Soaring oil prices in the United States have made many people more willing to try electric vehicles, but how does the energy consumption of gasoline vehicles and electric vehicles compare? In fact, there is a simple formula for conversion. Now, almost all popular electric vehicles have a "fuel consumption" performance of more than 42 kilometers per liter.
Buying an electric car if you do not have the money to refuel is one of the hottest ironies this year. However, switching from a gasoline car to an electric car can save you much money on gas, which requires car owners to calculate carefully. In order to help car owners better understand the energy consumption of electric vehicles, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed a calculation unit: MPGe, which converts the energy consumption of electric vehicles into the calculation unit of fuel vehicles.
The formula's energy per gallon of gasoline (3.8 liters) is approximately 33.7kWh, combined with the EPA endurance test results, the MPGe is calculated comprehensively. Due to the different units of measurement in the United States, to convert miles per gallon of gasoline to kilometers per liter of gasoline, MPGe must be multiplied by 0.425, which becomes the unit commonly used by Taiwanese.
Recently, the U.S. Department of Energy listed models with MPGe of more than 100 on the market, providing the public with a reference for car purchases. The conversion is equivalent to fuel consumption of more than 42.5 kilometers per liter of gasoline. There are a total of 17 brands and 37 models with fuel consumption performance better than this The list after data conversion is as follows:
▲EPA standard electric vehicle fuel consumption conversion table （Source：TechNews）
Models with ☆ are not sold in Taiwan. In addition, the choice of some models will affect fuel consumption performance and not all models have the same performance. The MPGe difference between the Tesla Model 3 and Lucid Air is only 1 and the kilometers after conversion are almost the same, as are the Nissan Leaf and MINI Cooper SE.
Unsurprisingly, the best performing models were the Tesla Model 3 LR, Lucid Air, and Tesla Model Y LR but the most surprising should be the Hyundai Kona Electric and Kia Niro Electric, which are the only two on the list developed on pure electric platforms and producing very beautiful energy consumption data.
Therefore, we can compare the energy consumption of the fuel version and the pure electric version. In terms of the most fuel-efficient Kona SE, the average fuel consumption estimated by the EPA is 32MPG, which is equivalent to about 13.6 kilometers per liter, which is far from the pure electric version’s 51 kilometers.
Another surprise is that the Mercedes-Benz EQS, the king of endurance, has an unsatisfactory EPA energy consumption performance, only getting 97MPGe (41 kilometers per liter), which caused it to just fall out of the list.
When it comes to fuel efficiency, many people must be curious about whether the best-selling gasoline-electric God A (Toyota Altis Hybrid) in Taiwan will lose to electric cars? EPA estimates that the fuel consumption of the 2022 Toyota Corolla Hybrid is 52MPG (22 kilometers per liter). Although the average fuel consumption of the 2022 commercial car is 22MPG, all the electric vehicles in the table have MPGe above 100, leaving it far behind.
▲Gas-electric God A vs Kona Electric Fuel Consumption Performance （Source：EPA）
From the performance of fuel consumption, it can be said that "there is no money to refuel, so I buy an electric car" is not entirely a joke. From the perspective of the US market, the fuel-efficient Corolla Hybrid is $10,000 cheaper than the Kona Electric, but costs $33 more per 100 kilometers. Calculated at 20,000 kilometers per year, the Kona Electric saves $20,000 in the total cost of buying a car after 5 years before including maintenance costs and rental tax subsidies.
Looking at a wider timeframe, 20 years ago, when gas-electric vehicles first started, lithium-ion battery vehicles were nothing but a fantasy, but now the performance of pure electric vehicles is growing rapidly. In the next five years, batteries and aerodynamics will improve and the energy consumption of electric vehicles may be further reduced. However, the most important thing is whether the production cost can be reduced enough to the popularization of electric vehicles.
（Image：Tesla）