Hello! March is finally over and it’s time for me to crunch some numbers as to how fuel efficient the Ford Focus Electric was and how non-fuel efficient the Dodge Caravan was. Seeing as we purchased the car March 25 of last year, I also have a full years worth of data on the electric car which might not be a ton of use here but I’ll talk about it somewhat because it’s interesting.

First off, the Dodge Caravan numbers. It was driven 528 miles for an average of 16.2 miles per gallon. Given the cost of fuel of about $2.50 per gallon, the Caravan cost us a whopping $80 for the month. On a per mile basis this is $0.15 per mile; this is better than the past few months but still pretty damn dismal. I really hate the van by the way.

The Ford Focus had a busy month by driving over 900 miles — 934 miles to be exact. This was the third farthest we’ve ever driven in a month. According to the car’s meter it used 300 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity while the plug-in meter said the car used 445 kWh. This is an efficiency of 67% which is better than last month’s value of 61%. The car seems to be using power more efficiently since it’s getting warmer out. Remember this is one of the mysteries I’m trying to solve with the car. Anyways, since electricity is still about $0.12 per kWh, this means the car used a total of $54 in the month at an average of $0.06 per mile: 40% of the van’s cost per mile. The car is still stupidly efficient.

Here’s the data in graphical form:

The Yearly Data

Seeing as the end of March coincides with a full year of owning the car, I want to put in a few numbers involving that. I also haven’t thought about it much so I don’t really know what to say other than to beat around some numbers like I always do. Numbers simply can’t lie!

In the year we’ve driven 10,084 miles in our Ford Focus Electric. Our total kWh usage at the house (according to the plug-in meter) was 4,346 kWh. Remember I did charge the car a few times “for free” elsewhere and this number doesn’t reflect that. At $0.12 per kWh this is a total cost of $520. Overall this averages out to $0.0516 per mile, or 5.2 cents, whichever sounds better. Each mile driven costs us a nickel!

Just to put that all into perspective I’ll include the data from the Dodge Caravan. That used about $800 in gas which doesn’t sound very bad until you consider it only drove 5,200 miles in the entire year! This averages out to $0.15 per mile which is in line with the numbers from above. The van is simply terrible on gas with the car costing one-third that of that van.

Happy Easter everyone!