Where does the electricity for the charging stations come from?
I’m wonderin’ where people buy gas for $2.81/gal.
I really think most people charge up at home. Or not??
My real complaint is the myth that electricity comes from the tooth fairy.
I have no plans on owning an EV, but this article is playing pretty loose with the facts to make its point as far as I can tell, i.e. factoring the cost of a charger in how much it costs to drive 200 miles, without explaining how long a charger might last and laying bare all the facts. Seems more like they started with a conclusion and twisted the facts to support it.
I presume it is still cheaper to run an EV - for most people - but not sure it offsets the extra costs of buying one, nor the risk of having a $22K battery needing replacing in 10+/- years.
Again. What is the “problem” EVs are trying to solve?
2.81 a gallon? What planet is that price on?
What’s next, I suppose you’re going to tell me that all those “recyclables” I put in that blue bin aren’t actually recycled.... Or that it takes more energy to produce ethanol from corn than it saves in cost over gasoline.... Or that plant based meat is actually ultra processed factory soyent green. ...... You’ve ruined my day with your facts and evidence! 🙄
You also have to factor time. The gas tank in a car takes a minute or two to fill. A sliver of the time it takes to charge an EV: From a couple of hours to overnight.
“Level 2 chargers are much faster but cost $1,600.”
Lowes now has Level 2 chargers for $600
If ev was more costly effective than gas, it would be bought by people like Black Friday.
Politics try to make it so. But on ground or in reality it is not.
I’d only want the F-150 Lightning as a toy as it can go 0-60 in 4 seconds. But I’d need to win the Powerball to afford it and the dealer ‘market adjustments’.
Right now electricity isn’t all that high, but put a massive, old onmthe system all at once, and it will very likely skyrocket, like gasoline going up up up, once everything g is electricity dependent, they know they’ve got you, and will keep raising prices, and will whine about how it takes increasing amounts of fossil fuels to create the electricity to keep up with demand, therefore we are dest roying the planet and how we must pay for our sins with higher and higher carbon taxes to “offset the damage”.
Folks think switching to electric will satisfy the left with their insane drive to punish mankind for “enviro-sins”, but it won’t. It will “seem to placate them” in the beginning, but they will be right back screaming about enviro-sins as soon as everyone is forced to switch as they claim it will be “better for the environment if we do”
EVs are about environmentalism the same way CoupFlu is about public health.
I made an honest attempt and looked at Tesla before my last car purchase. Its not feasible. There damn sure isnt a cost savings.
Cost of charger should be added to vehicle cost. Compare initial costs and then separately compare ongoing costs.
They probably have good points but I would prefer a less biased apples to apples comparison. May sound like nitpicking but I am tired of biased or sloppyreporting from either side of this issue.
Even if costs were same there are so many EV problems that are years away from overcoming.
Even if EV’s were cheaper I would probably not buy one because I need a reasonable distance range or it’s a no go.
Ethanol is more harmful to the environment on almost every level and is very marginal to saving gasoline. In fact, I'm certain that using ethanol increases the cost of gasoline.
But here we are. Once again bamboozling everyone into thinking they are saving the planet when in fact they are doing far more harm.
Crazy.
If two guys driving a new Ford truck - one gas and the other electric, both have respectively 1/2 tank and 1/2 charge, which one pays more and how long does the fill up take each one?
1. Don't compare apples to oranges. So don't compare a mid-size gas pickup truck with a small EV car. If you're thinking about getting an EV, look at an EV that's comparable in service for the gas car you'd otherwise keep or buy.
2. Think about your use. If you plan to use it for trips then you have to look at charge costs at charging stations. If you plan to rarely use it for trips (i.e. you and your wife need two cars anyway, might as well have one gas car and one EV to have the best of both worlds), then focus only on residential electricity rates.
3. Be real with expectations. Just like gas cars never get as high of mpg as advertised, EV's don't get as high a miles/kWh as advertised. And completely ignore mpge, that's such a contrived "metric". For instance, I'm interested in the F-150 Lightning because I like/need to drive mid-size trucks. It proports to get 2 miles per kWh, I'm going to drop that by 5% and assume in reality it'll get 1.9 miles per kWh (similarly to dropping the advertised mpg by 5% to get the true mpg, and that is on highway miles). I'll drop it another 5% for a total of 10% (1.8 miles per kWh) because of inefficiencies in charging the DC battery from AC power.
