EV charging stations shouldn't be making money yet! In my neck of the woods Electrify America prices are around $.64 / kw. I am still on the free plan but if I was paying for that a fill up from 20-80% that would be ~ $30. GAS IS THAT CHEAP for that amount of energy, effectively. How can we get the middle majority off of gas vehicles if, effectively, gas ends up being cheaper and more convenient?
If we really care about climate change, Electric vehicles and infrastructure should be incredible not profitable for 10+ years. We need more incentives and ways so the focus is on expansion of infrastructure, not profitability.
I don’t know where you are located, but I’d have to imagine your residential utility rates are a fraction of Electrify Americas rates.
Cars spend most of their time sitting around, the real infrastructure gap is that we don’t have enough cheap slow chargers located where they usually end up sitting: home, work, shopping centers, etc.
More importantly, EVs are currently a luxury product. Seemingly built like other popular luxury products, too (designed to be hard/expensive to repair). We shouldn't be building EVs as if they were disposable smartphones, intended to be upgraded as soon as the screen gets cracked or the battery degrades somewhat.
Something big needs to change if we want to see wider adoption of EVs, and overpriced EV 'fuel' certainly won't help.
The wealthy with large suburban homes can charge at home no problem. But not everyone can afford to have their own personal parking/charging space, so may be forced to use overpriced public chargers.
I bought my Chevy Bolt new for $28k. With the cheapest new ICEs going for about ~$20k, that's hardly a "luxury product". And I don't really see your "hard to repair" argument: There's very few parts of my vehicle that could conceivably wear out, and most of them can be repaired trivially. The only big one is the battery, and that represents ~2/3 of the value of the vehicle. It's like an engine dying: the car's totaled.
And you don't need a "large suburban home". Even the most cramped townhouse has a driveway you can run a cord from the house to. It's just apartment complexes that have this problem. If you don't have somewhere to charge your car overnight, EVs aren't practical at the moment, and no amount of subsidizing public charging could change that.
I’ve seen some pilot programs where utilities hang chargers from utility poles. Would really love to see that adopted more.
We needed to build out the public charging network for road trips and last minute “whoops I don’t have enough charge” use cases, but we really gotta take advantage of that fact the cars are only in use a small fraction at a time.
If we want everyone to drive electric, we'll need a lot of public charging. People will need to charge on longer trips, some people might forget to charge at home, and some will not even have the possibility. It's already obvious that the charging point operators will try to squeeze as much money out of everyone's pockets as they can get away with. Just like with the oil cartel, they have a customer base that pretty much has no other choice but to buy from them.
Once people are used to high prices and simply accept them, it will be the new normal. EVs won't turn out to be as cheap to operate in such a future as is currently assumed. That's what we seem to be headed for.
So long as the incentives to build and maintain charge stations is private, then profit needs to be on the horizon for operators.
What doesn't have to be on the horizon is high cost for consumers, because you're absolutely right that concern over charging stations is a drag on EV adoption.
There are grants to build EV charging stations, but what's less clear to me are operation grants. Ideally we'd see grants for operation that cover the majority of the cost for a period of time, reduce consumer cost and reward good operation (most stations being open, etc.)
We'd also ideally see incentives for solar installations or other green energy offsets for EV charging stations with grants that phase out.
Grants also would ideally be more about distance from existing charging stations, to incentivize spreading out chargers and rewarding "first movers".
There are still lots of issues with chargers from an operator perspective. While electricity is cheap and cheaper to run than building a gas station, the operating expenses are still there when it comes to maintenance and security, and there's the fact that charging takes significantly longer than filling a tank with gasoline, meaning that one needs more space to service the same number of vehicles.
Some costs do need to be handed back to the consumer, such as cost of using the space at a charging station. If not, then they could become de-facto parking lots.
> Some costs do need to be handed back to the consumer, such as cost of using the space at a charging station. If not, then they could become de-facto parking lots.
Vice versa, too. If a parking lot already charges $15/hour, it seems like an extra hidden fee if charging also costs an additional $2/hour. As charging becomes more common it makes more sense to roll the costs together into a single advertised price.
> there's the fact that charging takes significantly longer than filling a tank with gasoline, meaning that one needs more space to service the same number of vehicles.
Though all of that space doesn't need to be in the same sorts of places. Home and destination charging shake up the need for centralized "stations". Cars already spend most of their time parked, electrifying more existing parking lots and garages where cars already spend most of their time should be common sense. (And if it happens to economically profitable that should just make easy economic sense, circling back to the topic in the article. We probably need to make L1 and L2 destination charging "just profitable enough" without high cost for consumers, too.)
Local, from the pole, rates are $0.12/kw. You're not pay $0.64/kw for electricity, you're paying that for the charger, the lack of full time usage, repairs, etc. A gallon of gasoline in the US is heavily optimized AND, Electrify America would not be a business without it charging a price comparable to filling up a tank of gas. Charging at home is the cost savings, charging while road-tripping has a convivence fee attached to the ability to charge.
of course. But people - real people - will compare DC Fast Charges with traditional gas stations. So you aren't really doing a fair comparison here.
