Scooter Return on Investment (ROI)

Electric vehicles aren't cheap but they will reduce the money you are spending now for your gas car. This section looks at how much you can save, and what the total return on investment (ROI) for your electric vehicle will be.

Gas Car Operation Cost

There are four ways that gas cars cost us money: gas, depreciation, maintenance and insurance. Let's first look at how much we could save on these if we are driving a scooter.

The average fuel consumption for US cars is about 25 mpg. However, this is an average of both city and highway driving and normal gas cars get much worse mileage in the city. Let's assume that in the city, the average is 15 mpg. Let's also assume that gas costs $3.00 per gallon. This means gas costs about 20 cents (20c) a mile for a normal car.

For depreciation, let's assume that you pay $30,000 for a car, drive it for 100,000 miles and then sell it for $10,000. Then depreciation adds another 20c per mile.

Over that 100,000 miles, you will probably get 30 oil changes at about $30 each, and get 3 sets of tires at about $400 per set and also put in about $6,000 for repairs and tuneups (if you are lucky!). All this adds another 8c per mile.

You won't save anything on insurance since you still will have to pay this.

Overall, driving your car in the city will cost about 48c per mile.

Scooter Operation Cost

Scooters normally use about 1c of electricity per mile, if your electricity rate is close to the national average of 12c per kWh. (If you live in an expensive region like we do, and go over your baseline, it can cost 33c kWh, which puts the electricity cost up to about 3c per mile.)

Scooters don't require much maintenance except you will need to buy a new set of batteries about every 10,000 miles [1] and this will cost about $750 [2]. This adds another 8c per mile. You will also probably need new tires at about 15,000 miles, and they cost about $100, so add another 1c for tires.

The total cost for operating a scooter (without depreciation) is about 10c per mile.

Scooter ROI

Let's say you buy a nice scooter for $3,000. Every mile you drive your scooter, you will be saving about 38c over driving your gas car. So it will take about 8,000 miles for your savings to equal the cost of your scooter.

If you drive your scooter at least 20 miles 225 days a year (for instance, if you drive it to work which is 10 miles away), it will take less than 2 years to pay for the scooter. Even if you only drive it for errands, say 8 miles a day for 250 days a year, it will still take about 4 years to pay back the initial cost. And after that, you will be saving money!

The ROI payback period for a scooter is between 2 and 4 years.

Summary

Driving a car in the city costs about 48c per mile, while driving a scooter costs less than 10c a mile. If you use your scooter a lot, it will take about 2 years to pay off the initial cost. Even with more casual use, you are likely to pay it off in 4 years.

References

[1] Greensaver battery specifications

Assuming 30 miles total range:

• 50% discharge gives 15 miles and 500 cycles = 7,500 miles
• 30% discharge gives 9 miles and 1100 cycles  ~ 10,000 miles

[2] Greensaver SP36-12 Battery