Think Electric Cars are Expensive? Try Ford’s F-250 Full-Sized Truck
Think paying $100,000 for an electric car is obscene? How about $100K for an F-250?
As much was we covet electric cars like the Tesla Roadster, most of us balk at the $100,000 sticker price. But with gas prices at or above $4 / gallon, the cost difference isn’t as dramatic as you might imagine.
The NYTimes reported last week that if you account for total ownership of a full-sized truck, including insurance, interest, repairs, taxes, and gasoline, a big vehicle like Ford’s F-250 will now set you back $100,000 in the first five years of ownership. Five years is the average amount of time an owner keeps one of these trucks.
Obviously, the average person and automakers alike are noticing how expensive large vehicles have become (GM just announced it would stop making trucks and SUVs at four of its North American plants). Until May, full-sized trucks accounted for 13% of the US vehicle market. They’ve now now plummeted to 9%. Ford’s F-series trucks have been the best selling vehicle annually since 1976, but for the first time in years the top selling vehicle last month was a car: the Honda Civic sedan.
Unfortunately, there isn’t a great renewable energy replacement for heavy duty trucks yet, besides incorporating hybrid technology (like GM has done) which can boost fuel economy by 20%, or modifying the fuel system to accept high ethanol blends (50% of GM’s fleet will be Flex-Fuel by 2012).
One thing has been made abundantly clear: the threshold for buying a full-size truck has gone up a few notches. I was shocked earlier this month when my mechanic said he would be downsizing to a Toyota Tacoma for his daily commute. Will he keep the full-sized truck? Of course, he says, because well, he still has a boat and horse trailer to haul around.
Posts Related to Electric Cars and Gas Prices:
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- An Electric Car With Muscle: The 175 MPGe X1 Prototype by Wrightspeed Inc.
- Low Impact Living: Think Hybrid Cars are Too Expensive?
- Goodbye Trucks and SUVs; Hello Gas Saving… Geo Metro?
Sources:
New York Times-
Big Vehicles Stagger Under the Weight of $4 Gas
Detroit Automakers Compete for a Vanishing Truck Market
Photo Credit: Ford
You state an electric car can’t perform the duties of a modern private transportation vehicle without even defining the duties you claim it can’t perform. If you mean commute in a single passenger vehicle 30 miles to work and 30 miles home (a long commute) this can be quite easily accomplished with 1997 technology. The Ford Ranger EV with 1st generation NiMH batteries lasted 125K miles before the batteries need replacing. Unfortunately Ford and GM reclaimed most electric vehicles and crushed them. Electric motors can greater torque and horsepower with less energy than combustion engines. The issue is the extra weight of batteries, but new technology lithium ion batteries, like the one in my laptop, are lighter, more powerful, and last longer. It’s a shame Ford and GM chose to scrap their Electric vehicle lines in 2002. Check this Mythbusters story to see why electric cars outperform conventional gasoline combustion engine cars. http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/transportation/4264025.html
Seriously? You have to take in the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) to beat the STICKER of the Tesla? Let me see, I can bet that you will have to spend a lot of money on charging it, maybe less than gas but I don’t even want to think of the time required. What happens when the battery dies? Can’t just hike to a gas station, get a can and fill it, then drive the car away. I can bet you will need a tow, and then be out a few hours while you wait for it to recharge. I also highly doubt that they will be cheap to repair. You won’t be able to take it to any old car repair shop. It will HAVE to be “dealer” serviced.
I really don’t think you have made any reasonable comparison. Especially with those (as was mentioned) who work in construction, landscaping companies, et al, who need a “work truck”.
Electric motors don’t have the output capacity (or the ability to store enough energy to drive it). Hell, I have a battery the size of my forearm that only powers my laptop for 4 hours, and that is if I am only typing on it! I have to have screen dimmed and the wireless switched off. I would HATE to see the batteries required power a truck for 4 hours (How many hours can one run on a tank? I would bet, the average is closer to 10).
You are also comparing a car to a truck. Nobody does that even with IC motors of today. It just doesn’t make sense to compare different classes of vehicles to one another.
I believe that cities could benefit from eletric vehicles. Especially if work places provided a place to plug in while on the job. However, don’t kid yourself and think that a plug-in hybrid or eletric car is eco-friendly. Where does the electricity come from? Power plants. What do power plants use as fuel? Coal. That is right. Coal. You have done NOTHING to get away from a fossil fuel.
There is a better way. You can save fuel even with a big F250. Check out http://www.h2ofuelboost.com.
They can charge 100K or whatever, if the price is not within the range of ordinary people they will not buy them. I think that was the argument of the EV that GM scrapped in 2002. GM, Ford and other American car makers do not want to see the electric car massed produced in this country. To many of their stock holders also have stock in Oil companies. The Electric car is a threat to many, many special interest people. The Power companies for one. It is a small step from producing an electric car and powering my house off the grid. States live off gas taxes which bleed the consumer pennies at a time, but are worth hundred of millions to the State.
I will be quite surprised IF GM produces the VOLT, I see delays and excuses as to why it can’t be produced. 2010 would be pushed to 2020 and beyond. They only saving grace we Americans have are other countries producing an EV and importing to us. Go figure and the American Auto makers will complain about unfair practices and lobby for tariffs on imports. Wake up Americans.
I think folks are getting a little crazy bent out of shape here. Let’s try to remain level headed, yeah?
