I had fallen behind on keeping track of fuel costs in Quicken.  So I finally went back and got that (2022) all cleaned up.  Which wasn't a big chore because I have done a good job keeping track in my blog.  But I wanted to re-calculate monthly numbers in terms of how the electric bill sorted out every month.  Like my monthly blog estimates, it's all just a rough estimate.  But I keep track of car fuel costs versus home electricity costs.

I realized that I don't think I've ever added up all the free miles we get in a year.  But I expect that 2022 was particularly unusual.  I found a free charger by the animal shelter (had a few free 100 mile charges) and then we were surprised with free fuel *twice* when driving MM(19) to or from college.  That was 1,000 miles of free charge.  The rest were free charges here and there.

Grand Total = 1,660 free miles in 2022

That really was without trying very hard.  We just stumbled upon 1,000 of those free miles.

For point of reference, I have numbers from 2017 (our last gas car year) versus 2022:

2017 

$870 minivan gas ~ 3,000 miles

$1,341 gas sipper gas ~ 14,000 miles

$2,211 Total Fuel Costs 2017

2022 

$297 Hybrid fuel ~ 8,176 miles

$346 EV fuel ~ 12,200 miles

$503 Other Fuel Costs (Rental gas & kids' car gas)

$1,146 Total Fuel Costs 2022

$1,065 fuel savings 2017 versus 2022.  I'll take it!

Of course, with rising gas prices and other factors, our overall savings is much more substantial than this. 

2022 was a weird year in that I paid that $156 fuel for the gas rental car.  & we also paid for gas on the kids' car for at least 8 months of the year.  (We just didn't pay for the gas when MM was home during summer months, and after DL got his license at the end of the year).  That's $500 in fuel costs that I do not expect to pay in 2023.  Or $1,500 savings in a more average year.

& of course, we replaced our 14yo minivan with the hybrid, when I doubled my commute.  Rough math is that my commute is 9,000 miles per year and would have cost $1,800 gas in the minivan.  With the EV, I mostly only drive the hybrid for my commute.  (Any extra driving would probably be on gas, so I take the EV as much as possible in those instances, keeping our household driving mostly electric.) & of course, I only drove the hybrid 8,000 miles in 2022 because it was in the shop for the last 6 weeks of the year.  Anyway, this is an additional $1,000 per year gas savings.