Cost of public EV charging rises by more than 42% in four months | Hacker News Reader

Cost of public EV charging rises by more than 42% in four months

autocar.co.uk

52 pointsclouddrover141 comments

The EV charging infrastructure is going to have some reckoning before they can abolish ICE around these parts.

I live in a dense multifamily housing community. There are 289 units and there's plenty of parking in the lot for all the cars. There are zero bicycle racks and it's not pleasant for pedestrians to access the property; it's built for cars.

There are also zero EV charging stations, and I don't expect to see any. There are no garages for cars. There are not even electrical outlets that could be subverted nearby. That means that anyone who lives here is completely unable to charge an EV on the premises. It's out of the question. That's 289 families who must use and maintain an ICE car, or if they have bicycles they get to bring them upstairs and put them inside the apartment (bicycles not allowed on the porch or balcony.)

There are hundreds of multifamily housing units in the area and we have no recycling program and we won't be seeing any EV charging stations. Nobody who lives like I do will be able to own an EV unless they are 100% able to charge while at work or running errands. It's out of the question and out of reach.

This is the reality of the urban city environment: we are not yuppies with multi-car garages and 220V multi-phase circuits and photovoltaic panels on the roof. We are working poor with enough cash for a tank of gas and a quart of oil once in a while, and that's how it's going to stay.

The only things that will supplant ICE vehicles in my neighborhood will be the public transit, the rideshare drivers, and shared scooters and bicycles. I already do plenty of commuting on electric scooters; that's the wave of the future around here - I let someone else worry about charging them!

EV charger sales or leases to Multifamily Residential properties is going to be a huge business

Driverless taxis that never park up at multifamily residential properties are going to be a huge business

> Driverless taxis

Yeah I just read an article from Musk and Uber about it, they should be here in 2013, 2014 at the latest, can't wait for the future

It has been suggest that they are wildly optimistic with that time line, but Musk insists that those people only think that because they are stupid and dont understand all the things he knows.

All the same, if we have them by 2015, might be a few years late, but well worth it. The future looks bright.

So then when driverless arrives, Renting out those close to customer electrified unused multi family parking spaces to driverless taxi operators will be big

Charging at work is an option, assuming their workplace provides chargers. (I understand that this is a rose-tinted, tech company view…but it doesn't have to be.)

It's still the same problem - you need that charging infrastructure and someone is going to pay for it, one way or another.

Getting a charging station installed at your office is often easier than it is at your apartment building. I'm sure companies get tax credits and greenwashing PR that your landlord may not really care much about. (This is also why a lot of parking lots get solar panels.)

But those credits/subsidies are usually provided with string attached, like you are obligated to allow anyone to charge on that charger. So you will have random people going on your property, charging their cars.

Then you will need to take care and maintain the chargers, maintain bureaucracy around charging and keep them operational and safe, because if somebody gets electrocuted by your charger, you are responsible for the damages.

I don't think this is true, most companies have chargers only accessible to their employees?

In theory yes, but try a small game: to charge "quick enough" you need let's say 7kWp power, at 3kW you can't even balance cells, so you just end up with 80% or so maximum charge. But EVEN at 3kW: 10 workers means 30kW load, in a building there are normally MUCH more. They start all around the same timeframe. That's means a BIG grid peak load, after another peak load (when the Sun start shining). An AC grid without enough battery storage (the sole who can compensate quick enough) simply will go down unable to keep a stable frequency.

The theory is that in a smart grid cars, witch happen to be rolling batteries, charge or discharge following energy needs and owner needs, the practice so far is that no such smart grid exists, inverters at maximum follow as quick as they can grid frequency witch do not allow "smart" programming at all and most chargers do not even have DC ports needed to pilot the charge/discharge bi-directional usage (since on AC in-cars inverter would demand too much signaling for a still slow response).

The reality is: those who have designed the new deal have imagined to shift hyper-expensive storage costs to the people and have them mount as p.v. mount. Actually p.v. is economically interested enough so many have accept it, BEVs not much so they artificially change energy prices to "reshape the market" making BEVs interesting and as a result they create a situation that force people to switch WITHOUT the needed infra or the physical possibility.

If you can’t charge above 80% at 3kw then you have a major problem with your car. Cell balancing does not require high wattage charging.

The issue is not in the car but in hours of sunlight vs battery SOC when the Sun start giving enough energy to charge... If you charge at 3kW it's a slow charge. In winter it means you end up in the "evening" after all "Sun day" at 3kW and still the battery hardly have more than 80%.

IF you charge at let's say 7-10kW than things change...

So in the US, health care is tied to employment not citizenship/residency.

Next up, let's tie car charging to employment. No job? Your car stops working.

It’s somewhat common for literally all of one’s income to be tied to one’s job, so yes, that includes the money one spends on gas.

When you get fired you can keep buying gas with the money you have left. Losing access to your only charger immediately is different.

>No job? Your car stops working.

Losing your job/income already has a pretty big impact on keeping your car running.

Fair point, ideally we'd build public chargers that don't suck as well :)

If my employee would have asked to charge his car, I would point him out to nearest public charger, because somebody needs to pay that electricity and it won't be me.

You can charge people for electricity.

If I want to do it legally, then I need to become an energy provider company and keep all bureaucracy and maintenance as an energy provider company. Sorry no, there is a public charger of somebody who already did this leg work.

Some of the public charger networks have offerings to manage that for you. You can task Chargepoint to install and maintain a charging facility on your premises for instance. This way you just need to organise the parking and the access to the connection, but everything else is outsourced.

