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As discussed numerous times, the biggest benefit to hybrid that cannot be quantified is going to the gas station 75% less per month/year , driving in pure quiet with the sound on and thermal / noise glass (yet flipping the switch and hitting nearly 500hp).
the maintenance options can mostly be offset by aftermarket warranty. US regs require extended warranty on battery. I think “hybrid repair costs” is overblown. Has anyone actually put some numbers up compared to say a GTS over 10 years with aftermarket warranty?
Thank you for sharing your experience so far. I am actually on the fence between cayenne base and hybrid for MY24. I am trying to talk myself into hybrid, but every time I think about it, I struggle to justify the need for it. It seems like you drive 1000-1200 miles per month which is standard for a lot of people including myself. With a hybrid, if you try to stay electric as long as feasible, you will get 50-60 mpg which is roughly 3 times better than a cayenne base. So, you will hit the gas station once a month instead of 3 -3.5 times a month on average. This will save you $150-$200 a month and $1800-$2400 a year (I haven't even factored in the price of electricity which is not zero). Now, in MY24, the hybrid will end up 12K more expensive (including tax and subtracting the price of the sport chrono package which is standard in hybrid). This means that you will break even after 5-6 years if you are paying cash and probably longer if you are financing. Is that what we are trying to do?? I even thought about the theoretical hp difference to justify the price, but if we are focused on saving gas and staying electric, we will not be using the extra hp that much. Am I missing something here???
Originally Posted by Schnave
^^^
Motortrend did an interesting study of break-even times of 10 vehicle’s hybrids / PHEV’s versus the ICE equivalent. For instance, the Toyota RAV4 vs the RAV4 Hybrid (4 years), Hyundai Sonata vs Sonata PHEV (36 years).
Break even times @ 15K miles / year ranged from 4 or 5 years to over 100 (!) years for the Lexus RX 450h. Sole exception being the Lincoln MKZ Hybrid, since the Hybrid is a no-cost option.
The study is a little dated; the fuel price was about $2.50/gal. Today’s higher prices should decrease the time required to break even.
That's insane! Looks like RAV4 hybrid was only $1225 more expensive and still took 4 years to break even. I guess 12k difference will take much longer to make up for even with gas price increase. Add to that the need for cables/daily charging, loss of cargo space and potential problems with a more complex engine setup, and still not getting rid of gas. I understand the need to eventually become all BEVs for cleaner energy, but I am still not sure about PHEVs.
$12k is a big hurdle to overcome.
I didn't buy the PHEV purely to save money. I did it because after living in the same location for 10 years, and having grown accustomed to our driving patterns, and having owned an EV for 4 years and nearly 80k miles, I knew it would fit our lifestyle well. We live outside of Houston, which means our driving is binarily split: lots of short trips in our neighborhood or longer trips (for instance downtown is 70 miles roundtrip). Houston is like LA, it's BIG. We like to say Houston is an hour away from Houston in traffic, and that's not an exaggeration.
This tank we're getting 80 mpg, because we've done so many electric miles. That's probably a best case scenario. But let's just use the best case.
We pay $0.17 / kWh for electricity. Right now premium is $3.90 / gallon. Both of these fluctuate, although I can lock in my power rate for 12 plus months.
The 2023 Cayenne was rated by the EPA at 17/22, 19 combined. I'll be slightly optimistic and call it 20 MPG.
We do roughly 15,000 miles / year on this car, or 1,250 miles a month. At 20 MPG, $3.90 / gallon that gives us a monthly fuel bill of $243.75 or $2925
At 80 MPG that gives me a fuel cost of $60.93. Electricity over this tank of 1291 miles has seen us use 540 kW of electricity. Or 0.418 kWh/mile. Again, both of these are blended averages. So electricity cost for the 1,250 miles would be $88.83. Total cost would be $149.76 / month or $1,797 year. That's $1,200 / year.
For the 2024 that'd take 10 years to break even. And that's likely the best case scenario.
But for us, the ability to drive all our short trips on EV only is key. not firing up the gas engine for short commutes, runs to the grocery store, dropping the kids off at practice, etc. We love not having all the cold starts, etc. The last time my wife filled up with gas was over a month ago. That's really nice. As someone with a 997 Turbo, that's REALLY nice not to have to do.
