Hacker News Reader

Comment by idiotsecant | Hacker News Reader

This will have a lot of unintended dystopian consequences too. Rich people won't care or notice how much power they use when but poor people will be strongly impacted and have to spend disproportionately more of their time managing electricity usage. I'm ok paying a few extra cents so that the old lady down the road doesn't have to wonder whether or not she can afford to make tea now or she should wait until 1am.

View on HN

Another way to think about this is that people who are cost conscious cannot adjust their schedules to save money. They're forced to pay rates rates that aren't just daily average rates, they're averages weighted based on when customers without price signal incentives would like to use energy. If you want to help the old lady down the street, removing this cost signal has to be one of the most expensive ways possible.

> Another way to think about this is that people who are cost conscious cannot adjust their schedules to save money.

Huh? cost conscious people cannot adjust their schedule? Then they're not really cost conscious are they, otherwise they would! "I'm a cost conscious person, and I want to go to Hawaii.. TOMORROW! oh, the flight is 3k.. well, I'm not changing my schedule" Cost conscious people are masters of adjusting their schedule to save money. They'll buy the flight that leaves Tuesday and comes back Thursday to save 30 bucks.

It’s more like “I need to be at work at 8AM”. Or “the kids need to be at school at 7:43”.

Leaving the house at 4AM to save 20% on electricity isn’t gonna work.

There's some confusion here - GP was arguing against time-of-use rates. I wanted to highlight the irrationality of that argument. Rather I should have written "Another way to think about [your proposal against TOU] is..."

Arguably, those that can change their timing makes it cheaper for those that can’t.

Electric cars are for rich people anyway. Time-of-use billing is the least of the barriers to letting normal people use them viably in a way that lets them get the same benefit as all my neighbors who have Teslas and also a Suburban to take ontoad trips. Charging people based on supply and demand generally has a better outcome for everyone than trying to mandate economics.

Yes, this current crop of vehicles is still on the high even of what a middle-class family might spend on a car, calling the for the rich is an exaggeration. If you only look at Teslas and Porches you are not seeing the complete picture. You’ve also got Hyundais, Kira, Fords, and Chevys at lower prices. The next round of vehicles promise to be less expensive. New cars have always been hard to afford for the lowest incomes but as sales volumes increase, that means a large supply of used cars start to become available.

I've come to understand that when I hear this "EVs are for the rich" argument, it's not about the cost of the vehicle. Or at least that's not really the issue today (just as you suggested, we bought an immaculate used eGolf with low miles for ~16k).

One of the most expensive parts of owning an EV is the charging part. If you don't have your own charging point, you probably need to forget about EVs if you're in the market for a car. Sure there are people that make it work by charging at work or live in an apartment complex with a couple of community chargers, but for most people with kids just trying to make ends meet, etc... it just isn't worth the extra hassle.

Lots of parts of the US already have time-of-day electricity rates.

Market rates does not mean higher rates!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com