4. Look at your true power rate, not what the power company states as its official rate. Last month I paid 12.97 cents per kWh. I derived that by looking at my total bill, subtracting the monthly base rate they charge even if you consume no power, subtract all monthly riders they add to it, and subtract the tax percentage on those (in Alabama it's 4% tax rate on power). Whatever's left in the bill is what I call the overall usage charge for the month. I then divide that by the kWh the bill says I consumed from them to get my true kWh rate. I don't care how much of that is the stated rate, how much of that are riders added to it, and how much of it is state tax. All I care about is that increasing my power consumption costs me that much per kWh. (This is a calculation I used studying 2 years' worth of power bills before I decided to install solar and figured out how much each kWh saved. The same applies for adding kWh for things like an EV.)
5. Be realistic about how much you'll drive it. I drive on average about 200 miles per week. My old used mid-sized pickup gets about 15 miles per gallon. Gas costs me $2.89 lately. That means it costs me $38.53 weekly for the 13.3 gallons of gas I buy on average each week. If the F-150 Lightning gets 1.8 real miles per kWh (that's per kWh I supply to it from my AC), then it would cost me $14.11 weekly to buy 111.1 kWh's weekly (I know I'm billed monthly by the power company, but it's easier to think of miles and gas consumption in weekly terms). So the next question is if the $24.42 in weekly projected savings will pay for itself, and if so, how long would it take?
6. Add up the other costs I won't bore you with here. Be sure to include: a difference in insurance rates (if you're replacing an old car with only liability insurance with a new car you'll make payments on and have to, therefore, pay extra premium for comprehensive insurance), one time costs to set up the chargers, but also include inflation expectations for gas and power (I assumed 3% inflation for my calculations, though I fear the Dims will make energy costs keep skyrocketing to force us to repent from our ways), include interest on car payments (if you would otherwise replace your old used car with another used car, if you're like me you wouldn't make payments on it because you've saved enough to buy the next used car, thus buying a new EV is a major difference), no oil changes with an EV, plus costs of oil changes going up with inflation (thus saving more later than the first year), but replacing your battery in an EV at 10 years, etc.
7. For my calculations, I assumed I'd get none of my "free" power from my solar system going into an EV. If I do (I expect it to be 20% to 30% of all my miles coming from my solar system) I'll count it as gravy on top. If I don't get an EV, the savings I get from my solar system and converting my gas appliances to electric ones will pay for itself in 10 years (that includes paying the interest on the HELOC I took out to pay for most of it, and also includes the tax credit for installing solar). If I get an EV, the extra cost will pay for itself in 13 years (that includes paying off the solar costs too). That makes me think that getting an EV isn't worth it ---- except for one very important thing. Getting an EV would give me a hedge against gasoline price inflation, similar to the hedge I somewhat have against power price inflation. As far as overall wealth-building / avoiding expenses goes, an EV isn't worth it. As far as going to sleep at night hoping the Dims don't mess up your financial plan as you go into retirement by jacking up your energy costs, an EV might be worth it.
Cost of replacing battery for a regular auto-between $100 and $200. Cost of replacing a battery pack for an EV apps $15,000 plus. Wonder if there is an increase in fire insurance for EVs?
Recently purchased a Rav4 Prime plug-in hybrid for my wife. It gets about 2.8 miles per kWH of charge, and 38 mpg on gasoline. Using 13¢ per kWH (which is what I pay at home) to charge and $3.199/gal for gas, electricity costs about 56% as much as gasoline per mile. The car has a 400 mile range with a full tank and fully charged battery. There are four “free” charging stations in town, two at local libraries, one at the power company, and one at the Toyota dealer, but unless you’re going to stay a while, it’s not worth the wait. A full charge costs me about $2.00 bucks at home, so waiting a couple of hours for a free charge is no bargain, unless I got nothing else to do. Commercial charging stations are few and far between, but generally they would run a little more than a deuce. A full charge gets about as many miles as a gallon of gas, so any time I can get a full charge (from zero) for less than a gallon of gas, I am ahead.
Commercial charging stations would have to charge about 26¢ per kWH to cost more than gas at $3.50/gal.