So yes, you don't do it for straight economics. Could we have this vehicle as a pure EV? Yes, we could. It would make road tripping a bit painful, but we don't go on multi-state trips that often.
...We pay $0.17 / kWh for electricity. Right now premium is $3.90 / gallon. Both of these fluctuate, although I can lock in my power rate for 12 plus months...
The 0.17/kwh seems high. Are you using gross or net variable cost? When I left the TX power business, The Woodlands was non-ERCOT, so you could choose Entergy or make your own. Many of the ERCOT plans have hourly billing which could be a big savings if you charge over night.
Does the car calculate mpg and mpkWh?
The 0.17/kwh seems high. Are you using gross or net variable cost? When I left the TX power business, The Woodlands was non-ERCOT, so you could choose Entergy or make your own. Many of the ERCOT plans have hourly billing which could be a big savings if you charge over night.
Does the car calculate mpg and mpkWh?
The car calculates MPG, but does not calculate miles / kWh. It gives some bogus number for electrical consumption. But, the PMCC Plus has an output that shows how much electricity it's passed through on each charge, so it's a nice output. Not as good as Tesla and some of their third party trackers, but nice nonetheless.
$0.17 is the highest I've been at in 10 years. I was unlucky to have my plan run out 6 months after the freeze last year, so rates are at an all time high. I was lucky to get that low, I saw rates as high as $0.22. That's all in, including all Centerpoint delivery fees, billing, etc. That's the gross cost based on well over the average of 2,000 kWh/month. For those of you who aren't in TX, your rate sheets show "averages" of 500, 1000 and 2000 kWh/month and shows you what your cost / kWh is with your delivery fee, any monthly fees, plus your electrical charge, since some of those are fixed and some are per kWh.
I've researched TOU plans and none of them are very useful to me since our house is on the larger side and our base usage is on the higher side. "Free nights" sounds great but unless you're recharging a Model S every night from full, you're going to get hammered on your day rate and it doesn't work out. I've looked at several of those plans and the math never works. I also use an energy broker that monitors my usage and shops rates and sees when it's beneficial to switch, even if it means breaking a current contract.
The lowest I've had all-in in the 10 years I've been here is about $0.09 / kWh. Pre-freeze it was always around $0.11 to $0.13. I thought about using those in my calcs, but as I indicated I did use 80 MPG as my fuel average which is likely to be more like 60, so net-net the 10 year breakeven cost is probably pretty accurate.
Last edited by Needsdecaf; 05-02-2023 at 11:35 AM.
...$0.17 is the highest I've been at in 10 years. I was unlucky to have my plan run out 6 months after the freeze last year, so rates are at an all time high. I was lucky to get that low, I saw rates as high as $0.22. That's all in, including all Centerpoint delivery fees, billing, etc. That's the gross cost based on well over the average of 2,000 kWh/month. For those of you who aren't in TX, your rate sheets show "averages" of 500, 1000 and 2000 kWh/month and shows you what your cost / kWh is with your delivery fee, any monthly fees, plus your electrical charge, since some of those are fixed and some are per kWh.
I've researched TOU plans and none of them are very useful to me since our house is on the larger side and our base usage is on the higher side. "Free nights" sounds great but unless you're recharging a Model S every night from full, you're going to get hammered on your day rate and it doesn't work out. I've looked at several of those plans and the math never works. I also use an energy broker that monitors my usage and shops rates and sees when it's beneficial to switch, even if it means breaking a current contract...
I came to the same conclusion on TOU before we left (big house, not wanting to run the pool pump at night, etc), but just wondered if anything changed. That said, you should use the variable energy cost for these calcs. You pay the fixed charges (CenterPoint, etc.) regardless of whether you're charging your Cayenne or not.
I'm amazed that anybody considering buying a $100k vehicle is worried about gas costs vs. electricity costs (to power that vehicle).
Even buying our RAV4 Prime for my wife (her choice), the main consideration was just going to gas stations a LOT less, not the $150-or-so "fuel" savings that we get each month per vehicle with our two PHEVs, vs. when we drove ICEVs daily before that. It's just priceless -- when we don't do out-of-town trips -- to fill up on gas once every two months per vehicle instead of once a week per vehicle, and just plugging into an outlet in our garage every night. We generally have to go a mile or two out of our way to fill up on gas, and it takes time, not to mention stepping into spilt gasoline and having to stand in bad weather while pumping gas. We often drive our PHEVs weeks at a time without the ICE coming on once during our daily driving. (And the oil/gas industry is the most corrupt industry in the world, causing untold hardships via wars and environmental damage and exploitation of people in third-world countries and catering to horrible authoritarian regimes around the world -- so I'm happy to move as quickly as possible to stop supporting Big Oil and all their insanely high profits that cause the most hurt to our economy, on principal.)
