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Car Gas Spending

February 4th, 2022 at 01:04 am

In 2020 we spent $115 on car gas, for the hybrid car.   It looks like we did 4 Bay Area trips before we bought the all-electric vehicle in late Summer 2020.

After buying the electric car, I spent a whole whopping $6 on gas.  This was for a couple of gallons just to keep the hybrid in good condition.  I consider that more of a maintenance expense than a fuel expense.

I expect that 2021 would have been a $6 gas year.  We are to the point we are driving 100% electric.  But we had to put the electric car on hold for longer trips.  Which probably would have been completely N/A for us, but then we were driving MM(18) to/from college 300 miles away. 

Total household gas spending 2021:  $348 

 $29 of this was putting gas in the kids' car.  MM(18) was dragging his feet spending his own money and then MH needed the car a couple of days while his car was getting the battery swapped out.  Knowing he'd be driving the gas car to the dealership and back, etc., he just filled up the tank.  

That leaves $319 gas for the hybrid.    We spent -$0- on gas from January through August (hybrid) and then spent that $319 the last 4 months.

That's for 5 college visits (600 miles x5) & two Holiday trips to the Bay Area.  We've done plenty of Bay Area driving trips in the all-electric vehicle, but MH was getting more wary towards the end.  Technically we weren't supposed to drop below 30% battery capacity but was getting pretty close with the Bay Area trips.  It just depends how much we were driving around and visiting relatives when we were there.  

Oh yeah, and I put a couple of gallons in during the middle of summer.  The gas level in the Volt dropped below 40 miles? and the car just kept beeping at me.  But what pushed me over the edge was I had never done the remote start before and started doing that during the summer.  Don't ask me why it took 3 years to figure that out (makes 110F summer days much more bearable when you can just cool off your car first!).  So the remote start stops working one day and I quickly realize it's disabled once the fuel level is "low".  🙄  Which makes sense obviously for a gas car, but makes no sense for a car in electric mode that uses basically no energy to run the A/C.  So that is why I added some gas in the middle of summer.  

I am hoping that 2022 is a $6 gas year for our household.  

Of course, the next question is how much are we paying for electricity?  I have no idea!  I am behind on my estimates, and some of that is because we stopped charging the EV overnight (due to fire risk/recall).  & I am just behind, because of life.  I can probably extrapolate all overnight charging to my car and just try to come up with an equivalent to cover MH's miles.  But then I'd have to convert to higher daytime charging rates.  Still, it should be quick to work through the last few months, I just have too many higher priorities at the moment.  

I will share when I have those estimates.  But mostly, I had been running all my projections based on $4/gallon gas.  Which I felt was quite conservative at the time (when we bought the hybrid in 2018).  Figured gas had nowhere to go but up.  The pandemic has stalled gas going up, but clearly it is happening now.  Anyway, at $4/gallon we pay roughly 1/3 that cost (for electricity) when we charge our cars overnight.  When we pay full price while traveling, that was usually about 1/2 the cost of gas.

The college trip is quickly becoming a free drive for us, with the electric car.  So that might go from a $55 (hybrid) gas trip to a $0 electricity trip.   (Maybe $10 is you count charging up at home before and after).

We came home on the I-5 after taking MM(18) back after Thanksgiving break.  We hadn't gone that route in many months and we were surprised how many new chargers there were.  

Free chargers are popping up at all of the rest stops in our state.  There was one by the college we kept stopped at and using, but now there's several on the I-5.  

Electrify America gives away free electricity during Holiday weekends.  !!  The charging was free from something like December 22 - January 2nd.   

Before this recall detour, it was on my list to some day try a free drive down to the college.  I've seen many people posting they've done free fuel drives from Northern CA to Southern CA.  But usually the free places are kind of in weird places.  Not as convenient as just stopping and charging while you eat.  But we were up to the challenge and is something we wanted to do. Anyway, it seems kind of moot now with free chargers all over the place.  I mean, will still take advantage of the free charge, but it just won't be much of a challenge.

Edited to add:  I started this post a long time ago and just hit publish.  I will start sharing monthly car fuel spending, so it will become pretty clear how much less we are paying for electric fuel.  I did share January #s in my January post.

2 Responses to “Car Gas Spending”

  1. LivingAlmostLarge Says:
    1643998807

    that's amazing. how much were your used electric and hybrid cars again?

  2. MonkeyMama Says:
    1644074926

    We paid $22K for the hybrid & $17,500 for the EV.
    These were for very low miles pristine vehicles, fully loaded.

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