I drove an old pickup truck
I drove an old pickup truck before the Volt. This last year, I averaged $200/month on gas and about $2k/year on repairs. I don't think its really fair to compare those apples and oranges. It was time for a new car; I was going to buy or lease a sedan anyway. And I'm not going to get into the whole buy/lease debate. My first post was a counter to the lease being outside "normal" budgets.
I'm getting the $90 fuel cost savings number extrapolating what it would cost if I ran the Volt exclusively on gas. The few times I dipped into gas on the Volt, I averaged 31 mpg.
So, let use the round number of 1000 miles driven in a month. At $3.60 for a gallon of gas, my fuel costs would be (1000mi / 31mpg) * 3.6 = $116.
I have averaged 4mi/kWh. So, (1000mi / 4mi/kWh) * $.05386/kWh = $13.47 *,**.
So, I give a conservative figure of $90 instead of $102.50 to account for some gas consumed on longer trips.
* I am on time-of-use billing and only charge during off-peak times, so my kWh cost is much lower than standard rates. Progress Energy adds some base charges to the TOU bill. But, because I would be on TOU whether I had the Volt or not, I am not cost averaging the Volt electricity based on the entire bill. I am just using the off-peak rate in my calculation.
** I live in Raleigh, NC and the city and area businesses have made a strong commitment to installing EV chargers -- most of them free to use. I take advantage of these chargers quite often. I have a kill-a-watt inline with my home charger to track my actual usage. My real out-of-pocket cost for charging was $9.37 last month (174kWh).