I could surely also task OMV to build gas station on my property, question is why should I do that?

The folks who live near me are either students, immigrants, or they work blue-collar, minimum wage jobs. How many Wal-Mart greeters get fast-charger access in the parking lot?

This can definitely be non-zero if we put effort into it. After all, these people are buying gas, no?

Only companies large enough to afford that can... so what do all the smaller companies do? The rest of the world is so much much different than the West Coastal Cities, EVs are a pipe dream.

A 240V car charger is like $1000. They're not that expensive.

At least putting in wires is easier than putting in gas pumps.

Unfortunately the real obstacle is building management having to do anything at all so it wouldn't matter even if the wires were free.

The major problem with BEV charging is not the chargers themselves. While it is a huge infrastructure project it is somewhat doable in small chunks.

The elephant in the room is generation and transmission. You need shitloads of energy for BEVs. Depending on climate and culture BEV consumption is roughly in the ballpark of a household consumption. Most grids are simply not built for that kind of increase in transmission capacity and we already struggle with enough generation.

A study was made for Switzerland. If all private cars were going electric, it will only require an additional 17% to the current electric generation. This is not a shitload... People keep forgetting that the yield of an ICE is really really bad.

First, you are only talking about generation component. 17% may not seem like much until you consider that 1. it is roughly half of existing nuclear generation, which is already decided to be phased out 2. some nuclear reactors provide heating 3. that "only" 17% is equal to total consumption of one Baltic state.

That is for Switzerland alone, which is measly small compared to EEA population. For the sake of argument round that 17% to be 10 TWh. Switzerland owns roughly 6 mio private vehicles. EEA owns roughly 250 mio. According to referenced study EEA needs "only" roughly 400 TWh additional generation, or something like 60 nuclear reactors.

You just proved my point with data - it is shitloads of additional energy.

Second, that additional energy will have to be moved somehow. You not only need ample generation, but also cross-region links, transmission grids and distribution lines to actual homes/chargers.

Even if Switzerland just buys LPG and transmits electricity using that LPG, it is much more efficient to generate energy in big plants than in car motors. I do not see electricity generation a problem. Long routes are still problem though in Europe where I am used to going with 170km/h, but 150km/h is normal on the highway in Eastern Europe.

> it is much more efficient to generate energy in big plants than in car motors. I do not see electricity generation a problem.

Those plants need to be built. Gas pipelines need to be routed to those plants. Energy distribution has to be built etc.

This is a problem only in corrupt countries. Switzerland is one of the few countries where government projects finish on time in the planned amount of money.

Ah yes. In non-corrupt countries those plants and pipelines and distribution grids appear out of thin air.

It's just amazing how "we need to build huge ass plants and all the infrastructure" is just dismissed as insignificant (also in a similar discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32992808).

Yes it's an issue when people have decided that energy generation should be outsources somewhere else... If you close your nuclear reactor you can only blame yourself if your power generation infrastructure is undersized.

Can we please stop to compare to a Baltic state when their size is smaller than that of a western Europe large city. It doesn't bring anything to the comparison. (I'm pretty sure it's an order of magnitude of what San Marino need)

Just to put in perspective your 60 nuclear reactors, currently China is building 36 new reactor, 50 more are in final project phase and in total they will add 160 new reactors in the next 20 years. This coupled with the massive installation of renewable, China is the only country that is going to handle the CO2 problem in the foreseeable future.

> Can we please stop to compare to a Baltic state when their size is smaller than that of a western Europe large city. It doesn't bring anything to the comparison. (I'm pretty sure it's an order of magnitude of what San Marino need)

Ah yes. Some countries are more equal than others.

Estonia is 15% of Swiss population if you want to compare populations. So, to indulge your insistence to only talk about Switzerland and completely ignoring the bigger picture, Estonia's population is more than Zurich, Geneva, Basel, Lausanne, Bern, and Winterthur combined. Ah yes, and consumes more than San Marino of course.

But that's not the point

The point is: It's not just Switzerland that has to increase power generation by ~17%, and build all the infrastructure to distribute that electricity, and make sure all those new plants are properly connected to the grid.

On top of that Europe's grid is tightly interconnected. Here's a good twitter thread on what it means to supply/demand side of the equation: https://twitter.com/BurggrabenH/status/1567929340737863680

Pretending that "we need 17% more electricity is nothing, and is easily solvable" is uneducated at best.

China is building those very fast because you wouldn't want to be a worker in one of those construction projects. Even though I agree on principle that the dismantling of nuclear energy in EU is a disgrace.

> it will only require an additional 17% to the current electric generation.

That.... That is not an "only". Switzerland's total consumption is 58.46 billion kWh [1]. "Only" 17% increase is another 9 billion kWh. That's the equivalent of Estonia

[1] https://www.worlddata.info/europe/switzerland/energy-consump...

Estonia is 1.3M inhabitants or about 15% of Swiss population… And that’s if all cars were going electric which is going to take many years. Not like you need to increase power generation by 15% overnight. This perfectly doable and not even a real engineering challenge.

And population of Switzerland is 8.6 million. What's your point?

It is an actual engineering challenge because it's not just Switzerland that will increase its power demands.

Total energy consumption of EU is on the order of thousands of petajoules: "Final energy consumption in the EU in 2020 amounted to 37 086 PJ" [1]

"Not an egineering challenge" is in reality "we need to increase energy supply by 6 thousand petajoules which amounts to sum total of all renewable energy currently available in the EU" (renewables account for 17% of EU's energy production). Plus add all the infrastructure needed to distribute it to charging stations.