Let me put it another way - do we think that getting people to convert from ICE to EVs will only view fast charging as a convenience? or will they view it as a necessity? In the fullness of time we can view DC fast charging as a luxury, but not right now (which is my point I suppose)
Like the other comment says, it's an education problem. Gas Stations used to not be the thing is is now. Our neighbor had the big glass fuel pump in their garage when you used to fill up a ICE car in your garage. Gas stations won except for commercial locations that still have that tank because it's convenient.
There are mix of personas. Friend of mine was loaned an EV and didn't have a charger. They changed their habits to go grocery shopping at a place with an EV charger. Since they were there for 30-45 minutes, lower rate. That was a shift in perspective which is the issue here. The person doing a cannonball run across the US will never buy an EV and that's ok too.
People are not great at doing a full comparison. I'm sure people who have a Costco card never consider the price of membership into their gallon of gas pricing which is where educating future EV owners come in. Charging at home is cheap, charging while on a road trip you are trading time/money like a toll road. Rates will go down over time and I'm waiting for a Buccees sized EV charging stop where you have the time to stop.
Buc-ee's often has a lot of Tesla chargers. Many of those locations are also NACS-compatible so any car that supports NACS charging can charge at many Buc-ees locations.
I've also seen DCFC stalls near other large rest stops. Not all of them yet by any margin, but lots. Electrify America also tends to have a lot in the big Walmarts near the highways. The last road trip I did in my EV we usually went into Walmart and ate at the restaurant there or got stuff from the deli.
> do we think that getting people to convert from ICE to EVs will only view fast charging as a convenience? or will they view it as a necessity?
As an example, if I were to buy an EV, fast charging would absolutely be a necessity. I couldn't charge at home, so I'd have to use commercial charging stations. Carving out a large block of time to devote to charging would be a nonstarter, and it's something I'd have to do without fast charging. I don't spend enough time parked doing shopping and the like to make it possible to rely on those times to do my charging.
It matters while we work on electrifying cars. If they own the home, but don't have an outlet is different than if they rent and the property manager doesn't want to install a charger. Laws were passed in the US that required renters access to satellite tv and if property managers are the hold up it's important information to know.
I don't think that my single anecdote about the reason will (or should) affect things one way or another. This is the sort of thing that requires a good study.
I would be opposed to the idea of a law requiring properties to install chargers, though. It would make rents increase even more than they already are, and that would only make the housing crisis worse.
The issue is we have anti-ev articles, blogs, newscasts, magazines that take every opportunity to try and find a "gotcha" for why EVs are actually the worst thing ever.
DCFC will (probably) never be as fast or as convenient as gas. However, gas will never be less time consuming or as cheap as idle charging.
The challenge is balancing competing incentives: you need the infrastructure to be built, but you also need people to consider EVs as their next vehicles.
The additional challenge is building the trust in the infrastructure required to make a lot of folks, myself included, satisfied that they'll be able to charge when they need to. My experience here in the Bay Area is that it's hit-or-miss as to whether the chargers actually work, let alone whether they're duly occupied for that purpose.
With some hope, now that there's a potential for profit motive, we'll start seeing the level of service improve to meet expectations as required to make people like me migrate away from burning hydrocarbons.
I very desperately want to like EVs, but so far, the appetite hasn't been there because of issues, nay, subscriptions like this.
It's why Tesla built Superchargers; no one would buy EVs if they were beholden to non Tesla fast DC charging financial fundamentals and user experience. Electrify America built their network as part of VW's Dieselgate settlement. They had no incentive to make it work, only to spend the money and build it.
Bingo, but Tesla also likely wouldn't have built those without sizable grants to do so, just as Electrify America did with settlement money. I'm unsure whether that's a high-enough margin part of their business to warrant that kind of outlay for charging infrastructure otherwise.
It minimally isn't something I'd build out as a loss leader unless I had additional financial support to make it work.
Tesla has also substantially improved its costs, as it manufactures it's own chargers. Circa 2017, it cost them ~$250k per station from UBS' report [1], although it turns out UBS was wildly wrong about what the total cost would be for Tesla to reach the desired network density.
> There are 1,974 Tesla Supercharger stations in the U.S. housing 21,852 Tesla Supercharger ports, according to data collected by the U.S. Department of Energy. That’s roughly a quarter of all DC Fast (the quickest type of EV charger) EV charging stations in the country and nearly two-thirds of all DC Fast EV charging ports.
Yes, you're completely correct that 64¢/kWh is more expensive than a similar sized gas car. A Toyota Corolla has an annual fuel cost of $1,000 versus a Hyundai IONIQ 6 at $2,250 (using 64¢/kWh and $3.27/gal).
