Five Reasons Plug-in Cars Have a Bright Future
CARS.COM — Plug-in cars may still seem few and far inbetween on your daily commute, but a fresh report says they're progressing toward broader acceptance. The 40-page investigate, released this month by the University of Michigan's Transportation Research Institute, says plug-in and battery-electric cars are increasingly competitive with conventional vehicles.
Cars.com obtained the utter report, but you can read the abstract here. UMTRI credits latest advancements in a range of areas, plus future trends in vehicle costs and charging infrastructure, as reasons that plug-in cars can substitute their plug-free counterparts for most U.S. drivers "in the relatively near future."
Why? Here are five reasons.
1. People Are Buying More of Them
U.S. shoppers bought about 72,000 plug-in cars through the very first five months of 2017, per InsideEVs.com. That's only about one percent of all passenger vehicles sold through the same period, by Automotive News' count. But sales for such cars are on the rise despite relatively cheap gas. Electric current remains a bit player in transportation-related energy consumption, but UMTRI notes that plug-in sales have ballooned over the past six years. Citing government projections of extra full-electric sales in coming decades, the investigate expects those sales to keep climbing.
Part of that is because plug-in cars aren't as pricey as they once were. Relative to the average cost of all fresh cars, plug-ins have dropped. Citing data from Automotive News and Green Car Reports, UMTRI found the difference in median cost inbetween a conventional model-year two thousand seventeen car and a plug-in hybrid is less than $Ten,000, while the difference inbetween a conventional car and a fully electrified car is less than $Five,000 — and that's before any state or federal tax credits.
Two. Range Is Way Up
Extended-range cars like the fresh Chevrolet Bolt EV signal an overarching trend. UMTRI says average range for all EVs has enhanced to one hundred eighty seven miles, up from one hundred fifteen miles as recently as the two thousand fourteen model year. But that number carries a big caveat: Rather than averaging ranges by model, researchers averaged by EPA-listed battery configurations — so cars like the Tesla Model S and Model X, which have many configurations, influenced the average more than cars like the Nissan Leaf or Fiat 500e, which have one configuration apiece.
"Tesla is somewhat overrepresented in the data in latest years, but we were attempting to take a look at the capabilities of all EVs, independent of manufacturer," Brandon Schoettle, one of the examine's authors, said in an email to Cars.com. "If we looked at spectacle by make, or by make and model, we would certainly need to collapse (average) those into two values for [Tesla's] two models."
On a model-by-model basis, the average range for two thousand seventeen model-year electrified cars is indeed one hundred forty one miles, a Cars.com analysis shows. But UMTRI's thrust still applies, as the model-by-model average in two thousand fourteen was 98.1 miles. Meantime, the battery range for plug-in electrified cars has stayed about the same over that span — still twenty six miles, by UMTRI's tally.
Three. Batteries Are Improving
Citing numerous studies, UMTRI says stronger batteries have approximately 1/88th the energy density by mass of gasoline. But other studies suggest that if that density were to improve by a little more than dual, electrified cars could "generally substitute" their conventional counterparts for most U.S. drivers, the report says — and that could happen as soon as 2045.
At the same time, batteries are getting cheaper. The cost per kilowatt-hour fell eighty percent inbetween two thousand nine and 2015, then fell another twenty percent from that in 2016. Several studies expect them to fall even further in the years to come.
Nowhere does this become more apparent than with charging times. Despite the enlargened range for EVs, charging times have converged in latest years with plug-in hybrids. The latter group still charges swifter, but UMTRI notes that EVs have improved to less than dual the charge time, on average, versus plug-in hybrids, or Four.8 hours compared with Two.8 hours on 240-volt (Level Two) chargers.
Four. Charging Infrastructure Is Growing
Citing government data, UMTRI says U.S. drivers now have access to some 16,000 public stations and 43,000 outlets. Stations have doubled since two thousand fourteen and enlargened eightfold since 2011, UMTRI says — tho’ they're still few compared to the country's 112,000 or so gas stations. About eighty percent of public charger connections are Level Two, while 13.1 percent are DC fast-chargers. The remainder are Level one (as in, household-style outlets) with a smattering of inductive chargers.
Five. Electrical Cars Are Cheaper to Operate
Citing government data, UMTRI says the average cost to charge a plug-in car is equivalent to paying $1.21 per gallon of gas — more than a dollar less than the real cost of gas. UMTRI says the government projects that to increase less than fifty cents a gallon-equivalent over the next thirty years versus an increase in gasoline costs of $1 per gallon.
Put another way: In 2050, the government projects the cost to charge a plug-in car as equivalent to paying less than $1.50 per gallon of gas, while that gallon of gas will run more than $Trio. Prices are likely to fluctuate less, too: Inbetween two thousand and 2017, the price of electro-therapy fluctuated sixty two percent, UMTRI notes. The price of gas, by contrast, fluctuated two hundred fifty three percent.