Not a challenge at all.

[1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

My point is that 15% is still 15% even it represents the population of Estonia or of a suburb of NY.

By the way you are mixing everything. I talk about private transport and you give me the figure for total energy consumption... Total energy consumption is not going to increase!!! The petrol burnt in an engine is already counted. Because of all the loss due to the pathetic yield of IEC engines, your are not going to increase the total energy consumption but decrease it when you will electrify transport.

For Switzerland electrification of all private transport represent the addition of 2 nuclear reactors, so no nothing to write home about regarding sizing of the grid.

> 5% even it represents the population of Estonia or of a suburb of NY.

So? Why can't you make the next logical step? If it's a 17% increase for Switzerland, then it will be at in the same ballpark much for all other countries, won't it? Then an increase for Germany will be probably as much as two Switzerlands etc.

> By the way you are mixing everything. I talk about private transport and you give me the figure for total energy consumption.

I'm not. I'm just pointing the flaws in the insistence that "it's not even an engineering challenge"

> For Switzerland electrification of all private transport represent the addition of 2 nuclear reactors

Ah yes. It's just such an easy not an egineering challenge to do.

Switzerland built and put online 3 reactors in 6 years between 1965 and 1971, so yes it's a proven fact that's it's technically easy. Now from a political point of view that's another issue.

You're confusing speed with easy.

> renewables account for 17% of EU's energy production

That's yearly production. Solar has very poor seasonality, wind is not that bad is still nowhere close to nuclear/gas, therefore capacity-wise these numbers are the floor, not the ceiling.

To add on top of that Europe is migrating from nuclear in generation altogether :)

Hehe, seasonality and load-following... Some other discussions on this topic have people saying things like "just build more solar and wind, build twice as much or however you need to sustain the energy". So, a 17% increase becomes a at least a 34% increase in required new energy...

All these discussions (not just on HN, but in political contexts etc.) lack so much of long term vision and planning.

> So, a 17% increase becomes a at least a 34% increase in required new energy...

With solar in particular, due to high seasonality we effectively have 3 solutions and none of them make much sense:

1. Install huge-ass batteries to hold "summer" energy for "winter". LCOE goes down the drain.

2. Install "winter" season capacity. In the summer you have overproduction, that in the long term noone wants to buy, because everyone is on solar. LCOE goes down the drain.

3. Install gas plant along solar for "winter" backup. Unit cost skyrockets due to low utilization, LCOE goes down the drain. You save some GHG per unit when "summer" generation is covered by PVs.

This is not accounting that with non-dispatchable solar cost of balancing for the grid also goes up. It's not really long term planning per se. Renewables are expensive, period. There is almost zero actual political discussion on cheap energy vs renewable energy. If anything, this discussion is consciously dishonest: marginal cost of energy for producers is most often given as the true cost of renewables.

And then we have efficiency. Wind energy is especially sensitive to location. As the best spots are gobbled up first (duh) the marginal efficiency of wind generation declines, which is to be expected. However, various analysts like Lazard give LCOE numbers based on existing averages, which cannot - by definition - be sustained.

Yup. It’s increasingly clear that EVs are fools good.

Unfortunately it may be the only tool acceptable to Americans, who are simply not willing to pay for public transport and give up an inch of roads for dedicated electric bikes and scooter lanes.

The article is in UK, but prices have started to go up on some public charging in Sweden too.

Some are at 0.7€/KwH, which is more expensive than using a gasoline car, despite high fuel prices (Especially in the winter)

Fast charging always has a premium price though, due to availability and higher load on cables/stations.

When I see EVs that are charging at public spots in cities, I assume that the owners for some reason do not care about money. Either because their are rich, or because it is some kind of business expense for them.

Why would you assume that? I know someone who has an EV but lives at a home without a driveway, public charging is the only way for him to actually you know, use that car. As EVs become more and more popular, that's how most people will charge their cars, it's not like everyone has a house with a driveway.

I’m confident that most public charging are long distance travellers away from home with limited choice.

Not really. Electricity tariffs can be pretty competitive if you shop around.

I own an EV and I have never charged at home, even though I have my own garage. My average electricity costs at home are around 0.30€/kWh. Meanwhile, 30% of my charges have been cost-free and the rest I'm paying between 0.12€/kWh and 0.39/kWh.

The investment required to install a wallbox is not really worth it at the moment. It would just add convenience.

Lower-cost EVs have a limited battery capacity, so it's unavoidable when traveling between cities.

Charging at night with hourly pricing, is just 0.06€/KwH (Sweden) (But going up due to industries switching to night shifts..).

> 0.06€/KwH

Is that in the UK? I think in Germany the cost for providers is already above 0.20€/KwH at the moment and the prices at home are typically higher. Mine is about 0.40€/KwH at the moment.

In Germany there are already Smart Electricity suppliers which also provide a Wallbox in order to automatically charge your car whenever certain price threshold is reached. You could for example configure it to charge your car when prices are even negative. That's not so common anymore, but we had a price of -0.08€/kWh on 21.05.2021. 10 days ago, the prices were also pretty low (0.02€).

https://www.awattar.de/tariffs/hourlycap

Nice theory, assumes that prices stay below your threshold long enough for the car to charge. It can happen, as your examples show, but can it happen at scale, i.e. when 1 in 10 people are running "full house equivalent" energy requests every time the price drops below say 0.02 EUR/kWh?

Been pricing electicity derivatives at work last week; with that context I'm now thinking of your scheme as a limit order, and what happens when the market is oversaturated with limit order?