My forthcoming 2024 Cayenne E-Hybrid will be our fourth PHEV, and I'm assuming that it'll have an all-electric local-driving range close to that of our RAV4 Prime (50 miles); I'm close to getting a full BEV (possibly the Macan Electric in a couple of years), but we both do enough long-distance road trips several times a year that we're not quite "there" yet, due to public-charging issues.
I'm amazed that anybody considering buying a $100k vehicle is worried about gas costs vs. electricity costs (to power that vehicle)...
Not so much the cost (except calculating cost efficiencies satisfies my nerdy engineering soul - see above), but fuel availability. I keep cars for a long time and the rate that the anti-carbon theology is spreading plus the reduction in refinery capacity could make 93 octane scarce for some periods in the not too distant future.
I'm amazed that anybody considering buying a $100k vehicle is worried about gas costs vs. electricity costs (to power that vehicle).
Even buying our RAV4 Prime for my wife (her choice), the main consideration was just going to gas stations a LOT less, not the $150-or-so "fuel" savings that we get each month per vehicle with our two PHEVs, vs. when we drove ICEVs daily before that. It's just priceless -- when we don't do out-of-town trips -- to fill up on gas once every two months per vehicle instead of once a week per vehicle, and just plugging into an outlet in our garage every night. We generally have to go a mile or two out of our way to fill up on gas, and it takes time, not to mention stepping into spilt gasoline and having to stand in bad weather while pumping gas. We often drive our PHEVs weeks at a time without the ICE coming on once during our daily driving. (And the oil/gas industry is the most corrupt industry in the world, causing untold hardships via wars and environmental damage and exploitation of people in third-world countries and catering to horrible authoritarian regimes around the world -- so I'm happy to move as quickly as possible to stop supporting Big Oil and all their insanely high profits that cause the most hurt to our economy, on principal.)
My forthcoming 2024 Cayenne E-Hybrid will be our fourth PHEV, and I'm assuming that it'll have an all-electric local-driving range close to that of our RAV4 Prime (50 miles); I'm close to getting a full BEV (possibly the Macan Electric in a couple of years), but we both do enough long-distance road trips several times a year that we're not quite "there" yet, due to public-charging issues.
I'm not. It's just a side benefit.
To me, the powertrain fits our use case. I hate, absolutely hate, the wear that short cycling causes these engines. Agree with you on the last points too. We thought about a full BEV (iX, Rivian, EQE) but wife wasn't comfortable enough having to deal with it.
Just like my BEV, I didn't do it for environmental reasons.
45 Days and 1,577 miles between tanks.
Electricity used during this time was 670.2 kWh. At $.17 / kWh, that was an electrical cost of $113.94.
Gasoline cost was 17.4 Gallons at $3.99 - $69.43
Total "fuel" cost was $183.36
If I had averaged 21 MPG for this tank, it would have cost $299.63. So $116.27 in savings or $0.074 / Mile.
If we do 12,500 miles this year, that will save $888. As I stated above, this isn't about long term savings via fuel. It's more about convenience, mechanical sympathy, not emitting as much CO2 locally and the ability to absorb price shocks by having a relatively affordable second fuel source. Had my electrical prices been closer to my historic average of $0.13, we would have saved more.
45 Days and 1,577 miles between tanks.
Electricity used during this time was 670.2 kWh. At $.17 / kWh, that was an electrical cost of $113.94.
Gasoline cost was 17.4 Gallons at $3.99 - $69.43
Total "fuel" cost was $183.36
If I had averaged 21 MPG for this tank, it would have cost $299.63. So $116.27 in savings or $0.074 / Mile.
If we do 12,500 miles this year, that will save $888. As I stated above, this isn't about long term savings via fuel. It's more about convenience, mechanical sympathy, not emitting as much CO2 locally and the ability to absorb price shocks by having a relatively affordable second fuel source. Had my electrical prices been closer to my historic average of $0.13, we would have saved more.
