12.95.

Assuming that a mid-priced car travels 12,000 miles per year, the cost of driving a gas car is $1,030, and the cost of driving an electric car is $1,554.

For a luxury gasoline vehicle that travels 26 miles per gallon, using premium gasoline at $3.25 per gallon, the cost of driving 100 miles is $12.60. The cost of a luxury electric car is $15.52 per 100 miles, assuming that commercial charging piles are mainly used.

This study is different from some previous reports, which show that the cost of electric vehicles is cheaper than traditional cars.

For example, a 2018 study by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute found that in the United States, the average cost of an electric car is $485 per year, while the cost of a gasoline-powered car is $1,117.

Anderson said that this is because most previous studies only included residential electricity costs and did not consider the other four costs involved in this study.