Let’s face it: a new car is one of the most expensive purchases you can make. But how should you calculate value if you’re investing in an EV? In this episode, join host Tara Jean Stevens in conversation with Mark Zacharias, the executive director of Clean Energy Canada, and Saifullah Sanaye, a professor of Automotive Technology at St. Lawrence College, for an in-depth cost/benefit analysis of what it means to drive an electric car. Plus, Tara Jean takes a deep dive into the financials with two drivers tracking the costs of their electric vehicles.
Let’s face it: a new car is one of the most expensive purchases you can make. But how should you calculate value if you’re investing in an EV? In this episode, join host Tara Jean Stevens in conversation with Mark Zacharias, the executive director of Clean Energy Canada, and Saifullah Sanaye, a professor of Automotive Technology at St. Lawrence College, for an in-depth cost/benefit analysis of what it means to drive an electric car. Plus, Tara Jean takes a deep dive into the financials with two drivers tracking the costs of their electric vehicles.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
Here's an interesting fact for you: In 2023, the average price of a brand-new vehicle in Canada was sixty-one thousand dollars.
And if you’re in the market for a new hybrid or fully electric vehicle, the price can be even higher—up to about twenty thousand dollars more.
I'm Tara Jean Stevens, and this is Road to Electric, an original podcast powered by Mazda.
We are halfway through this podcast series now, and it's time for some real talk about money. Cars are expensive!
And there's more to the overall cost of a car than the sticker price. There are repairs, maintenance, tires, and, if you're driving a combustion-powered vehicle, gas.
PINO MASTROIANNI
I think the biggest motivating factor, or instigator, to buy a plug-in vehicle is the cost savings.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
Pino Mastroianni has been driving a hybrid EV for over a decade, and he's certain he’s saved money.
PINO MASTROIANNI
Both the fuel and maintenance—brake pads, for example—lasted a lot longer. They'll typically rust before they wear out. I've got 10 years on my brake pads, and they weren't worn out; they were just rusty.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
Anecdotes like Pino's are pretty common among EV owners. But my next guest decided to put that theory to the test herself.
Mary Guthrie loves two things: driving and numbers. She's a retired IT professional who now operates a farm near Amherstburg, Ontario.
When she made the switch from a gas-powered car to an EV, she really geeked out on her car's monthly performance reports, starting with how many kilowatt hours she's using per one hundred kilometers of driving.
MARY GUTHRIE
So I went back and looked up a couple of numbers, and in the winter I seem to be using 20 kilowatt hours per hundred kilometers. And in the summer, I'm using 18 kilowatt hours per hundred kilometers because I like to drive and I tend to have a heavy foot on the pedal.
And, um, here in Ontario, because I charge at night and I'm using time-of-use billing without factoring in all of the fixed costs and everything, electricity here costs 7.40 cents per kilowatt-hour. So for 18 kilowatt hours, that works out really well. Math: 18 times 7.40 cents is a dollar. Per hundred kilometers in the winter, it's 20 kilowatt hours.
It's a dollar per hundred kilometers.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
Oh wow, you break it down to seasons.
MARY GUTHRIE
Well, because, uh, just like an ice car, EVs tend to use a little bit more electricity in the wintertime. You have to have the heat on, and by using heated seats and probably more climate control items, it takes a little more energy to drive when it's cold as well.
So it's good to know there's a slight difference. It's not huge; it's just a slight difference.
The other car that I had prior to the EV, my ice car, was an SUV, and it wasn't bad for an SUV. It used about 11 liters per hundred kilometers, and that works out here in Ontario.
Again, the gas is about 60 cents a liter. Right now. It's fluctuating between $1.50 and $1.60 That's $17.60 per hundred kilometers, against $1.33 or $1.48.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
You sound like my Mom when she was telling me about things I shouldn't spend my money on when I was a teenager.
MARY GUTHRIE
You sound like you have a wise mother.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
So Mary, tell me about maintenance costs. Can you break those down for us?
MARY GUTHRIE
There's a lot less maintenance on an EV. I would never tell anybody there's no maintenance on an EV because there are regular wear items on an EV just like a nice car. So, every spring and fall, I swap my winter tires for my OEM tires, and that's it—about $110 a year. Um, I change out my cabin air filter once a year, and that's 45 bucks because I do it myself.