Thanks for this post with some numbers. Yep, the savings in "fuel" costs with a PHEV is just frosting on the cake. I just love not going to gas stations nearly as often as we used to. And now looking at the 2024 Cayenne E-Hybrid, a YouTube video just posted the last few days shows an estimated all-electric range of 46 miles with the battery full (and the video says that 21 kWh is usable in the 26-kWh battery pack). I'm planning to order one sometime this year. That kind of range will handle most of my local driving needs in all-electric, while still hopefully getting me 25-27 mpg on the highway on long road trips where I can't charge.
The definitive plug-in hybrid advantage I am jealous of is the ability to condition the interior while the car is in the hot/cold garage. That seems like a killer feature that’s massively superior to traditional ice remote start. Improved start/stop seems like it could be nice too.
My usage profile doesn’t otherwise lend itself to the short trips/stop and go city style that would seem to let a hybrid shine…
Some day when infrastructure and technology maturity supports me having a full BEV in a place with 80mph speed limits, long distances between towns and -20F winters I will definitely appreciate the ability to warm/cool the car before getting in.
The definitive plug-in hybrid advantage I am jealous of is the ability to condition the interior while the car is in the hot/cold garage. That seems like a killer feature that’s massively superior to traditional ice remote start. Improved start/stop seems like it could be nice too.
My usage profile doesn’t otherwise lend itself to the short trips/stop and go city style that would seem to let a hybrid shine…
Some day when infrastructure and technology maturity supports me having a full BEV in a place with 80mph speed limits, long distances between towns and -20F winters I will definitely appreciate the ability to warm/cool the car before getting in.
this is true but it also goes a bit beyond in ways that are super subtle
basically - the Hybrid has to be fully functional as a "pure EV" - so EVERYTHING works when the ICE motor is shutdown (because it has to) - so even when sitting at a stop light in the summer sun the AC continues to functional with the main ICE motor shut down (unlike my 911 TurboS with auto/start/stop enabled) - powersteering still works - which you can tell when you're going down hill and the motor shuts down cause it's not needed…the car works flawlessly as a "pure EV" with no downsides with the ICE motors is "off" - this is in contrast to ICE vehicles with auto-start/stop - that when the ICE motors turns off you "lose" some functionality
the hybrid is a pure EV with a backup ICE motor…and it works great - and better in ways most people don't realize until you experience it.
The definitive plug-in hybrid advantage I am jealous of is the ability to condition the interior while the car is in the hot/cold garage. That seems like a killer feature that’s massively superior to traditional ice remote start. Improved start/stop seems like it could be nice too.
My usage profile doesn’t otherwise lend itself to the short trips/stop and go city style that would seem to let a hybrid shine…
Some day when infrastructure and technology maturity supports me having a full BEV in a place with 80mph speed limits, long distances between towns and -20F winters I will definitely appreciate the ability to warm/cool the car before getting in.
It's very handy.
Also, there is no "start / stop". Saying it's "improved" is kind of an understatement. It's so seamless as to not even be there. It just...is.
They did a great job on the powertrain calibration.
16 months ago when I ordered my GTS my SA said I shouldn't waste my time trying to get a Turbo S because they wouldn't get an allocation for one (at the time I was first on a list for a GTS expected in about 3 months) ... As a do it all daily driver I have to say that the GTS is pretty amazing at everything. The idea of a future Turbo S hybrid isn't totally out of the question but I would rather have a 997/991.1 proper sports car for track use first.
Given my extremely energy intensive usage patterns (light towing in the summer, cold temps in the winter (my wife won't settle for a temp setting less than 75F), and long distances) I expect that a hybrid is going to remain a far superior solution for me vs a full BEV for quite some time.
16 months ago when I ordered my GTS my SA said I shouldn't waste my time trying to get a Turbo S because they wouldn't get an allocation for one (at the time I was first on a list for a GTS expected in about 3 months) ... As a do it all daily driver I have to say that the GTS is pretty amazing at everything. The idea of a future Turbo S hybrid isn't totally out of the question but I would rather have a 997/991.1 proper sports car for track use first.
Given my extremely energy intensive usage patterns (light towing in the summer, cold temps in the winter (my wife won't settle for a temp setting less than 75F), and long distances) I expect that a hybrid is going to remain a far superior solution for me vs a full BEV for quite some time.
Probably so. Having said that, towing in an EV is wonderful...if you don't go very far.