Night-time electricity can be practically free at times, since people are asleep and a lot of businesses aren't operating. You just need to be on a plan where you pay different rates during the day and night.

South Sweden, if we didn't export huge amounts of energy to Germany and shut down 4 nuclear plants (With 20+ years left of life), it would be a permanent < 0.06/KwH.

Funny - I assume the opposite because they're spending their time at a charger rather than plugging it in at home. If they can't charge at home - that probably means they don't have a home but maybe an apartment without a garage that has EV hookups which means they probably don't have much money.

The other alternative is road tripping.

can confirm, have business ev charging card, free parking baby.

Same in Germany. Prices can be as high as 75-80 cent/kWh at certain public fast chargers. That would be 16€/100km or more, while a diesel with consumption of 6.5l/100km costs about 13€/100km at current diesel prices.

I was always wondering how people get these 6.5l/100km. Never had that. Diesel Mazda 6 was closer to 8l/100 km, old euro 3 Passat was 7, petrol Golf 4 - 8, BMW 3er no less than 10. In the BMW case it’s 21€/100km and it will be replaced by electric vehicle one day. Apparently electric vehicle needs ~20kWh/100kh and I can choose if I charge at home for ~8€/100km or I go for fast charger for ~16€/100km.

I own both a diesel (2021) BMW SUV and an electric BMW. The diesel has an average of 6.0l/100km since factory. It's slightly higher on highway (~6.5l) and slightly lower on national roads (5.0-5.5l). It's a typical 4 cylinder, 190hp with a 48V micro-hybrid system. I can imagine a 3 series or a non-SUV would have even lower averages.

The electric BMW i4 is averaging around 16.5-17kWh/100km.

Woooow, neighbor’s older X3 consumes 12 liters petrol for 100 km. Looks like renewing car could be economically viable option. i4 is amazing, but not suitable for my needs having only one car in the family.

(not an attack) I would suggest you check how you are driving and maybe try to drive in a more conservative manner (of course terrain/traffic may be the culprit). My recent car usages:

- 2007 Honda Civic (gasoline): 5.9L/100

- 2015 Mazda CX-5 (diesel): 5.6L/100

- 2017 Porche Cayenne S (gasoline): 7.9L/100

- 2017 Lexus IS300h (gasoline + hybrid): 4.9L/100

(Can't remember my older cars consumptions but even those never more than 6L/100)

For reference, I now drive a 2021 Hyundai Kona/Kauai EV. My average is 12kwh/100, though I'm still getting the hang of driving it more efficiently so I'm confident I may get it a bit lower.

Depends on how you drive and how large your car is. My moms old Renault capture diesel uses around 5l/100km on average (combined city/highway) while she is driving and around 5.5-6l/100km while I'm driving. Just rented a Peugeout 208 1l diesel in Nice, France. Averaged 5l/100km during the week (500 km). Around 50/50 split regarding kms driven on highway and inside a city.

I have a 30+ year old Toyota highlux converted to be an RV. Looks like a brick, drives like a boat. But even that thing manages ~10.1l/100km.

Depends how you drive. I had 5.5L with a BWM serie 3 diesel, about 6.1L with a class E wagon diesel. I would consider myself an average driver, neither slow nor fast. Cars in normal mode (not eco, not sport).

“Some are at 0.7€/KwH, which is more expensive than using a gasoline car, despite high fuel prices.”

Can you show your working please?

I paid 50c/kwh at a public charger the other week but it was still cheaper than benzine here (NL) at 2+ eur/l

Seems to make sense to me.

Mercedes-Benz E200 4MATIC (not a plug-in hybrid) has a quoted combined fuel effiency of 7.5 l/100km. To get 100 km of range, you'd need to fill up 7.5 litres of petrol at around 1.73 €/l (https://bensinpriser.nu/stationer/95/stockholms-lan/), costing 12.98 €.

Tesla Model S 90D has a quoted energy efficiency of 18.9 kWh/100 km (https://www.tesla.com/en_EU/support/european-union-energy-la...). If you pay 0.7 €/kWh, you need to put in at least 13.23 € worth of electricity, assuming a charging loss of 0%. If you increase that charging loss to 20%, you'd be putting in 23.6 kWh with a price of 16.52 €.

South Sweden, daytime, at 0.6€/KwH, gasoline is cheaper per 10km.

Benzine is 1.7-2€/liter.

I charge my EV with free solar energy 90% of the time. Can't dig my own gas out of the ground for an ICE. Hopefully that kind of setup will become cheaper and more accessible to many.

EVs aside, every bare roof is a missed opportunity for solar anyway. It should be mandatory for every overground parking lot to be covered in solar panels, same for every newly built residential and office building. If this sort of policy was in place, there would be a lot more locally generated electricity for heating and charging EVs that doesn't need to be transported over long distances.

This is for DC fast charging, which is always the most expensive. I only use them when taking road trips, if necessary.

Fast charging where I live is around 3.5x residential rates per kWh.

Read it. Only in Europe, and because of surge in their power cost. Would have been better if the title reflected it.

Huh. I saw an article the other day which was only about the US, and the bad stuff was only because of a US specific event.

And there were also a couple of articles which really only applied to California. Really, who cares about health impacts from wildfire smoke, it only affects livability in a few parts of the world.

Hey, sorry for the snarky tone, you deserve better. I'm just thinking of friends of mine whose mortgage cost just doubled. And thanks to the UK gilt meltdown, no banks are issuing mortgages.

