Broken down on a technical basis.
Cost efficiency is one of the most important factors buyers use when determining high cost purchases. When a product is used in a professional setting there will be a lot of wear and tear associated costs and keeping those costs down without giving up any desired feature. When it comes to utility vehicles, it is no different. It can be just as expensive as a small piece of heavy machinery. Below, we compare the difference in costs between owning a gas-powered ATV versus owning an electric ATV.
The DRR EV Adventure has a 50-mile range (the same as a gas ATV) on a 6-hour charge. The included battery has 20 amps decaying charge rate, meaning in the first hour it uses 20 amps and in the second 15 and continues until it reaches 0 amps use in the 5th hour, depending on how you use it. In all it takes 5 kw of electricity to charge the battery to full capacity plus amperage. According to Energergybot.com, the average cost of electricity is 10.42 cents per kilowatt-hour. In order to convert amps to a cost you must multiply amps times volts to get watts used. A typical household 120-volt outlet would use 20*120 watts, or (2,400 watts) in an hour.
The calculation for charging is: 20(amp)*120(volt)+15(amp)*120(volt)+10(amp)*120(volt)+5(amp)*120(volt)+5,000=11,000 watts
Or simplified to 50*120+5,000=11,000 watts
Take 11,000 watts and convert them to kw you get 11 kw of power to charge the battery fully.
11kw*$0.1042(Cost per kwh)= $1.1462 to fully charge the battery.
Then you take $1.1462/50 = $0.0229 per mile
That is the long and technical way to say that it costs you $0.0229 per mile.
Now compare that to gas ATVs which average between 15-20 mpg. With gas prices averaging $2.79 right now that leads us to the much simpler equation of 2.79/15 or 2.79/20 which averages to between 14 and 18 cents a mile.
This makes electric ATVs 611% cheaper per mile or 6x cheaper, not including maintenance.
Another place that E-ATV owners save over the course of a year is having no moving parts.
The average gas ATV uses between 1.5 and 2.5 quarts of oil. The general change time for oil changes is every 100 hours of use. Say one gets 6 hours of use on an ATV on average it would need an oil change every 16 days or 21 changes in a year. A quart of 2 stroke oil is around $10 and $5 for a new filter means that each oil change will cost you $25 or $525 for a year's worth of oil changes.
Gas ATVs also require the carburetor rebuilt on a regular basis. A typical rebuild consisting of rings and pistons can cost in the range of $75-$200 dollars plus 2-3 man hours. When used regularly, like in farming or transportation, it is recommended that the carb be rebuilt around once every 3 months or 250 hours of use.
If you used an ATV 1,000 miles every year, the gas ATV would cost around $1,300 dollars more per year in gas and maintenance.
If you had a fleet of five ATVS you used regularly, you would spend $6,500 or almost the cost of 1 DRR EV Stealth.
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