Electric Vehicles (EVs) are hot property in the automotive industry right now, with almost all OEMs rushing to get in on the action and releasing their own vehicles or vehicle platforms. Currently, EVs make up approximately 2% of new vehicle sales in the North American market but, with the ever-increasing number of EVs being introduced and infrastructure being built, this is bound to increase over the next few years.

In this analysis, we will be looking at which EVs currently for sale offer the best value for money to the customer, and more specifically, which vehicles provide the most real-world range compared to their purchase price.  

The Market

Using data attained from VehiclePlannerPlus, we can analyze and plot OEM competitiveness by comparing the relationship between vehicle price and EPA range. This analysis will allow a view into how OEMs are positioning their vehicles in the market and to whom they're marketing towards. This plot can be seen below.

 

 

This quadrant based plot showcases 4 different areas of the EV market, these are as follows:

• Bottom Left - Low cost, low range. The vehicles in this segment can be seen to be new vehicles that are either still based on older EV platforms, based on ICE vehicles with the EV internals or generally just small EVs.
• Top Left - High cost, low range. This segment is dominated by premium OEMs and performance EVs.
• Top Right - High cost, high range. Contains better established EV manufacturers (exclusively Tesla at this time period).
• Bottom Right - Low cost, high range. Contains 'long range' models of vehicles and those more focussed on practicality rather than performance.

Vehicle Cost per Mile of Range

Using VehiclePlannerPlus data, the $ cost per mile of EPA range can be calculated to show which EVs are providing the 'best value for money'. This can be seen below. 

 

 

Using this plot, we can see which vehicles provide the most range per $ of purchasing cost, the top five are presented below.

 

 

Tesla hold positions 3 through 5 with variants of their Model 3 and Model Y vehicles. These vehicles tend to have higher range than the other two vehicles in the top five, but the premium nature of Tesla as a brand means the price of purchase is also higher. The Chevrolet Bolt EV LT and the Hyundai Kona EV SEL fill the first and second spots with a MSRP cost per mile of of $140.93 and $144.92, respectively. The Chevrolet Bolt EV LT is the base trim of the Bolt EV range. While it is only a small city car, it boasts an EPA range of 259 miles, which is actually more than the Tesla Model 3 base trim.

A common theme seen in this analysis is the standardisation of range across a vehicle model. It can be seen that the best scoring vehicles for $ per mile of range are generally base trim models, this is because the range does not increase with trim pricing unless the vehicle is packaged as having a longer range, such as the Tesla Model 3 Long Range.

In conclusion, it can be seen that this analysis is making premium vehicles look less competitive. However, this is because we are not accounting for features or performance, and are solely looking at range in this instance.