The difference with an article about wildfire smoke is it would probably be obvious if it applies to you or not.

This is more the equivalent of an article name "Air quality down 42% since last year!" and once you read the article you realize it only applies to people living in California because of fires.

autocar.co.uk - Article is about the UK, not "in Europe" but of course you read it so you are fully aware of this

I know the article is related to energy costs but:

If for decades people have shown to pay £X for private travel in a car, why would business charge less than X?

Governments will temporarily provide incentives etc because it’s greener but the biggest costs of EV are in the hands of private enterprise (purchase/lease, electricity suppliers, maintenance shops) and they’ll extract maximum profit.

Anyone who thinks in the long term that EVs will cost a fraction of ICE are a bit naive imo

For decades people paid 2 cents for a nail[1]. Why do nails cost 0.5 cents now? Because once you figure out a way to make them cheaper than 2 cents, you can make more profit by charging less -- you take market share away from producers who can't go under two cents.

This is a steady process that has been going on for centuries in all kinds of different products. If it doesn't happen with EVs, it will be because government intervened to stop it.

[1] - https://conversableeconomist.blogspot.com/2012/04/price-of-n...

> If it doesn't happen with EVs, it will be because government intervened to stop it.

Actually I think you're right. It'll be greedy governments and naive interventions.

Which I'd be somewhat in favour of - because mass transit should be the focus of government transport departments and a mode of transport that they strongly encourage.

Or it won't, because electricity generation is not free and we acted as if energy from fossil fuels is endless and doesn't have any side effects.

There's a limit on how cheap things can get.

> If for decades people have shown to pay £X for private travel in a car, why would business charge less than X?

Because of the invisible hand of the market, thanks to the magic of competition.

We forced the national electricity provider to open up to "competition" in France and it now is more expensive than ever. "Competition" isn't always a good thing

If you don't believe in god you shouldn't believe in the magic hand of the market, because it essentially is the same thing

Just speculating but perhaps true competition wasn't introduced? Are there 3 or 4 genuine competitors, who aren't just retail frontages for the same back end company? (that's the way telcos and power companies here can be structured).

Costs of petrol in Australia went up 100% in that long recently.

A really bad side effect is that in some European countries, people with hybrids have stopped charging their cars because it's cheaper to drive on petrol.

Curious - how much would charging costs have to increase for the cost of driving an EV to match that of an ICE car?

I can buy 10 used but running ICE cars for the price of an EV and could probably buy a couple of years worth of gas for the money that I saved, even at current prices.

We need some actually cheap EVs, so probably models that are not so full of electronics like the current ones. Just some basic models without self-driving hocus pocus and futuristic bling.

I also would never buy a car that keeps up a constant network connection to its manufacturer, so that's a requirement I'd be looking for as well.

>>We need some actually cheap EVs, so probably models that are not so full of electronics like the current ones. Just some basic models without self-driving hocus pocus and futuristic bling.

Those exist, just buy yourself an e-Up/Citigo EV/Mii Electric, it's very cheap, it's very basic, has 160 miles range, it even comes with a normal analogue cluster. Or another cheap choice is an MG ZS EV or EV5 - both fantastic cars, both pretty basic without a whole lot of tech.

More affordable than Tesla, but still 10x of the cheap used ICEV that they are competing with.

But basic?

https://www.just-auto.com/analysis/interior-design-and-techn...

> The Mii doesn’t offer a built-in touchscreen – not even as an option. Instead, it comes fitted with a smartphone dock located on top of the dash. While it may appear low-tech compared to its rivals, it does the job by allowing the driver to link their phone to the car via two apps: Mii Drive and SEAT Connect. The latter provides remote access and management of the vehicle, so drivers can review driving data, parking position, the vehicle’s status, including doors and lights, manage the charging process via the e-Manager and the ability to control air-conditioning remotely from the app.

How to repair this at home if it breaks?

Can I make sure that my car does not send any data to the manufacturer?

I mean, I have the e-UP so I can answer any questions you have I suppose.

Yes, you can make sure the car doesn't communicate with the VW servers - either through the option in the menus, or if you don't trust that just pull out the SIM card below the dash.

>>How to repair this at home if it breaks?

If what breaks?

>>but still 10x of the cheap used ICEV they are competing with

I'm so confused why you say that a brand new EV is competing with a decade old petrol car(because only those will be 10x cheaper)? Like.....when I was car shopping it hasn't even crossed my mind to look at cars that old. I want a warranty and I want a very basic EV car - a decade old petrol car fulfils neither requirement.

Any of it, really.

There are cars that you can fix at home with a hammer, but this is getting rare, unfortunately.

> I'm so confused why you say that a brand new EV is competing with a decade old petrol car

If people want to buy the cheapest vehicle, then they are limited to ICEV, because the cheapest EV is much more expensive.

>>Any of it, really.

I mean, sure, but then the argument is that this car literally has a battery, EV motor, one ECU, cabling for the brakes and the AC, and....that's about it? Yes you won't open the battery or the motor in your driveway, but other parts are no more complicated than in a normal car, and there's very very very few of them. I know some people who have already put 100kkm on these cars and the only thing they had to change was tyres - even the brakes don't wear out at all because you just use regenerative breaking.

>>If people want to buy the cheapest vehicle, then they are limited to ICEV, because the cheapest EV is much more expensive.

Yes, but why were you comparing a brand new EV to a decade old petrol car?

