EV vs Gas car

Lets look at a few common use scenarios for your family car, drawing from my experience lets compare commuting, errand running, regional, mid and long distance road trips between a gas car, and an EV. As we will see, the EV rules the shorter distance commuting and errand running categories, day-trips, weekend trips are very doable in an EV, while the gas car still holds the edge for long distance road trips. Much depends on your EV, in particular what charging speeds can you expect to achieve given charging infrastructure along the way.

Lets look at some use cases for a car: The commute, an errand, as well as road trips from nearby day trips to longer hauls. We assume you have access to convenient home-charging, at least a nearby L2 neighborhood charger. We use a 4 star scale as follows:

★	Take the gas car
★★	While the EV works, the gas car is a better choice
★★★	The EV is a better choice, but the gas car works too
★★★★	The EV does this so much better

★★★★ — The commute

Most of us drive a surprisingly short distance to work. According to statistics Canada, 12.6 million Canadians drive on the average 8.7 km to work (source). There and back adds up to say 17.4 km, lets be generous (lunch is important), 30 km per day. This is well within the range of even a very used Nissan Leaf with only half the battery working. A simple outlet will do for L1 charging, about 4 hrs a day is enough to get you 30 km of range (assuming a 5km/kWh efficiency, and 1.5 kW charging). Plus you can program your EV to warm up/cool down before you depart for the office. Even if you forget, in the winter, you get near instant heat as you leave since heating is not dependent on a gas engine that takes 20-30 minutes (the duration of said average Canadian commute) to warm up. Plus there are some perks with EV commuting in some regions, my wife really likes to jump in the carpool lane which is no problem with our Leaf’s green license plate (source)

★★★★ — Errand running

Need to visit the grocery store? Go to the dentist? the Bank? Again, we assume a fairly short daily total (approximately 30-40 km) so the same logic holds as to the commute scenario above, for the same reasons, the EV here is the better choice.

★★★ — Regional day trip

A quick day trip to a nearby nature reserve, perhaps a local ski-hill. Assuming a 1 hr drive one-way gets us to perhaps 150 km round trip. A distance that is quite doable in most EV’s, although my 2015 Nissan Leaf would struggle without access to charging. Assuming you can leave for your day trip with a full charge, a quick coffee stop/top-up at a public L2 charging station will suffice. While numerous, you will need to use an app to find it, and probably another app to manage your charging session. The economics clearly favor the EV, at least when we ignore fixed costs, and focus solely on the additional cost of driving said 150 km.

★★ to ★★★ — Mid-distance weekend trip

Were going somewhere for a weekend, a 4 hour drive one way, getting us to say 300 km one way. This one is quite doable in both an EV and a gas car. While the EV will most likely need to charge, a L2 charging station will suffice for my 2018 Nissan Leaf, and a DC fast charger puts us on parity with the gas car time wise. Id say much depends on the charging situation. Are you going to drive by lots of charging stations anyways? Are those located by a grocery store you need to stop at to stock up for the cottage anyways? Where are you having dinner? Is there a DC fast charger located nearby? If the charging infrastructure is there, Id tilt towards the EV, if you are relying on L2 charging and driving say a first generation Leaf without fast charging, the gas car has some advantages.

As to charging at the cottage/campsite/hotel, if a charging station is not available, an outlet will do, using the assumptions above (5km/kWh efficiency, 1.5 kW L1 outlet), we can recover the 300 km of charge in about a day and a half, starting the charge say late on Friday evening, we would be fully charged in time for the return trip on Sunday around lunch.

★ to ★★ — Long-distance trip

Were now going 500-1000 km in a single day. This could be for example a run to Mnt. Tremblant (source), or what my buddy likes to do when driving to Nova Scotia from Toronto. He does the 1800 km drive over two days, stopping in Quebec City (approximately mid-way) overnight. My Buddy does this in a plug-in hybrid car.

As discussed in a previous post charging speed is more important than range. Hence its all going to come down to the charging infrastructure and how it works with your EV. With fast charging along the way, you could come quite close or even match realistic trip times in a gas car. With kids and a dog in the car, numerous stops are required for food/beverage/exercise. Long trips of this nature do require planning in an EV, lots of apps for both finding the charging stations, ensuring they are working, and managing your charging session. I personally find it an enjoyable challenge, but there is a learning curve.

Bjørn Nyland maintains a youtube channel ( source) that runs a variety of tests on a range of EVs. His 1000 km challenge is illuminating (source), where he drives cars along either a “Norway” or a “Sweden” route for a 1000 km journey. Topping the charts as the fastest car, is a plug in hybrid (Kia Ceed), doing the 1000 km in 9 hours, the EVs are not far behind, a Tesla Model S Plaid is only 5 minutes slower. A more modest 62 kWh Nissan Leaf is listed, did the challenge in 14 hours, 10 minutes. A 45 kWh Nissan Townstar, manages the same in 13 hours 35 minutes, again driving home the importance of charging speed. The Townstar charges consistently at 75 kW, while the Leaf on the average over such a long course, charges closer to 30 kW.

This is why, on very long drives, the gas car still holds the edge. A gas pump delivers about 10 Gallons/min of gasoline, 337 kWh of energy in just one minute, corresponding to a 20 MW charging rate, even if the gas car only uses 10% of that, no EV on the market today can charge at 2 MW, but then again, a Tesla Model S plaid has a peak charging speed of 200 kW, which is about what you can get these days from a modern DC fast charger.

Summary

There we have it, the EV rules the shorter distance commute/errand run, and can hold its own on a road trip, particularly shorter weekend journeys. Where EV’s struggle, is on long distance runs, such as my buddies Nova Scotia run. Granted, to be fair, most of the time my buddy actually flies to Nova Scotia instead of taking the plug in hybrid gas car. Spending four days driving there and back makes it impractical to drive unless you plan on spending at least a few weeks/few months in Nova Scotia.