Um, the insurance is about the same as it was in my ICE car, so that one's really not that much different. Besides not having to do oil changes, the one thing that's a little bit different on an EV from an ICE car is, uh, brakes. There's a feature on my car that lets me slow it down without using the brakes.
And the difference is that you wear your brakes out in an ICE car because you're using them all the time. With an EV, you're not using the brakes all the time. And what that means is that they start to deteriorate. They need lubrication, and sometimes the pads and, uh, rotors rest. So you do have to do a brake service.
The first brake service I did on this EV was four years after I bought it, and I have about 80,000 kilometers on this car. So I wouldn't compare brake service on an EV directly to an ICE car. But it's just something to be aware of.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
I'm so used to driving an ICE vehicle where there are so many repairs and unexpected costs. I'm almost not wanting to believe you, but I want to know more too. So what would you tell someone who says the initial cost of buying an EV cancels out any savings from charging, maintenance, and repairs?
MARY GUTHRIE
Well, I would tell you that the cost of the car that I bought is comparable to the same cost you would pay for an ICE car. And for me, the difference is that I'm going to be able to keep this car a lot longer than I would keep an ICE car. I've had mine for four years, and I expect that I'll have it for at least another six.
TARA JEAN STEVEN
Mary Guthrie, a farm owner and EV driver on the roads in and around Amherstburg, Ontario
SEAN PRPICK
The thing that electric car people like to say is that the average electric car, and this is absolutely true, has 95% fewer moving parts than a gasoline car.
Tara Jean Stevens: Remember Sean Prpick? We met him in our first episode; he lives in cold, cold Regina, Saskatchewan and takes great pleasure in zipping off in his EV on the coldest winter mornings while his neighbors spend upwards of 15 minutes warming up their ICE vehicles.
SEAN PRPICK
There's simply less to go wrong, and the parts that you need are typically cheaper. So if you just follow the right practices, if you charge the car correctly, if you select a well-rated car, and if you drive it in the right way, you're going to have fewer problems. Then you have, uh, conventional cars.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
But it's not like EVs come with no maintenance costs or needs at all—of course they do. But they are different from the needs of ICE vehicles.
SAIFULLAH SANAYE
Yes, there are fewer parts and fewer moving parts. Yes, there is less maintenance for sure, but, um, there's still crucial maintenance on these vehicles, right?
TARA JEAN STEVENS
Saifullah Sanaye, has been an auto mechanic since he was 16 years old. He started as a "regular" mechanic, doing maintenance on gas-powered cars.
SAIFULLAH SANAYE
And as I went through, I started looking at, uh, what is a need for the automotive industry? What's lacking? And what happened was that I realized that, at that point, the technicians didn't have the proper skillset to diagnose even the most basic electrical issues. And that's when I started getting more and more training, taking more classes and courses, and traveling to different countries, including California. I've been to New Zealand and Switzerland to get this kind of electric vehicle training.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
Now Saifullah teaches EV repair at St. Lawrence College and owns a shop specializing in hybrid and fully electric vehicles. There are some crucial differences in the ways EVs operate, so specialized knowledge is needed.
SAIFULLAH SANAYE
In an EV, the electric motor is basically contactless. We have far fewer parts. So basically, all we're doing—I know I'm kind of simplifying it—is having magnetic fields that are acting against each other.
So believe it or not, I tell all my students this. I say, Listen, you guys want to know, uh, how an electric motor works. It's basically magnetism, all right? We are controlling the magnetism at certain angles. That's how we make power in an internal combustion engine. What we're doing is that we have a lot of different components that are happening, a lot of different movements that are happening inside there, but an electric motor. We're basically just magnets. Magnets that are controlled by a computer, believe it or not,
TARA JEAN STEVENS
Magnets! So there ARE fewer moving parts, but that doesn't mean EV drivers can get complacent. Just the opposite, in fact.
SAIFULLAH SANAYE
What I would like to put out there is that with an ICE vehicle, you will get warning signs. So let's just say that I'll give you an example. With an internal combustion engine, you have a muffler. This muffler, if it rusts out, gets a hole in it, or falls off, will make a noise.
