Adjusted EV Calculations

You'll be happy to know I was off on my calculations about the electricity. According to my city's website, the highest price during winter for the first 2000kWh (they actually charge less after this) is 0.087 cents/kWh
This would take the EV cost per mile if at 0.44kWh / mile = 0.038 cents/mile for the electricity.
(12,000mi = $456)
My current car is more like 0.088 cent/mile for gasoline alone at $1.95/gal (12,000mi = $1,056)
If gasoline gets up to $3/gal again it would be 0.136 cent/mile (12,000mi = $1,632)

So I ought to save anywhere from $600 - $1,176 on fuel/year ($50 - $98/month).
Granted I'm not counting maintenance here (like oil, filters, coolant/antifreeze, etc. vs. battery replacement costs) but the ROI has potential if you continue to drive the EV.

I have read one using "$500/year" arbitrary figure for ICE maintenance costs and 3.3c/mile battery replacement but I don't know that I feel comfortable using those numbers.
Really that's not quite 1c/mile extra (+0.041 for ICE, +0.033 for EV) or $96/year savings.

If only solar and wind generators were cheaper for consumers...

Well I do not think electricity itself will get cheaper (quite the opposite) but I do believe batteries will from everything I've been reading in EV news, etc.

Oh, and if you can somehow charge from work... you can get even better savings.

I really believe there is an unquantifiable savings benefit to driving an EV that involves the lack of complexity. To just diagnose problems I've had with other cars, it can cost lots of money, since there are just so many parts and systems and they're buried and interconnected with each other. The more points of failure, the more chances for something to go wrong. Still, I can't think that way in my calculations and I'm not that much of a pessimist. :)

It's really interesting thinking about a car as something that could "pay for itself" (not literally unless I had a truly green solution like wind/solar).

Oh I will add, if your car really gets 50mpg (for the argument of say a Prius driven conservatively) you're more like 0.039 @ $1.95 and 0.06 @ $3 which cuts your overall savings but something to note about all those wonderful hybrid cars? Don't they need battery replacements, too? ;)