>>There are cars that you can fix at home with a hammer

I just want to add to this - I think maybe that is true, but that must be 0.00001% of drivers who have that ability, if not less. I used to have a Fiat Cinquecento, you couldn't imagine a simpler car(mechanically), it didn't really have electric anything on it other than lights, and I still wouldn't have any clue how to fix an engine issue for instance. I could replace the brakes or suspension elements myself, but I can do that in the e-Up too.

The initial question was about cost difference between EV and ICEV. I think it is fair to compare the cheapest of both options.

Well then let's compare a 10 year old EV(like a Nissan Leaf) vs a 10 year old ICE, not a brand new EV vs 10 year old ICE?

Then I am still looking at a 5x price difference and a massive difference in range.

For hammer-grade fixing, EVs are way simpler than an ICE, which consists of tens of thousands of precision machines parts to control thousands of expositions every second. An EV is a battery pack, some power electronics, and two wires going to a motor. And a couple other parts if you wanna get fancy, but seriously, EVs are dramatically simpler than an ICE to the point that it’s not even funny. Don’t let BigAuto and BigEV confuse you. If you’re able to keep a thirty year old ICE car running, you can build your own EV. And if you build your own, you can be sure it’s not phoning home.

If you’re looking at the cheapest end of the spectrum, try looking at golf carts or importing something from China. $4,000 gets you quite the cart, well within the price range of a used, old ICE vehicle. And likely competitive too - my sister’s last car was an old (ICE) beater and couldn’t go fast enough for the freeway.

You and me both, but I think we're the minority. I want bell-and-whistle free ICE cars when I buy but those are becoming harder and harder to obtain.

I'd be fine with a bell-and-whistle-free EV as well. I think there are just none on the market, except a couple of Chinese models that you cannot try before you buy from a Western country.

Get VW eUP. It's discontinued but you could find year old ones. So almost new. Perfect city car.

Actually, we don't need cheap EVs.

The only thing we really need is less ICEVs

Yes. Yes, we do need cheap EVs and the infrastructure for them.

I'm in Sweden, and the cheapest EVs are often more expensive than fully kitted-out ICE versions of the same cars. Even an ardent proponent of EVs will think twice before buying an EV (unless they are rich and live in the city center)

I don't see the problem. If he thinks twice, he's going to save a ton of resources that may be used better elsewhere.

No, he's not. If he's going to think twice, it means he's going to use ICE for longer.

Perhaps, doesn't even have to be a bad thing.

E.g. producing a new BEV can have a worse impact than driving an ICEV a little bit longer.

However, long-term, it is the task of governmental bodies to make the cost using ICEVs reflect the real cost to society, making it probably even less affordable.

So, you're not proposing to make EVs cheaper, but to make transportation as a whole unaffordable.

And no, "affordable public transportation" doesn't solve the problem. I live in Sweden where you have busses going to even the most remote of places. The farther you are from a big city center, the more yo need a car. And unlike the US being far from a city doesn't mean you live in a big house where you can put your own charging station etc.

I am proposing to make prices reflect the real cost. Even today many can't afford a car, this doesn't mean transportation as a whole is unaffordable for them. It is possible to live without a car, you know.

> I live in Sweden where you have busses going to even the most remote of places.

Sounds good. I live in Germany where you don't have that, I still don't need a car, even though I use one once in a while because it's so cheap.

> The farther you are from a big city center, the more yo need a car.

So what? Doesn't mean you need a car at the end of the day, let alone own a car, especially when you're not living in the US. It only means cars are more helpful than at the city centre. The same probably holds for your own helicopter

> > The farther you are from a big city center, the more you need a car.

> So what? Doesn't mean you need a car at the end of the day, let alone own a car.

And your proposal is what exactly?

BTW car sharing and carpools have been a thing for a while, including EVs. They are 2x or 3x more expensive than owning a car. And also not available as soon as you move about 10-10 kilometers away from the city center.

I live in a suburb with a population of 60k people, 11 km from the city center. There 20-ish charging outlets (3.7 kW and 11 kW) mostly in paid parking lots (2 EUR per hour after second hour of parking). There are two car pools offering a total of 10 cars at completely ridiculous prices (Volvo's M, I'm looking at you: >25 EUR just to start the car, 30 EUR for 10km purely electric, 27 EUR for 10 km ICE).

> It only means cars are more helpful than at the city centre.

Exactly. They are more helpful, and your proposal is to make them unaffordable for people who need them

> The same probably holds for your own helicopter

Reductio ad absurdum isn't nearly as strong of an argument as you think it is.

You can't pretend that the cost of EVs (both the cars and the infrastructure needed for them) isn't an issue just because you say "ah, they don't need it all the time" or "yeah, but steelman argument is public infrastructure". This just pushes reckoning with reality farther away, possibly beyond the point where it can be solvable.

How does an economy work without affordable transportation?

The strawman argument is "nobody has affordable transportation". The steelman one is "we add affordable public transit".

And when? Public transport is a strawman if it does not exist in sufficient quality and quantity to replace all personal transportation and it takes decades to get to that capacity.

I am writing from Berlin. We enjoy one of the best public transport networks in the world, but it is still not affordable enough for many and there are still good reasons to own a car in Berlin.

It's not a straw man. I have my doubts you know what you are talking about.

EVs for everyone doesn't work, and ICEVs even less so.

People who really need it for their life style will either have to change their life style and habits or pay enough for it.

And with respect to the economy: supply and demand will solve it

> It's not a straw man.

What I meant to express was that the GP was making a fallacious argument themselves by claiming that mine was fallacious when it is not.