Right. So you're going to hear that noise, and you're going to understand. You're going to say, "Wow". There's a problem here with an EV. They're very quiet. So the consumers that are out there thinking that they don't need to do, uh, maintenance on their EV or as much, they need to kind of rethink that and say, "Hey, I should probably take this into a shop and get it looked at. and take care of it."
The biggest thing is to stick to your maintenance intervals. All right? If you don't, you will probably have to, uh, pay a pretty big bill at a dealership or an aftermarket shop. Enjoy it, though, because they're really fun to drive.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
Saifullah Sanaye, owns a repair shop specializing in hybrids and electric vehicles and teaches EV mechanics at St. Lawrence College.
So generally speaking, when it comes to the sticker price on the lot, most EVs do cost more than the equivalent gas-powered car. But we've ALSO heard from EV drivers that over time, those up-front costs will get balanced out, especially when you consider the fact that there are various government rebates available to help reduce the purchase price of an EV.
Earlier, we heard Mary Guthrie describe how she's tracked the cost of her EV versus her old gas-powered SUV.
But I wanted to dive into some more official data to see if Mary's experience is backed up by broader studies.
Clean Energy Canada commissioned a research study in 2022 that compared six popular vehicles with their EV equivalents.
Mark Zacharias is the executive director, and he sat down with me to give me the low-down on how the costs really compare.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
So let's start at the very beginning. How did you actually conduct the research? Because there's so much data available.
MARK ZACHARIAS
We were lucky in that the US has done this type of work before when they looked at the total ownership costs of internal combustion versus electric vehicles. So we took the tool that was produced by the company that did it, and moved it up to Canada. So all we really had to do was basically transpose everything into Canadian equivalence, and it was fairly straightforward for us to actually do the work. And as you said, we looked at six vehicles and their internal combustion equivalents and looked at ownership and total costs over eight years if you drove 20,000 kilometers a year.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
Can you break down the costs in detail for me? I am one of these people who is thinking about buying an electric vehicle, and I want to really understand the numbers.
MARK ZACHARIAS
Well, we looked at six different categories in terms of vehicle size and vehicle class, so right from the smallest right up to electric pickup trucks. And what we found is that on average, for five of the six classes, you would say thousands, if not tens of thousands, of dollars over eight years of driving 20,000 kilometers a year.
So, for example, and probably the best comparison we're using, there's an internal combustion variant and an electric variant. And what we found is that if gas was $1.45 a liter, which was the average cost over the last year, you would save $10,700 over the life of the car over eight years.
Um, if gas costs were $2, Um, I live in Victoria, which is where they are right now. You would actually save almost $17,000.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
Which is a lot of money in these trying times, right?
MARK ZACHARIAS
Absolutely.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
So I've been hearing a lot about rebate opportunities. How did you factor in rebates? Considering that, from my research, there are different rebates for different provinces,
MARK ZACHARIAS
Right now, the federal rebate is $5,000. and then seven provinces offer their own rebates on top of the federal rebates, so they actually stack. So in Quebec, for example, you can get up to $13,000 off a new vehicle purchase, so long as it's a zero-emission electric vehicle. And from there, you look at different provinces.
BC has a means-tested program, so it's tested against your income in terms of how much you would get back at the point of sale from the car. And, uh, also, Quebec and BC are the first two provinces to start offering incentives on used fees.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
So are we going to see used EV car lots pretty soon?
MARK ZACHARIAS
In Victoria, BC, and we already have one, so I would say yes.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
So what did you find out about the overall costs associated with driving an EV versus a gas-powered car?
MARK ZACHARIAS
Yeah, what we did for our work was only look at eight years of ownership. And again, depending on the model, it might be less for certain models and certain trims, but just for comparison purposes and to be able to make sure that we had a level playing field for all of the comparisons that we did, we looked at eight years. Owning an EV is cheaper for all Canadians if you own the car for eight years and you drive 20,000 kilometers a year, that was our result.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
So what I’m curious about, based on this research, is public perception. Are more people considering EVs as a cheaper option than a gas-powered vehicle?