But home charging (18.5¢/kWh for me) or L2 charging at a workplace is much cheaper and can bring that cost down from $2,250 to <$700/yr.
I think the reality is that most people home charge. You typically only use fast chargers when you go on road trips, or do an unusual amount of driving.
Sure. I home charge. But many American's drive for work. Trades people, people going on vacation, sales people. Many vehicles can't just charge at home. Because there is no home, or apartments, or whatever. Get out on the road and see the broad mix of vehicles out there. I see tons of people flying down the road in F-150s getting maybe 8 / mpg. Those people - and those are most of the people out there - will never move to electric vehicles unless it is so fucking easy to charge, gas has to be prohibitively expensive, and you can charge anywhere and not think about it.
> Trades people, people going on vacation, sales people
Many tradespeople and salespeople sleep at home every day, and the work vehicle (van or car) is parked at home. They can charge it at home — there are already systems to allow the employer to reimburse for the cost of electricity.
For people with occasional nights spent elsewhere fast chargers or destination chargers might be sufficient. Same for the vacation.
For someone who travels all over the place all the time, a petrol vehicle is probably still more convenient. That's OK, electric vehicles don't need to solve 100% of usage patterns just yet.
You're way off with Ford F-150 fuel economy. The least efficient new model has a combined fuel economy of 16 mpg and would only get down in the 8 mpg range when towing a heavy trailer. Even the older models didn't burn 8 mpg in normal use.
let me put it this way. As an EVSE owner I see a direct correlation between how far I can go between chargers if I drive 65 vs 75. Because I have to stretch out where I am going to hit a fast charger. I see F150s going 80. Do you think they are calculating their MPG like my parents used to back in the early 80s? I don't think they are. So maybe it is 16 in some cases, but people drive them really really fast.
Most EV owners charge at home because it's priced as a high end vehicle (some mid-range ones exist - I drive one of the few low-priced ones).
However a sizable portion of the population (35%) live in apartments - which are notoriously against any upgrades.
Without that population EVs will not be "mainstream". It's a chicken/egg problem where you need affordable EV chargers for that population to migrate to EVs and EV density so EV charger build-out can be justified.
Governments typically front this kind of shift (e.g.: 2022 IRA - mild support).
Controversial take, but if you have an EV, should do most of your charging at home. If you're taking a trip sure, you'll have to pay more for charging stations, but in general, travel always costs more (food, housing, etc).
With the large amount of wind energy in Texas the best time to start charging is like 1-2AM. You still have tons of wind energy, but the demand has fallen considerably. This is usually the time where Texas experiences negative wholesale electric rates.
Sure, there's lots of solar potential during the day, but that's also the peak energy use by a good amount. You're already wanting solar to smooth out that curve instead of making that demand peak even peakier.
In the end they are selling you BTUs which limits how much price difference there can be.
Diesel used to be a lot cheaper than gasoline because it was something of a waste product: the refining process produced an oversupply. Refining technology improved and now we can make more gasoline and less diesel from a barrel of oil. So diesel has become more expensive, but roughly equivalent to gasoline if you consider the energy content per gallon.
Nearly everyone can charge at home. EV charging is for those rare trips when you need to top up. Like drinking water at home (home charging) vs water bottle from a vending machine, $1.50.
I'm surprised to still see such uninformed claims. Many drivers have no practical way to charge at home due to lack of an available garage or even a dedicated parking space where a charger can be installed. The available of chargers in places like apartment complex parking lots and street spaces will gradually improve over time but this will take decades until "nearly everyone can charge at home."
The availability of reliable high speed chargers in other places will be crucial for EV adoption. Last time I had an EV rental car, multiple chargers that I tried to use simply didn't work at all.
As a bonus the public chargers are about 2-4x as expensive as home charging (at least where I live), and that is without possibilities like solar power etc.
Incorrect. I rent in Austin. I think about 50% of the population here rents. I'm sure some newly built multi family mid & high-rises have EV charging infrastructure, and some single family home rentals as well. During recent lease hunting, nothing in my price range had even a single EV charging point, never mind infrastructure to support the the majority of renters.
When I've brought this up to people making this argument, they suddenly switch tacks to "well, just charge at the public locations, they are everywhere!" Every time I respond by asking, well sure - but would you make that same compromise if this was your only vehicle and you didn't have DCFC at home? Guess their response...
Was their response “you can plug it into an outlet”? Not the fastest charge you will ever get but doable as long as you can get what you need in the time the car is parked.
It's slower than for houses, but apartment parking can have charging points.
The parking where I live in Copenhagen has two spots with chargers, and they (like all the spots) are reserved for specific cars. I suspect the people paid at least part of the installation cost. They were installed 7-8 years ago. The electricity cost should be very low. This is no different to owning a house.
