ShareThisBy BRUCE SICELOFF
Your math may vary, but here's how Sam L. Rogers figures the cost of commuting in his electric car:
About a penny per mile to recharge the batteries. He plugs his ordinary-looking 1995 Geo Prizm into a household electrical outlet.
Plus about $2,000 when it comes time to replace the batteries, which he hopes will last 25,000 miles. That will be another 8 cents per mile.
That's about it _ roughly 9 cents a mile. By comparison, he points out, a car that runs 30 miles on a gallon of $3 gas costs 10 cents per mile for fuel.
"It works out to about the same cost as driving a gasoline vehicle in terms of dollars you'd pay out for gas," said Rogers, 57, of Raleigh, N.C. But there are some bonuses.
"You do eliminate things like frequent oil changes, belts, spark plugs, tune-ups, things of that nature. They just don't exist on an electric vehicle. The only maintenance is the battery itself."
Rogers doesn't want to say what he spent for the car when he bought it used in January. But he says he is considering an even swap with the owner of an electric compact pickup truck listed on eBay recently for $10,000.
His electric vehicle was one of eight or nine on display recently at an EV Expo at the Galaxy Cinema in Cary, N.C. EV devotees organized the event around the local premiere of a documentary film, "Who Killed the Electric Car?"
The movie centers on the short history of the battery-powered EV1, introduced in California by General Motors in 1996. In 2003 GM repossessed the cars, which had been leased rather than sold to drivers, and destroyed them.
Other manufacturers briefly made and sold a few models in California, but the few passenger electric cars and small trucks on the road today are mostly converted gas vehicles. Their engines and tanks have been replaced with electric motors and batteries. Speakers and displays at the EV Expo included other automobile alternatives such as ethanol and bio-diesel, and "plug-in hybrids" _ commercial gas-electric hybrid cars modified with added batteries. It was packed, Rogers said.
"About 800 people showed up," Rogers said. "They gave us EV owners a free pass to the movie, and I almost couldn't find a seat when I got in there."
Don F.P. Crohan II, a counseling psychologist in Raleigh, organized the EV Expo with the help of several local organizations. Crohan drives a converted 1986 Pontiac Fiero that he bought in January.
"You wouldn't know it's an electric car, except that it's quiet and there aren't any fumes," Crohan said.
Crohan and Rogers say their cars have plenty of power around town and at highway speeds.
"Driving it is extremely smooth," Rogers said. "There are no gear changes. Very smooth acceleration. The most fun part is when you let off the accelerator to slow down, you put energy back in your batteries.
"That's impossible with a gas engine _ when you slow down, you cannot put gas back in the tank."
Rogers' employer permits him to plug in for a recharge at his workplace, and he recharges it again at home _ usually on a slow-charge setting for about seven hours.
"I just like the idea of not using any fossil fuel _ no war is fought over it, and all that good stuff," Rogers says.
Then he laughs and acknowledges that fossil fuels do provide a lot of our electricity.
"I'm hoping mine came out of the nuclear plant."
(E-mail Bruce Siceloff at bruce.siceloff(at)newsobserver.com.)
