Tuesday, June 07, 2022

Limited Research

 I was paying bills this morning and started doing a little basic research.  On electric vehicles, based on my current kilowatt/hour costs for my area.  According to my electricity provider, I'm paying $0.1289 per kilowatt hour for residential electricity.

Based on my figures, if I were charging a Chevy Volt in my garage, it would cost me $5.72 per day to fully charge that vehicle.  That would add $171.60 to my current monthly bill.

I was listening to a local talk show host last week.  He had a caller who drives a fully electric pickup truck and that caller said that it costs him $16.00 per day to fully charge that truck at the end of the day.

I filled up my van yesterday.  It cost me $60.00 to drive 335 miles.  I fill up once a week, depending on lots of things.

A buddy and I were talking Sundary.  There may come a time when the technology makes good sense to switch to electric vehicles, and battery technology is certainly improving.  But it doesn't make sense now, even with inflated gasoline prices.

In parts of the country, I don't know if the grid would handle the extra stress of charging large numbers of EVs.  Some places can't handle peak-hours load, as evidenced by rolling blackouts in some parts of the country.  There are lots of issues associated with switching from gas to electric.  Let's not even talk about the cost of fully replacing the hatteries.

According to polls I've seen, the #1 concern is inflation, and gas prices are mostly all tied to inflation.  It is the issue that is going to drive elections.

6 comments:

Joe said...

If you google up what it costs in "miles per gallon" equivalent for an electric vehicle, you are paying about $2.80 a gallon to power that electric car. So, it was cheaper during the trump years to power a gas vehicle than an electric vehicle. Biden ended that with the actions he took on day one. Now it clearly is cheaper to power an electric vehicle, but that assumes all things remain equal... put 1/3 of the vehicles on the road onto our electric grid and see what that does to the cost of electricity. If this country does move significantly to electric vehicles the cost savings to power the vehicle will be gone. It will return to the same burden that we have now with filling up gas vehicles... but now ALL of your electricity costs will go up as well. The cost of heating and cooling your home will skyrocket.

Clayton W. said...

You likely won't have to completely charge the car every day.

The correct analysis is to figure what it costs per mile. Of course, that doesn't cover the cost of the charger. Or the fact the vehicle will be worthless at somewhere around 100,000 miles (The Tesla battery will be expended at that point and costs about $20K to replace. Others will be similar).

The elephant in the room is that the electrical infrastructure will not support the wholesale replacement of gas cars. We will need to double the generation and distribution to do that. We are not keeping up with demand increase and are actively reducing dispatchable power in favor of intermittent wind and solar. We need an order of magnitude improvement in energy storage before that works.

Don McCollor said...

The battery replacement is a big-ticket item. With the figure $20K at 100K miles, that is $0.20 cents per mile, or $4.00 per 20 miles, equivalent to $4.00 gas for an IC car making 20 miles/gallon. And the sticker shock would come all at once. As a dweller in rural and cold land (ie NC MN), I have doubts of electric vehicles. Besides the cost of the charger, would the house service have to be upgraded? Can you leave the expensive little darling sit out at -30F for a couple of days, or do you have to heat the batteries, or keep it in a heated garage (do not have one)? And what does it do to the range when you have to keep the heater going full blast driving into a 25 mph NW wind at -20F?...

Old NFO said...

Clayton nails it.

TechieDude said...

The thing is, as energy prices increase, it'll cost even more to charge your car.

I think a lot of people are getting moments of clarity about electric cars.

I had a friend tell me a friend of her's husband was at their lake house, and had to go to the hospital. So he drove himself in his Tesla. His wife had to get a ride up there to visit and pick up the car.

Didn't have enough juice to get back. She had to cool her heels for an hour for a charge, and only had enough to just get home.

I did the same financial exercise with solar panels. I think I calculated 5 years of paying electric bills before any sort of ROI kicked in, and that was assuming they weren't damaged in that time (by hail).

Same thing with other cars. I can get a beater truck from an auction. Even if I have to buy a crate motor, and new interior pieces, I'm still way ahead of even a decent used truck price. AND...I'd know the condition of the vehicle having fixed it myself.

Jonathan H said...

Lithium batteries lose charge FAST in below freezing weather.
And you are spot on with the heater issue. Electric cars used to have a small kerosene tank for a fuel heater, but now that is out of fashion.