More recently I've seen commercial low-power (~7kW, standard three-phase supply in Europe) overnight chargers by apartment buildings, in the parking reserved for residents. Presumably people try and get one of these spots often enough, but as demand increases they will need to install more. The electricity cost is probably a bit more, to cover the overheads of the company maintaining the charger. If the spots are a free-for-all, I'd not want to rely on needing one every night, but it could be OK for a car that only needs charging once a week or so.
Also, most of those who already choose to not own a car are already in that 35%, so of "people looking to buy a car" its even more weighted towards that 65% who don't live in an apartment.
No one runs numbers thinking the non-apartment dwelling population is going 100% EV. So 30% EV adoption is pretty mainstream, but not if it's 30% of 65%.
If 50% of non-apartment households got an EV, that would be ~33% of all households with an EV. With your definition of 30% == "pretty mainstream", it is pretty achievable to have EVs be mainstream while excluding every apartment dwelling household.
Roughly 8% of US households have zero cars. What do you imagine the breakdown is between apartment and single-family households? I'd guess probably all dense apartment, the main cohort we're talking about that would lack charging access. So for those actually looking to charge a car, if 50% of single family homes moved to an EV that would in reality be even more than just ~33% of the market, because 8 of the 35% of apartment dwellers weren't shopping for a car to begin with. It is really more like 27% of households want a car and live in an apartment that would be challenging to charge a car in. But hey unless we solve it for 27% of the population it just can't possibly be considered "mainstream".
It surprises me that coffee shops, restaurants and rest stops haven't picked up on the gas station model of fuel/energy as loss leader/sold at cost, and making the money on a captive audience. Hell, even local business groups should be trying to get them on main streets of small towns.
I'm not an EV owner, but I would definitely plan my charging around meal stops if I knew that some restaurant always had chargers for customers.
I always see EV chargers put in spots that I would never want to spend 30 minutes.
Otoh, a gas pump install is in that range. I know that the non-profit that manages my local airport had to pay around $50k CAD to get a new cardlock system, and that didn't even include the pumps.
If we really care about climate change, Electric vehicles and infrastructure should be incredible not profitable for 10+ years
If we really cared about climate change, might consumers also bear at least some of that lack of profitability? Maybe it costs us a few more cents per mile for the next 10 years to bootstrap the world into sustainable transportation.
Most of the money in non-Tesla charging stations was in collecting government subsidies to install them. There's no incentive to see them utilized or even keep them working.
Last year there was a big update, creating a National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Standards and Requirements trust anyone getting federal money needs to meet. Reliability requirements are added, and chargers need public realtime & historical status reporting, so consumers can make informed choices about charging. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/02/28/2023-03...
It will be tough to get the public on the side of taxing gas to subsidize electric charging. At least where I am, Teslas and other fancy electric cars are still seen as a "rich person's flex." Poor and middle class people tend to drive gas cars and rich people tend to drive electric. So asking people to vote to increase gasoline tax on themselves so that a few rich EV owners can be subsidized--you can imagine how that will go down.
Here in SF, electricity prices are $0.41/kWh while gas is ~$4.0-6.0 (depending on time of year and whether you are filling up regular or premium). So even $0.64/kWh seems quite competitive in California and gas prices are unlikely to lower until relations with Russia normalize and sanctions lift (seems unlikely but a Trump victory might change things). People make these kinds of decisions based on the feeling of conditions today + people also care about the environment and view electric cars as better for that (i.e. multiple decision axis and the price of the EV is going to matter more than the cost of fuel).
Sanctions on Russia and US presidential politics have no significant impact on gasoline prices in California. Russian petroleum exports haven't been cut off, just redirected towards neutral countries like India and China. Crude oil is a (mostly) fungible commodity so from a world market standpoint it doesn't matter where the oil is going as long as it gets out somewhere. The USA didn't import much Russian oil even before the war. Gas prices are high in California almost entirely due to state government policies: taxes are the highest in the country, no new refineries have been approved for many years, and the CARB mandates a unique blend which isn't produced in significant quantities anywhere else (and which does little or nothing to reduce overall pollution relative to other blends).
Longer term we might see some reduction in Russian crude oil exports because they have been under investing in exploration and infrastructure maintenance. Their system is slowly breaking down without the support they used to receive from more competent foreign oil companies. But that isn't impacting the current market yet.
There’s also been global inflation since then for various reasons, not least of which is that destabilization in Europe has ripple effects. It’s not the sole reason, but it’s a big one and energy markets are tied even if the commodity is different (e.g cut off natural gas to Europe & their demand for other sources of energy goes up & higher prices there means higher prices for their goods and refineries). Prices have come down because Biden released strategic oil reserves to combat higher prices.
Your explanations explain why gas is higher in California than the rest of the country, but fails to explain why it’s also higher US-wide and globally.
