Hi everyone,

At the request of some neighbors, I've put together a spreadsheet to help everyone figure out the financial implications of getting an electric vehicle (through the PSP program or otherwise).

The spreadsheet is pretty robust, in order to take into account the myriad of scenarios we are all in. For example:

If you currently own your car, and think you can get another 5 years out of it, but you think you can get $5,000 for it today, you can do sell it and then get the EV.

If you currently own your car, but still owe some money on it, you can still sell it - cover the balance of your loan and get the EV.

If you are looking for a new car because yours is defunct - you can do a straight up comparison with the spreadsheet.

You can also toggle your expectation of gas and electricity inflation (but I wouldn't really recommend it) - you can toggle the specifics of the Replacement EV (the numbers in it currently are for a Volt. If you want to model the Leaf, change the "Electric MIles" to 100% since there is no gas at all.

The only constraint is that I don't model changes in maintenance costs. The case can be made that if you sell an older vehicle today (or even a new gas-powered vehicle) that since the EV's have fewer moving parts, there should be less maintenance, making it even more financially attractive, but in order to stay conservative and since these variables are currently unknowable, they are ignored in the spreadsheet.

Make sure you fill in every field in blue to the best of you knowledge to get the right numbers.

I did not model the Lease because the primary benefit of the lease is going to be through fuel savings. For people interested in leasing, if your alternative is a vehicle that gets 25 mpg, a Volt would save you $3,000 in fuel costs over three years ($83/month). If your existing vehicle gets 15 mpg - it will save you $5,700 over three years ($158/month). Leasing the vehicle considering the downpayment and lease payment seems like a no-brainer in terms of cost, but reducing cost is not the only consideration with these things.

Good luck and if you find any issues with the spreadsheet, or if you have questions, shoot me an email at amankj at gmail.com.

Aman

Nice spreadsheet, Aman. Looking forward to running several scenarios in the coming days.

What would it take to add a solar component into this? Or do you think it's negligible to this equation?

Thanks

This is cool. It's easy to add discounting just by dividing the net benefit each year by: (1 plus your personal discount rate)^t (t is the year) before you sum them up.

But why did you include the replacement cost of the current vehicle as an upfront cost? The benefit of not getting a new car is that you don't need to pay for a new car.

But if you have a truck like mine that gets about 18 mpg and is 11 years old it makes a difference in the long run. :)

Bryan - thanks. I'm not sure what you mean by adding a solar component. The only way solar would be involved in these calculations is that if you have solar, PSP will refund the up-front cost you spent for your install up to $5,000. If the gross cost of the vehicle is 40K and you get 7.5 from the fed and 7.5 from PSP, your net cost is $25,000. If you have solar on your roof, you get another $3,000 to $5,000 (depending on how much you spent on your system).

Jlincove - I didn't add discounting because most people don't think in those terms, and I couldn't find a scenario where it drastically changed the outcome.

However, your specific question of the replacement vehicle, I did address. If you don't plan on buying a replacement vehicle for 5 years, you just enter in 5 in cell D8. While the math still won't take the time value of money into account, it does move the expense of a new vehicle to year 7 (and pro-rates it based on its useful life since the new vehicle will last longer than this analysis).

Thanks

They needed funding for the project which was not readily available so they had to take it from the EasyBank. It is the best option for them when it comes to getting a loan.