Cost Efficiency of Electric Vehicles and Extended Range Electric Vehicles for Various User Groups

The fear of climate change encourages countries to work internationally on common plans to try stop the world wide temperature rise, as was seen in 2015 on the "United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, 21st Conference of the Parties". The main objective is to avoid emission of greenhouse gases. Traffic is one major source of greenhouse gas emissions, however this sector offers deployment of technologies without emission of greenhouse gases. Electric vehicles (EVs) are one key technology, which is widely encouraged as a main part of future traffic. However in order to encourage people and companies to buy EVs and use them for their individual demands the related costs play an important role for the individual customer. This paper evaluates the costs and amortization times of EVs in comparison to conventional vehicles for several user groups. The results show that EVs can be cheaper within a few years for people with average and above-average yearly mileage (German figures). This is supported by a new governmental decision (May 2016), which offers grants for purchase of new EVs to reduce the additional costs of EVs and therefore make EVs more profitable for more people. The underlying driving profiles of these calculations are taken from a field test based measurement. The database includes driving profiles of more than 500 people and mileage of more than 785.000 km of pure battery electric vehicles with a dc fast-charging option and extended range electric vehicles.