And yes, it does matter how the fungible commodity gets out - if India / China were a better price, Russia would have been sending their crude there in the first place. That means India / China is more expensive whether it’s because it has to be shipped a longer and more expensive route or because the partner’s form of payment is not as valuable (e.g. Russia tried accepting the Rupee for oil payments for a while but has since stopped). So yes, while there are headwinds that mitigate the impact, there is still a negative impact to price.
Anyway, my main point was that there are geographic locales where EVs are cheaper regardless of whatever local and geopolitical factors are involved.
You want people's taxes to subsidise cheap charging. Of course you are fine with taxes on gas. I guess whatever the state says, goes. Reality be damned. The state's reality be blessed.
What about food subsidies? Or the massive subsidy we give drivers in the form of paved, maintained roads? Are only the subsidies you personally benefit from okay or can we sometimes give subsidies to other people?
I'm not really fine with taxes or subsidies at all. I certainly don't think that state officials have some special insight to judge the best way to spend communal funds... of course their pensions feature highly in worthy expenditures.
Have you ever heard of community gardens, or community anything really? This is where people voluntarily contribute to what is perceived as some communal good.
The key word is 'voluntary', ie without coercion, force or manipulation. If you don't pay taxes, you will be forced to pay, regardless of whether you agree with the attack (not defence) budget, or whether you would like the money to be used on actual communally valued goals as opposed to lining an ever increasing number of government workers' pockets, or the cradle-to-grave propaganda effort, etc.
Yeah, in fact the area I live in has several of those. But I'm talking about building things like roads, water systems, sanitation, etc.. How do you propose those things get built?
There is more than one way to do things, and its far from clear that the state mandated way is the right way. Its pretty obvious that this is the most expensive way though - as most of the tax take goes on paying off existing debts, and superfluous expenses such as supporting a huge administrative state 'service' - pay, pensions, army, police, teachers, etc.
With roads, in the first place these existed before the state adopted the infrastructure - someone made these. New roads were created to encourage a specific type of corporate industrialisation, with petrol companies heavily supporting gas burning cars. And nowadays, roads are being constrained and pedestrianised to discourage cars - so this infrastructure (that has already been paid for) is being rolled back (at further expense). So, how is that a good use of money; what value is the state adding here? By the way, having an extensive road network is probably why we don't have flying cars.
Water systems and sanitation are sort of the same thing. Perhaps you think taking all the sewage and grouping it into a river of muck to then discharge it at sea is a good idea. I don't. Have you considered that human excrement might be processed more locally, and then re-used as fertiliser - as we do for animal waste? Probably this is how things were done (I know this was the case even recently in China) but instead we are taught the gross story that 300 years ago people in cities threw their sewage into the streets, walking into their homes, etc. I'm sure some of that occurred - forced industrialisation happened very quickly, moving people off common (acts of enclosure, etc - this is state sanctioned theft, btw) forced people into cities. I'm sure peoples' peasant habits could not work in the city.
Force, brutality and tight control underlie the state system. Humans are perfectly capable of managing things without state intervention - but once you force people from a more natural state (living near the land to living in densely populated cities), the state seems to be the only management option. The state is not actually there to help - it only needs to appear to be 'doing its best'. It is there to collectivise and harness the efforts of many people, regardless of how they feel about it. Most people simply accept the reality that they are presented and are happy to do what it tells them. The state uses schooling, culture etc to create the idea that it is beneficent, that it has a moral right to force another - it literally teaches people to adopt its self-serving immorality - and it works! Mostly.
The fundamental problem here is that 300 years ago the population was measured in hundreds of millions. Now it's measured in tens of billions. You are no doubt aware of the problems that cities and civilization faced while growing in that direction?
I'm not trying to argue with you about the merits of our current population size. But what I'm trying to point out is that your solutions of "local problems should have local solutions" don't work very well when you have 10,000 people in a 1000x1000 area. Suppose you were in New York City, where would you put the sewage to be processed by those 10,000 within that 1000x1000 area? I'm starting to wonder if you are considering these problems, or if you rather have a pet philosophy and a utopia that you want everything to conform to.
Just to let you know, utopias are not "ideal" in the sense that they are great societies to live in and I can think of examples of utopias that are very very bad for individuals. It's not something to be strived for it's a tool for thought experiment. You might appreciate most the concept of an Industrialist utopia, where all time is measured, efficiency is maximised, workers are tools, and resources are meant to be extracted.
To address one of your points regarding sanitation: we do not "[take] all the sewage and [group] it into a river of muck to discharge it at sea." If you look at how a modern sanitation system works, the sewage is very highly treated before discharge, and it flows through entirely separate, self-contained underground waterways before it reaches the processing center. To liken this to dumping untreated sewage into the sea is very disingenuous. Solids, chemicals, bacteria, salts, and other undesirable elements are extracted either in settling ponds or via aerobic or osmotic extraction. And it's utterly impossible to build and maintain something like this for a community without levying some tax from that community. Even something as simple as a community septic system requires ongoing maintenance and repair.