Take personal transportation out of the equation without sufficient replacement and the economy (and quality of life, as well as social peace) will take a massive hit, because so many people rely on it for their needs.

Transitions to better models are great if they are planned and executed well. Suddenly pricing people out of their lifes, because required planning and investment 20 years ago was avoided is not a great way to proceed if you value social peace.

> The steelman one is "we add affordable public transit".

What about better urban design so less transit of any kind is necessary?

"The hike in price means drivers who only use the public network to charge vehicles pay around 18p per mile for electricity.

That is just 1p less per mile for a petrol car, based on someone driving at an average of 40 miles to the gallon, the motoring group said.

The cost per mile for charging electric vehicles at home is around 9p per mile for the average-sized car. The BBC has been told most EV drivers charge at home overnight."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63029226

64p per kWh vs £1.90 per litre looks like parity between the two ~3 kWh ~= 1 litre petrol a fair estimate (~11 kWh ~= 1 us gallon)? Obviously your mileage may vary.

If you live inside a European city, how do you charge your car? I don’t see cords going inside of windows… I only ever see public spots. What gives?

Have an EV-plug installed into the side of my house. I run a cable over the crosswalk to the car from there.

"Inside a European city" is quite a broad concept. Some people will indeed have parking next to where they live.

Otherwise the next best option is to charge the car at the place they work if they commute by car and their employer offers that.

Other options are to include charging into your mental overhead and use options whenever you are out shopping (larger supermarkets with parking often have charging options), training (parking next to football fields might have charging), use public charging spots but that can be time consuming when your next one is further away.

Source: We own an electric car and charge at home but we recently considered moving to a place without home charging and had to figure out how we would deal with that.

< “Inside a European city” is quite a broad concept

Is it though? Paris, London, Berlin, Amsterdam, Madrid, Rome… dominated by 3-5 story mixed-use, with some special area for skyscrapers, and farmland near to the edge of the city. (Or, near by American standards)

“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”

Here in San Jose, CA, I have one of the most efficient EVs on the market (4 miles per kWH) and my off-peak charging rate is 25c/kWH ($0.25) which is high relative to other states. That's 6.25 cents per mile. For comparison a 30 MPG car at $5/gallon is 16.7 cents per mile. So your answer in my situation is 2.7x.

One can reasonably quibble about other costs but what surprised me is that it's within an order of magnitude.

If you have a Leaf, it's not too hard to push it past 4.5 mi/kWh ;)

We're on the same plan as you are, and last week we found that charging it at the office (which used to be significantly more expensive than at home) is now 2x cheaper that it is from our garage, so that's where we're going to all our charging from now on. Electricity prices for off-peak usage going from 5¢/kWh to 25¢/kWh at home really hurts. I get free charging at work, but alas I bike so the car gets charged at the other office…

The most efficient ice cars get 60mpg so comparing like with like it's even closer!

You cannot give one figure here. The only comparable metric is cost per km or equivalent consumption (which is basically the same thing in different units), which is function on 4 variables: ICE/BEV consumption and electricity/fuel price.

Fuel cost equivalent BEV consumption (expressed in fuel per distance, e.g. l/100km) is equal to [C_e * P_e] / P_f = C_e * [P_e / P_f]; where C_e = BEV electricity consumption; P_e = Price of electricity; P_f = Price of fuel.

With C_e = 20 kWh/100km; you need [P_e / P_f] ~= 0,35 to break even. With fuel prices in the [1.7 -- 1.9] range you need electricity prices in [0.59 -- 0.67] range.

Sibling comments list UK prices to be P_e = 0.65; P_f = 1.9; yielding equivalent consumption is 6.8 l/100km. (34.5 mpg according to google)

In my country prices are roughly P_e = 0.59; P_f = [1.65 -- 1.75] giving equivalent consumption of roughly [7.15 -- 6.75].

BEV consumption is a bitch for comparison. Your trip computer displays battery-to-controller consumption, which is what you pay at public charger, but when charging at home you pay for grid consumption which includes charging losses.

This article is talking about the cost of public charging (in the UK), which is much more expensive that charging at home, which of course is where the vast majority of EV charging occurs.

So the answer depends on where and when you charge.

The vast majority of people in the UK do not have their own private driveway adjoining their property.

Everyone I personally know uses public charging. Currently the way people are going is to know which car parks and shops still have free charging and to use those but they all know it doesn't work in the long run.

I see more and more of the public chargers with trash bags taped over them, which is a bit sad I guess, but probably a sign of the times we're living in now.

Aldi Süd was one of the typical free charging locations. Since this summer they have closed all their chargers and they plan now to start charging around 0.40€/kWh.

To elaborate: If you're using public chargers only, EV's are already more expensive than ICE cars in parts of Europe. The energy market is rather... interesting at the moment.

As it should be.. public chargers are quite expensive infra-wise since they need to support fast charging.

What do you mean they "need" to support fast charging? Majority of public charging points in this country are just type 2, 3.6/7.2kW chargers, CCS rapid chargers are outnumbered probably 1:10. And a simple 7.2kW point costs about £1500-2000 to install(commercially, at home it's cheaper) - hardly an extravagant expense.

For EV drivers mostly relying on public, "fast" charging, their energy costs are getting extremely close to, and can exceed, the fuel costs of ICE drivers.

The main way for the energy costs to be cheaper for EV drivers relies on charging at home or at work where it may be subsidized/free.

Using Anecdata from the United States

The energy or fuel cost of driving an EV versus an ICE car varies primarily based on the following factors: - Where and When the EV is being charged (e.g. at Home versus at a Public Charging Station) - Cost of Electricity in the Region - Cost of Gasoline in the Region

Let's use the state of California for an example and calculate the general fuel/energy cost per mile driven.