Of course, comparing the Tesla Roadster to an F-250 is like comparing apples and oranges. The point is that for those folks who simply own a huge truck (not just F-250s, we’re talking Hummers, Expeditions, etc.) because they want to look good and never use it haul anything or go offroad and the truck never has a single dent or scratch, spending as much money on that vehicle as you would on a brand new mid-life-crisis electric sports car seems kind of crazy.
Look, I know there will always be people that will buy status symbols no matter what. But, wouldn’t it make more sense to spend half the money on something less harmful to the environment but just as status-symboly such as a hybrid Lexus or Diesel Mercedes? I know those cars aren’t really the environmentalists version of a good car, but at least they’re better than a huge truck.
I also realize that there will always be folks who need big trucks to conduct their business (farming, hauling, etc) and no one here or anywhere with half an ounce of sense would say that we’re at a point that we can replace those needs with something else. The point of this article was not to convince those folks to buy a Tesla Roadster, but to convince the folks who buy a Full-size truck for the status to evaluate other options.
‘The numbers for all the items listed are bogus.
Gas(70,000 miles at $4 calculated at 18mpg - 14) 15,555 - 2000″
You’re numbers aren’t correct either. If that truck gets 18 mpg I’ll eat my hat. I don’t think they even publish mpg info for trucks that big, because it’s more like 8-12 mpg, especially in non-highway driving.
You also forgot to calculate the purchase price of the truck itself, which is part of that figure.
Let’s be honest, while some of these trucks are actually used for work, a large # of them are driven by guys who like driving big trucks, and commute in them. Every construction site probably needs one of these, yet every guy on the job site drives one to work,
I drive a small car, and rent a big u-haul pickup the one time a year I need one.
Wanted to also point out that the electricity used in charging your tesla costs about 10% of what gasoline currently costs. If you went to your local station and plugged it in to charge it you would be paying about
$0.42 on average per gallon of gasoline equivalent depending, of course, on your utility company and the state that you live in.
[...] Gas 2.0 - With rising gas prices a Ford F-250 truck will cost you $100,000 in 5 years. Buy an electric car. [...]
One thing I never see mentioned in all the proselytizing for “smaller is better” cars: what are big people supposed to drive? Making cars smaller to make them more efficient is fine…if you find a way to shrink the people too, but from what I’ve seen, people are getting bigger, not smaller. I don’t run into all that many people my size, but most all of them are 20-somethings. What are they supposed to drive?
I’m 6′6″ (that’s 198 cm for the more enlightened parts of the world), and there is very little on the market today that I can drive at all…including some of the behemoth vehicles. I own a ‘98 Jeep Grand Cherokee, and it just barely fits me (got a full 1 cm of head room, and not much spare leg room, even with the seat way back and leaning). In ‘99 Jeep lowered the roof line of the Grand Cherokees to save a little drag, and I lost my spare 1/2″. They no longer make *anything* I can drive…not even the 300D, which isn’t all that tiny a vehicle.
Engineers need to get a clue and realize that not everyone is 5′5″! Or even the “standard male” height of 5′9″. You don’t have to make a large vehicle to fit a large person though…you just have to design it more intelligently than anything being made today. My first car was a ‘67 VW Beetle, and it was plenty roomy, and I *almost* fit into a friend’s Mini Cooper. I tried a Prius, and in an emergency I could drive one…but I’ll not own one. I’m looking out the windshield through the top inch, and the way the front of the roof dips down in front blocks my view up the road…particularly if the road isn’t flat. I’d have to duck to one side to get a view of where I’m going and avoid feeling like I’m wearing a medieval great helm.
The main problem in almost all vehicles made today is center consoles (those didn’t exist in my ‘67 VW). When you are tall, and the firewall is close, your knees have to stick out to the sides (they can’t come up…the dash is always in the way). Getting my knee tangled in the shift lever is sometimes a problem, but I can work around that, but if there’s a center console, I can’t reach the gas pedal…the line from where my knee ends up, to the gas pedal, always goes through the edge of the damn center console, making the vehicle undrivable! I once owned a ‘92 Nissan Pathfinder…and my shin ended up resting on the center console edge, but at least I could drive it. When I went back to buy another in the late 90s, they’d widened the center console about an inch, and I could no longer drive anything they made (the smaller vehicles weren’t even close).
I’d love to have an all electric vehicle, or one that runs on hydrogen that I can make at home from sun and wind, but I just know that when they come up with one, it will be like the Prius or the other “green cars”…way too small for me to fit in and drive, and I’ll have to put up with hearing about how awful I am for driving a big gas hog from all the unthinking, sheep-like, munchkin-like morons.
I’ve considered looking into modifying my Jeep to burn hydrogen…it’s certainly possible. I bet if I do, I’ll still get arguments about driving an SUV. Too many of the sheep-like greenies have internalized “big is bad”, rather than “gas is bad”. If I’m burning hydrogen made from sunshine and wind, who cares how big a vehicle I drive? It would be “greener” than a tiny hybrid. Don’t go small, go renewable!
HONDA GX propane-LNG car is coming in December 2008 it is in production but SOLD OUT…caliCORNia is saved….only $25,000.00. You can hold out till GM VOLT (laugh) is released or HONDA comes out with another TECH BREAK for the USA Market….
I have a wind turbine car design that only works within 5 miles of WASHINGTON DC.