MARK ZACHARIAS
Well, our polling and focus group work has shown us that, uh, most Canadians are interested in looking at an EV for their next vehicle, and we also found that. Six out of 10 Canadians feel that EVs will be cheaper than their internal combustion counterparts. So by and large, Canadians are already seeing the EV opportunity, and they're already thinking about what an EV might look like as their next vehicle.
So Canadians are very open to EVs. What we're seeing right now is that last year, nationally, 8.9% of all new vehicles registered were Zero-emission vehicles, you know, the majority of those being electric vehicles.
Uh, what we also found last year in those jurisdictions that had a zero emission vehicle sales mandate or requirements to sell a certain percentage of electric vehicles was that British Columbia had 18.1% of all new vehicles registered as electric, and Quebec had 13.2. So the EV revolution is already upon us, and as Canada starts to capitalize on the building and assembling of EVs in Canada, in Ontario, using battery metals from across Canada and batteries made in Quebec elsewhere, you're going to see more and more EVs on the road.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
And in talking about the results of your study, was there anything that surprised you?
MARK ZACHARIAS
We were very surprised when we looked at the total registrations across Canada to see that they were as high as they are. Given that it's been very hard to get an EV and many other models over the last year or two, what we're seeing now is that there were wait times a year or two ago of up to a year and a half to get the car you wanted.
What's different now is that we have more models coming into showrooms across Canada, and we have more EVs being produced globally and in North America, so the wait times are starting to get shorter and shorter. So it surprised us how many new cars were being registered as EVs, but it also surprised us that even in such supply-constrained times, there were still that many new cars coming onto the road.
So very, very good.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
What's your opinion on how I mean, this is maybe getting a little into just, you know, social aspects and psychology and stuff like that, but how do you think data actually impacts us as human beings? Do you think that we hear this data and go, "Yeah, that's a good statistic; I'm going to buy myself an electric vehicle?"
MARK ZACHARIAS
I think it does, and it may not be for the urban family that only drives 5,000 or 7,000 kilometers a year. Uh, but certainly if you're a small business owner or you live in rural Canada and you need to have a truck for your work, you're going to be looking at the math. And you know, I'm always surprised when I travel across Canada at how many battery-electric trucks there are. we're seeing out there, and, you know, that's not virtual signaling by anybody that's these; the math works for the owners of these vehicles. And as more of these vehicles come onto the market from different manufacturers, we're going to see more and more electric vehicles everywhere, and it's just going to become the norm.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
So buying an automobile, as I think everyone would agree, is a pretty major purchase for most people. Right? So we put a lot of thought into it. We worry about it. We definitely weigh all of our options. What would you say to anyone listening, including myself right now?
I'm going to take this to heart about why we should pay more for an EV right off the bat compared to a gas vehicle.
MARK ZACHARIAS
Well, first and foremost is the fact that you will save money over the life of the vehicle. And so that's kind of the first thing we would say. The second one is that you are reducing your overall carbon emissions, and as you drive the vehicle, and the more you drive it, the more you're going to basically reduce your carbon footprint.
Also, you're helping yourself with energy security. And remember, every time you fill up at the pump, what you're doing is filling up with gas that's priced internationally. So the price of oil is not set in Canada, whereas we generate all of our electricity here. So you know, from year to year and from month to month, what it costs to fill up your car is going to be the same.
So there isn't any sticker shock at the pumps.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
Mark Zacharias is the executive director of Clean Energy Canada.
So according to our experts and our real-life drivers, although a new EV will probably cost you a bit more up front, the costs will balance out over time, especially with some of the rebates and incentives that are offered here in Canada.
And I learned how electric motors actually work and the importance of magnets!
More importantly, I also learned that you need to stick to a strict maintenance schedule because an EV doesn't necessarily have those clunks and rattles that warn you when your car needs some extra TLC.
I'm Tara Jean Stevens, and you've been listening to Road to Electric. An original podcast powered by Mazda.
Next week we're talking about sustainability—are EVs really as good for the environment as everyone seems to think? Find and follow us wherever you get your podcasts.
Thanks for listening.
DISCLAIMER
The thoughts, opinions, and views expressed in this podcast are solely those of the guests and do not represent the thoughts, opinions, or views of Mazda Canada. The material and information presented in this podcast are for general information purposes only.