Where and When: Some residential power customers are on time-of-use billing plans which typically charge premium rates during peak hours (daytime-to-early evening, and substantially cheaper rates during off-peak hours. Pricing can also go up by usage tiers. Some EV drivers are able to charge exclusively at home, and/or have subsidized charging at work. It's almost always more economical for the EV driver to charge at home/work, however home/office chargers will typically be limited to not-"fast" charging speeds (L1 or L2 charging).

The average residential electricity rate in California is ~$0.30/kWh.

Many Public EV charging stations offer "fast" (L3) charging speeds and are convenient or necessary to use for some EV drivers. Many California public EV charging stations also now have variable pricing based on time of day and their location. The rates can vary from ~$0.30-$0.50+/kWh at EVgo stations or Tesla Superchargers, as examples.

Typical EV efficiencies I've seen are around 3.5-4.0 miles driven per kWh consumed. Assuming the upper end of 4.0 mi/kWh, the energy cost per mile driven is around $0.08/mi at the low end, and $0.13+/mi at the upper end with the above energy prices.

If we assume an ICE or hybrid vehicle with average fuel economy of 35mi/gallon, and gasoline costs typically range from $4.50-$5.50/gallon, the fuel cost per mile driven is around $0.13/mi at the low end and $0.16+/mi at the higher end.

For fun, if we took a typical Toyota Prius from the last 10+ years, with average fuel economy of 50mi/gallon, the fuel cost per mile driven is around $0.09/mi at the low end and $0.11+/mi at the higher end.

The prices for Public EV charging fluctuate, as do the prices for gasoline.

Generally, if someone is driving an EV and primarily relying on public "fast" charging, their energy cost per mile driven is really not that different from the ICE car examples, and higher than the average Prius driver.

(I have an EV and ICE vehicles)

I've moved into a newly constructed apartment building (construction completed in June this year) about 13km from Stockholm. There are zero chargers in the parking lot they also built from ground up, and there are none planned anywhere in the vicinity.

For the absolute vast majority of the world, even in the richest countries, EVs are a pipe dream, and will take another decade to be even remotely viable on scale.

Are you talking about fuel cost alone or all costs? Because the cost structure is very different and depends a lot on the region. You might have a higher upfront cost because EVs tend to be pricier than their ICE counterparts, but you might save on road taxes (at least if they're based on CO2 emissions) and on regular service, but lose out on things like tyre/suspension wear (heavy cars, lots of torque) and insurance (at least Tesla rates are insane).

External costs included?

Thanks for confirming what I was asserting a couple of days ago.

* In the UK.

There are few issues I think nobody want to accept:

- living on renewable is possible in some parts of the inhabited earth, not all, essentially only where Sunlight + climate and|or hydro can be used enough for local residential needs;

- it's doable ONLY for private homes, not for industries, or so to speak actual "RE" tech can't be built with itself;

- it's doable only for few humans, not all those living already or relocatable toward eligible lands, starting from only those who can afford it.

Now if you start telling people: "you can have $thing, you, you and you can't" those excluded start to revolt if such $thing is a key to mere living/living well enough. So someone have probably thought "well, we can push most in situations they can't revolt, to survive they can only accept" and that the mechanic of "universal revenues" etc in a prisons-alike "smart cities" (so dumb citizens) like those from https://youtu.be/Hx3DhoLFO4s those who can are also divided in two cohort, the rebels witch can perhaps just barely survive and those who are helpful who can profit A BIT, but not more than that of the new society.

Are you think that's a crazy far-right stanza? Well, I came from a WWII Partisans family, so hardly nazi-fascist or clerical. BEVs have a handful of scale issue:

- current substantial inability of recycling batteries and perhaps producing enough of them;

- battery wight and stored energy limit that makes them substantially unfit for anything more than private cars, to a point that electrified roads would cost FAR LESS;

- to charge quickly, but really quickly, they simply drain to much power witch is not an issue per se, but is a AC distribution network stability issue since they cause a sudden frequency drop anytime they start draining power. Such drop can't be sustained on scale. It can be correct with "smart-grid" features who mount and lower the load slowly enough to allow power plants to adapt but so far no such feature exists;

- even really quick (300+ kW) chargers are not quick enough for long business trips, they can be ok only if you are on vacation, while the sole reasonable charging (from the Sun, locally generated electricity from a p.v. plant or hydro) hardly mach the current state of things.

To correct IMVHO:

- start mandate p.v. near-zero injection to the grid (allow just 1-3kW) to REDUCE grid frequency;

- start subsidizing SMALL (8-10kWh) home batteries, enough to offer the minimum except heating/cooling without the Sun to power a whole home (fridge, VMCs, computers, lights etc) with two purposes: compensating small p.v. output fluctuations and small blackouts;

- MANDATE home battery inverters high-voltage DC (400V) to DIRECTLY use (both directions) car battery for the home and to charge depending on p.v., no AC conversion needed;

- mandate domestic p.v., 10kWp minimum WITH subsides, to buy a BEV.

Those steps are the BARE minimum to get a sustainable amount of usable BEVs for those who can own/use them without causing grid issues. Oh surely, that means a far slower transition but ladies and gentleman transition will be slow ANYWAY because so far only possible at individual homes level, no technical way to "accelerate" at all beside a mass genocide.

Broom broom... (sound of me revving up as I hold down the clutch)

That's pretty baller :0

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