But everyone in the community benefits from not getting the diseases that are associated with having untreated sewage flowing on top of the ground. If one person in that community is allowed to opt out, what would they do with their sewage? In the worst case they might dump it on the ground, which makes everyone around them sick. What you propose is that they should be allowed to ignore externalities and do their own thing. That's not fair to the other 9,999 people in the 1000x1000 block who don't want to get cholera and typhoid and anything else from that 1 person's untreated sewage.
That's doomer nonsense parroting Big Oil propaganda. Mass electrification, a mixed grid of nuclear and renewables, and some concerted, but far from unachievable, investment into carbon capture (burying charcoal) could easily get us to a "not making things any worse" level.
Industrial civilization is a lifestyle that can never be sustainable.
I'm not "parroting Big Oil propaganda". They're one of the worst culprits, who managed to addict us to cheap energy. Now everybody expects access to cars, planes, and electric grids, no matter how destructive they are.
The oil companies have realized they're losing the fight on "global warming doesn't exist". That just leaves "global warming is bad, but giving up on fossil fuels would be worse", which is exactly what you're (presumably unintentionally) spreading.
The whole reason anyone should care about climate change is that it's going to make life worse for ourselves and our descendants. If your pitch for addressing climate change is "let's make our lives worse, proactively", then you're never going to win popular support.
Good messaging is "We can make our lives better, and give future generations the opportunity for even better lives, without fossil fuels". Anything else is inadvertently advocating for nihilistic hedonism as the world burns.
But I'll give it a go with our EV(Volkswagen e-Up).
- our price for electricity at the moment is £0.16/kWh
- the efficiency is about 3-4 miles/kWh most of the time, it can go as high as 6 miles/kWh in the summer.
- we drive about 8000 miles per year.
Based on that(and using the most pessimistic numbers for calculations), you need:
8000/3 = 2666kWh to travel per year. At 16p/kWh that's £427 per year, or about £36 per month(which is actually spot on with what I see on my bills).
As to how that compares with an ICE.......a petrol Volkswagen UP gets about 6L/100km(6L/60 miles - I'm using that unit for simplicity of calculation so we don't have to mess with gallons. And yes 6L/100km is a big high for the UP, but I'm using pessimistic numbers again).
So assuming that 6L/100km, you would need (8000/60)*6 = 800 litres of fuel to cover 8000 miles per year. At the average cost of £1.40/litre it would cost us £1210 in fuel alone to drive for a year(or about £100 per month).
So just in fuel vs Electricity alone, the e-Up is about 3x times as cheap as a petrol one. And the servicing is much cheaper, and it doesn't really use consumables like brake pads, they will last a lot longer. On the other hand I've noticed it uses tyres quite quickly(at 10k miles fronts were down to 3mm, which is a good point to replace them), so it might end up being a wash.
And yes, we are lucky that
- we can charge at home
- our home tariff is pretty cheap
If we could only charge at public charging points(which at the moment are usually all £0.50/kWh if not more), then that entire saving would disappear, and it would probably be cheaper to drive a petrol version of the same car.
> It's kinda impossible to answer without knowing:
TBH, I'm kind of amazed at the way people talk about electricity. It seems like about twice a year I see a couple of threads on local Facebook groups about how much electricity has gone up. Once after the coldest month, and again after the hottest month. I like to ask their $/kwh, and I've never once gotten an answer.
But the US is sort of backward in general. I use an energy coop where how much my car costs to charge is directly affected by how much insulation I have in my attic.
Electric companies have gotten very good at hiding and obfuscating their $/kwh. I can tell you instantly how expensive auto gasoline is in my area because prices are written in giant numbers on billboards next to each station. If you wanted me to quote my electricity costs, I’d have to scrutinize 12 months of bills, find the numbers in the small print, do some averaging because the cost varies throughout the day and has a complex tier system, then do more averaging across the year.
My previous coop itemized the bill nicely, with the monthly fixed cost, the energy charge, and any relevant taxes all separately itemized. Probably the most confusing part was how to proportion the taxes, but even neglecting that wouldn't be particularly confusing.
My current coop charges at least four different costs. A monthly $25 fee, an energy charge for each kwh below 1,000, a significantly higher charge for each kwh above 1,000, and the taxes. They don't itemize any of it, it is just a single line item with the amount and rate code.
Interesting, the cost per kW⋅h is clearly included on my electric bill. I had assumed that was a regulatory requirement.
But I have a flat rate electric service. I could see that if you have demand-based or time-of-day rates it would be complicated to express anything other than an overall average cost per kW⋅h .
We used to be on a tariff where the cost could change every 30 minutes, in theory it meant that you could get very cheap electricity because the cost was directly linked to local demand, I've seen it where at night it was going into negative numbers(so they were paying us to use electricity), but at peak times it could be absolutely brutal too, you had to be careful and really monitor it almost real-time. We've since changed to a tariff where the cost changes daily, but the cost for the next day is announced around 1pm the day before, so I can plan things like charging my car or running appliances depending on what the tomorrow's cost is going to be.
