Recoup Your Investment In Only 132 Years!
One does not need to be a Brookings Institute scholar like Mr. Sandalow, specializing in “oil dependence, electric vehicles, and climate change,” to see why no one will willingly purchase an all-electric car, much less the one million that President Obama wants on the nation’s highways in five years. (Call me cynical, but this number does not sound as if it were the result of a scientific analysis either.) First of all, the cost of anything is that which is foregone by the purchase. In other words, when we buy something, we cannot spend this money on other things. That is what our cost is. In the case of Mr. Sandalow, his $9,000 investment cost him 3,000 gallons of gasoline at the current price of roughly $3 per gallon. Assuming Mr. Sandalow’s Toyota Prius gets only 20 miles per gallon, he could have driven his car for 60,000 miles. Since his commute is 10 miles per day, Mr. Sandalow’s conversion cost is the amount of gasoline he could have purchased to drive to work for 22.7 years. But that is not the only cost; the cost of electricity, which Mr. Sandalow estimates to be the equivalence of $.75 per gallon gasoline, has yet to be considered. This expense adds an additional $2,250 to his commute. (60,000 miles divided by 20 miles per gallon times $.75 = $2,250) Stated another way, he could have purchased another 750 gallons of gasoline and commuted to work for another 5.7 years, or 28.4 years total.
One does not need to be a Brookings Institute scholar like Mr. Sandalow, specializing in “oil dependence, electric vehicles, and climate change,” to see why no one will willingly purchase an all-electric car, much less the one million that President Obama wants on the nation’s highways in five years. (Call me cynical, but this number does not sound as if it were the result of a scientific analysis either.) First of all, the cost of anything is that which is foregone by the purchase. In other words, when we buy something, we cannot spend this money on other things. That is what our cost is. In the case of Mr. Sandalow, his $9,000 investment cost him 3,000 gallons of gasoline at the current price of roughly $3 per gallon. Assuming Mr. Sandalow’s Toyota Prius gets only 20 miles per gallon, he could have driven his car for 60,000 miles. Since his commute is 10 miles per day, Mr. Sandalow’s conversion cost is the amount of gasoline he could have purchased to drive to work for 22.7 years. But that is not the only cost; the cost of electricity, which Mr. Sandalow estimates to be the equivalence of $.75 per gallon gasoline, has yet to be considered. This expense adds an additional $2,250 to his commute. (60,000 miles divided by 20 miles per gallon times $.75 = $2,250) Stated another way, he could have purchased another 750 gallons of gasoline and commuted to work for another 5.7 years, or 28.4 years total.
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