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Comment by matt_wulfeck | Hacker News Reader

Having just purchased an EV, I can see the biggest need is at the office and at home. Even at home there are barriers: an evse is expensive to purchase and install, electricity costs are high ($0.29kwh non-peak in San Jose), so it's actually more expensive to take our Leaf than our gasoline car on most days.

Saving grace is being able to charge for free or discounted at work.

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Call PG&E and switch to EV rate. I get 9c/kWh by only charging at off-peak hour. They also give you rebate for driving EV.

Their EV plan jacks up the peak rate to $0.45kwh, unfortunately. Good if you're never home in the day.

Hmm, your math is surprising. Let's suppose the leaf has the 30kwh battery. .29*30 = $8.70. You can drive 80-100, say 90 miles. California Gas Prices .com says the avg price of gas in cali is $3.15. Suppose you have a high efficiency car that gets 30 mpg. 90 miles is 3 gallons or 3x3.15 = $9.45, so pretty close. I suppose if you have a prius you get better than that, but most cars dont do that well. Also you'll have maintenance prices that are high on gas.

But with that high electricity charge it makes them closer than you'd think. In Washington state our prices avg out to 11.x cents per kwh, without any special pricing, and I get the all green power option.

Does not Leaf come with 2 years of free charging at ChargePoint locations? Specially in CA, ChargePoint has many locations so you might be able to take advantage of it.

Only if you lease or buy new. We bought it used.

Doesn't Nissan provide free charging for Leafs at their dealerships? Or was that a time-limited thing?

This is an honest question. I've been thinking about getting a Leaf for a while, but living in Gilroy, we're stuck with the same crazy-expensive electric tiering you are. But there's also a dealership less than a mile from my home.

Rooftop solar is vastly cheaper than 0.29$/kwh. Assuming you own your home it's a massive savings.

Fully agreed. We live in the Bay Area as well, and put in solar a couple years ago. Due to the shape of our roof, we were only able to put in a ~68% system (the rule of thumb is to target generation at about 80% of your average use for best ROI) but even with a slightly-undersized array, our savings have been immense, as we no longer need to pay Tier II or Tier III rates, even in the middle of summer.

AFAIC, if you own your home, it's a complete no-brainer. And our time to payoff is going to be around 4 years, tops.

I'm surprised they left you on a tiered system. They forced us on to a time of day plan which is quite expensive

I think we just got lucky. The pg&e rep pushed the TOU plans pretty hard, but we asked to stay on the tiered system, and they didn't say no. Our neighbors, who got a system just six months after we did, were required to switch. This was almost exactly two years ago.

From what I understand, the plan we're on is going to be forcibly retired in 2020. Hopefully by then powerwalls will be cheap enough to get us through the 5-9 hump during summer on the Time of Use system.

Because you get the retail value of the power you push into the grid, the TOU plans aren't that bad because you get more "money" for your excess power. You pay more when you use, but they pay you more when you produce.

We have solar and the amortized cost is approximately $0.13Kwh

It's not only about the economics, though. The CO2 you are no longer emitting has value in itself.

CO2 emissions of one car are utterly inconsequential

No single raindrop is responsible for a flood, either. But collectively it does matter.

The raindrop argument is like suggesting that we rebuild a beach a single grain of sand at a time. Le Bourget airport outside of Paris was packed with hundreds of private jets for the Paris conference; all those “important” people nullifying the effects of thousands of Leafs. I stop my raindrop, they start a thunderstorm, so I hardly see the point of spending extra money when the “important” people have no respect for the sacrifices of normal people.

Over 250,000 leaf's have been sold which is still a drop in the bucket but a meaningful one as there are a lot of cars on the road. Further, the poster has solar power and pays "amortized cost is approximately $0.13Kwh" making a gas powered car a far worse option.

You must have an efficient gas car! This [1] suggest the leaf uses 34 kwh per 100 miles, or about $10 at your cost per kwh. To cost less than this, with gas at, what $3/gallon? Your gas car needs better than 30 mpg.

[1] http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1082737_electric-car-eff...

Plenty of gas cars do better than 30mpg! Hybrids usually 40. A Honda Accord hybrid is 49 city/47 highway.

If you have a plug-in hybrid, you often have the choice between gas and electric, without even using a different car. Hybrids easily beat 30mpg.

For example, the Volt is capable of 48 mpg with no charging on gas only. On electric only with no gas, it does 31 kWh/100miles.

> On electric only with no gas, it does 31 kWh/100miles.

Of course, that depends upon the weather. I get 30% better range in the Summer than the Winter in mine.

Wow interesting. Is that because of using the heater?

Partly that, partly the headlights but also the performance of batteries changes with temperature. In fact, the heater is used to condition the environment for the battery pack, so if I didn't use the heating in winter the range might be even less.

It's a Nissan Versa, rated at 31mpg city. We measured it ourselves and found that to be pretty spot on.

My Honda Fit does better than that and only cost me 18k$ brand new

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