Welcome to another Tesla Tuesday!
In the last post in the series, I gave an update on our Model Y’s efficiency and our continued progress towards having this car be cheaper than the gas car we would have purchased instead. Today I’m here to report on a bit of a change to those calculations. Our electricity price has increased by ~20% this year and next year they’ll go up again (~5-10%).
PSE prices are increasing because of state regulations which are requiring them to get rid of coal and natural gas plants. Voters want more wind and solar but not nuclear. This is being demanded at such a rapid rate that PSE needs to raise costs to cover the change.
This slows things down a bit, but the bigger factor in determining how much money we are saving is still the cost of gas. The change in electricity cost means that our electricity cost per mile* goes up from $0.034 to $0.041/mile. Our gas cost would currently be $0.19/mile. A gallon of gas going down by about $0.20 would be a bigger hit to our savings per mile than this electricity cost increase.
This price increase also led me to do a better job with the previous price increase that had happened in January of 2023. My old calculations had ignored the lower prices for the first half a year that we had the car. After improving the electricity cost changes in the model, we’re at $10,628 in fuel savings after 57,600 miles.
So while the cost increase is annoying, it doesn’t dramatically change the math. It does increase my desire to have solar panels on the house though. The math on that just doesn’t work out super well in the Seattle area though. It would be a neat feeling to generate my own power to fuel our car!
*Yes, I’m also factoring in service costs, depreciation, insurance, registration, etc in the total cost per mile. This post only focuses on the fuel costs.