Keep in mind that especially in the US every state has different regulatory requirements for electricity and some states are better than others at forcing transparency in their utility's processes.
A British energy bill would typically look like this [1, PDF]. The green marked (11) shows the rate clearly.
My Danish bill is less clear. There are lines for electricity, tax, and other charges, rather than e.g. a single figure for usage and another for the connection.
I know households who are poor and don't have financial education. They own a fully paid-off house, but can't afford to switch from space heaters to heat pump (or gas or anything more efficient). One of them was desperately trying to sell this winter because of the sheer cost of keeping warm.
Luckily she has the home equity to finance and install mini splits. I helped her work through a home equity loan with the local bank.
Being poor is expensive. The people who need efficient houses the most often don't
That depends on the efficiency of your EV, how many miles you drive, and power cost in your area.
Something like a Model 3 will typically do <300 wh/mi (gross). At $.14/kwh (pretty close to average for the US), you'd be looking at about $0.042/mile.
Energy prices in the US vary between <$.05/kwh (usually off-peak) to ~$.49/kwh (PG&E if you didn't already guess that), so ymmv.
I get ~3.5mi/kWh in my EV with how I drive. I pay ~$0.11/kWh for electricity including delivery.
The average US driver drives ~13,000mi/yr. We'll make the math easier and just say you drive ~1,000mi/mo.
1000 mi / 3.5 mi/kWh = 285.7kWh per month. At $0.11/kWh, that's ~$31.43 added to the bill.
Gas around me has been around $3/gal for a while. Average US car fuel economy is like 25mpg, which is a bit better than the car my EV replaced. 1000 mi / 25mpg = 40 gallons of gas, * $3/gal gives ~$120 per month. If I had a 40mpg car, it would cost ~$75/mo in gas. I'd need close to 100mpg in an ICE car to get to the same fuel cost.
That really depends on where you live, but for me in the EU the fuel/energy cost per km is about 2.5-3x lower with a home-charged EV than with a gas vehicle.
Electric bill goes way up, of course, but it is about the same as gas for me. There have been various fluctuations in both electric and gas prices around me so hard to make an exact comparison. However, my bet is that gas prices long term will only go up and electricity prices ... probably will too, but have a higher chance of remaining lower.
I have 12kW of solar deployed at my house so haven't had a electric bill in years, so I can't really say. I usually charge about 200-300kWh/mo for my EV which would be about $20-30 based on NV energy's rate plan.
In GA I saw my electricity bill go up ~$30/month charging my Model 3 at home and driving it almost every day, about 1000 miles per month. Still cheaper, safer, warmer, and more convenient than going to a gas station.
You can charge outside without issues. Snow/sleet doesn't matter; the charging connections are water-tolerant.
And you should probably find some better electricians to get a quote on the home-charger thing - sometimes "I want to put a dryer plug here" gets a lower quote than "I want an EV charger here" (the latter signals money-spending-ability).
Also, do the math on what you really need for charging. Most people can charge at home overnight on a standard 120v outlet just fine - unless you're driving more than ~50 miles a day, every day, consistently.
Ah, the bulk of the 20k would be for a cover or garage. I still don't know how I feel about not having a heated space- leaving a car outside in winter means the stuck on road snow and slush doesn't melt off body panels, so they'll rust even faster.
As it is, I have a spare 60 amp line out to where the garage used to be (it was rather dilapidated and I haven't had spare funds to put a new one up yet).
> leaving a car outside in winter means the stuck on road snow and slush doesn't melt off body panels, so they'll rust even faster.
So then its still ~$20k for a place to put an ICE car either way and not really connected to the cost for an EV. Since you already have a 60A line to where the garage was, the actual costs in the end for wiring up an EVSE is probably less than $1,000. An EVSE can be had for a few hundred bucks, a few dozen feet of romex and all the other odds and ends needed would be another couple hundred, and you'll have a charger that will last for decades. And chances are some of that cost can be subsidized with tax credits in the US.
My friend recently did something similar, and was told he needed 120 amp service minimum. I'm not sure if he just over-did the level of charging he needed or what, but that was where the rest of the cost came from.
We've been getting on fine without a garage because our cars are used and not expensive. They also don't have massive battery packs that would cost more than a used car to replace, either.
The electrician was trying to make a buck if he recommended 120A to charge an EV. Practically no EV will even pull anywhere close to 120A on AC charging, most top out around 40-50A. And they're all designed to only pull whatever the Electrical Vehicle Supply Equipment (EVSE) says its rated for, which is often a configurable setting on the EVSE.
