Doing Volt Math at the Cracker Barrel

Project Get Ready emailed me a summary of their latest efforts to get cities ready to put electric vehicle charging infrastructure in place. One thing they've done is put together "Plugging In: A Stakeholder Investment Guide for Public Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure" to help organizations figure out the costs, the pros, and the cons of deploying charging stations for electric vehicles.

A scenario that has always intrigued me is places like Cracker Barrel providing free charging stations (like the free wi-fi you get at a coffee shop). It's cold and rainy and you're hungry, so you stop at a Cracker Barrel to get a warm meal by their fireplace. You plug your car into their electric hitching post, in front of the rocking chairs there on the porch. Part of the draw to choose Cracker Barrel is that they're going to provide you with a free fill up.

But the scenario is busted by conundrum. Cracker Barrel isn't going to pay for charging stations unless people are going to pay for electric vehicles. The price tag for the electric vehicle (a Chevy Volt at $40K, for example) would appear to be prohibitively expensive.

So here's a run at the math that would make this all make sense, were it possible to break out of the vicious conundrum.

• Chevy Volt costs $40K
• Less <$7,500> Federal tax credit
• Amended Chevy Volt cost: $33K
• Avoided gas cost is <$15K> if a car got 20 mpg over 120,000 mile life cycle and gas cost $2.50/gallon

If you could stay within the Volt's 40 mile all-electric range, and if you could get your charging for free (from your employer, from the Cracker Barrel), you're now talking about life cycle adjusted equivalent Volt price tag of $18K. People are buying Volts on this math.

From the Cracker Barrel side, using the annual net costs calculation from Page 13 Project Get Ready's report, after initial net costs of several thousand dollars annually, Cracker Barrel would be paying less than $1,000 per year, or less than $3 a day, for the charging infrastructure. Maybe with the electricity costs, it is $5 a day (assume the cost to fully charge an EV is a buck a day, and Cracker Barrel doesn't fully charge each vehicle that docks). Cracker Barrels are installing charging stations on this math.

The trick then, is getting the one math to not wait on the other math.

Photo: yummyinthetummyblog on flickr