My car can pull up to 48A. At home my EVSE is set to 40A, but I can set it to 32A, 24A, and 16A with a little switch inside the box. Even at 24A, at 240V that's 5,760W of power going to the car. Even if in the cold I was getting 2mi/kWh, charging for 8 hours overnight gives 90mi of range. You should be able to install at least a 40A charger and still have a couple 15/20A circuits for lights, additional outlets, and a heatpump. 8 hours of charging at that amperage would get you >150mi of range.
Putting it in a garage isn't going to stop the salt from the roads from rusting out the car. The car being outside isn't going to really put any additional wear on the battery, especially if it is plugged most of the time while parked at home.
EDIT, somehow I was thinking it was an 80 amp line not 60. Still, a 60 amp line could run a 40A charger and some lighting in the garage, probably not a lot of heating though.
>>Rough back of the napkin math puts getting a home charger at around $20k... The payoff isn't even close yet.
Like the other comment said, you don't need a covered or heated space - the connectors are water tolerant, you can plug them in in heavy rain/snow without any issues.
You also have to think how fast you really need to charge - for a lot of people a basic 220V socket is fine, so you just need to pay an electrician to fit one in, then you can usually use the charger bundled with the car - as long as you only need about 20-30kWh replenished overnight then you're fine. You can fit a faster multi-kW charger, but the cost shouldn't be anywhere near $20k for that.
All you really need is like 20-30 amps at 240V and most EVs will go from 0 to 100% within a few hours. Which for most people its rare to even need to charge more than 50% every day, unless you're routinely driving over a hundred miles a day. It shouldn't cost $20k to install another 20-30A circuit, unless your home power is already pretty much maxing out your line to your house.
The car can warm itself with the power, you don't need to put it in a semi-heated space.
It hasn't quiet happened yet. Everyone has announced the switch but AFAIK there's not anyone that's produced a NACS vehicle other than Tesla and a few smaller outfits.
You'll probably see some NACS at the end of this year. However, don't expect it everywhere until either next year or maybe even 2 more years.
It's not TOO big of an issue as NACS speaks CCS so even old models just need an adapter to start playing.
Yeah it's going to be a rough year for EV sales because of the switch. I'm definitely not buying one that needs an adapter if I can just wait a year and not need it. Luckily the EV I'm looking to buy (either Hyundai Ioniq 5 or Kia EV6, they're basically the same thing) seems to be on the relatively early side of the switch.
Yup, that's what I generally advise some of my family members that have asked about switching to an EV. On the flip side, there might be some good deals to get as CCS phases out. But it's just not a great time to buy one (Unless you are thinking of buying a tesla).
I imagine there's still going to be many, many thousands of L2 chargers with J1772 for several years. And there will probably still be CCS chargers out there as well. So, if you're going to want to truly charge anywhere, you'll need some basic adapter probably for many years to come. Tesla people charging at a lot of L2 chargers today use an adapter.
I requested the CCS adapter for my car but honestly, I might only use it once or twice a year if even that. I really doubt there will be much actual pain with this migration.
I don't think it is particularly relevant to the article at the moment. Outside of Tesla, very few DCFC stations support NACS at the moment. L2 has never been an issue, since adapters are so common.
The biggest shift is just ongoing sales. EVs represent ~1% of cars on the road, but ~9% of sales. Even if there were no sales growth, charging demand would increase by ~9x over the next 5-10 years.
Yeah, that's true for basically all of the public charging networks. EVGo, Blink, and Chargepoint have struggled to attract investment and also to reach profitability.
The big winners are likely to be complementary businesses.
> The average residential electric rate for Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) customers is 45 cents per kWh, as of January 1, 2024. However, the cost per kWh ranges from 34 to 72 cents per kWh depending on the rate schedule, season, and time of day.
I mean it seems right inline with California prices in general.
Being reliant on PG&E has definitely kept us from buying electric — no way am I ever trusting that company given their track record.
In order to go from early adopters to mainstream it not only needs to be cheaper, but it needs to be more convenient and otherwise advantageous, especially for renters.
I am watching as corporate profits on charging strips that away and it’s concerning. I have also watched electric vehicles get gutted by depreciation in the secondary market — losing half the value in three years as a category isn’t great.
If you raise these issues, the advocates bristle, but these are real headwinds for the industry and important to bear in mind. They can’t be ‘equivalent to gas’ as so many argue: they must be and remain a superior option.
Electric vehicles should not get subsidized energy prices. The entire economy is being electrified, and competing for those scarce electrons.
What logic is there in incentivizing personal vehicle use over other uses for this energy? Build gold plated public transit systems instead. It is much cheaper than trying to buy everyone a Tesla.
And on top of that, zoning in the US makes it basically impossible to reach densities where public transit works well. The last 50 years of construction were entire designed around everyone owning an automobile
If we really care about climate change, Electric vehicles and infrastructure should be incredible not profitable for 10+ years. We need more incentives and ways so the focus is on expansion of infrastructure, not profitability.