Average EV fast-charging costs soar above petrol | Hacker News Reader

Average EV fast-charging costs soar above petrol

autocar.co.uk

62 pointsclouddrover81 comments

Well, yes. We're in an energy crisis in the UK and the commercial rate for energy was about 75p/kwh at the start of the year. Domestic is lower due to government intervention. The prices have risen accordingly. They should fall when the market allows them to.

At least this article is more honest than most when they point out "using public rapid chargers" - the most expensive way you can - because charging at home is still vastly cheaper than petrol.

Article spends all its time talking about a ~40% increase in electricity costs, when the headline is just as related to oil prices having crashed in the past few months.

Indeed, electrical generation in Europe remains high right now due to the disruption in the gas market. That's newsworthy and deserves coverage, but it's got nothing to do with "Electric Vehicles".

Also, article spins badly trying to conflate charging at DC fast chargers with "charging an EV". In fact most EV charging happens at home at residential rates, not at fast chargers which need to charge a premium to provide high-amperage service to remote locations. FWIW: my Model Y in the west coast of the USA (an area much more heavily reliant on long road trips and thus fast charging) has received just 27% of its total energy from superchargers. I'd expect British cars to use them even less.

> Also, article spins badly trying to conflate charging at DC fast chargers with "charging an EV". In fact most EV charging happens at home at residential rates, not at fast chargers which need to charge a premium to provide high-amperage service to remote locations.

Contrary to your point, the article actually addresses that directly: "The RAC data shows that those charging from a slower home charger are paying just £17.87 for the same 188 miles of range."

> my Model Y in the west coast of the USA (an area much more heavily reliant on long road trips and thus fast charging) has received just 27% of its total energy from superchargers. I'd expect British cars to use them even less.

It's quite possible that British vehicle owners don't have as many garages (probably synonymous with the ability to easily and securely charge at home) as owners on the west coast of the U.S.

https://worldofsynonym.com/qa/what-percentage-of-uk-homes-ha...

You don't need a garage, just a driveway. Plenty of people with chargers mounted on an outside wall.

Then you also run into this:

“Car chargers are particularly appealing to thieves because they can be sold for up to £200 and they are selling them everywhere – eBay, Facebook, and to dodgy scrap dealers,” says divert.co.uk spokesman Mark Hall. “They can be pretty costly and inconvenient for you to replace, so it’s best to keep it locked away from the crooks.”

https://www.whatcar.com/news/electric-car-charging-cable-the...

This bit of journalism amuses me. Headline reads (emphasis mine): "Electric car charging cable theft could be the next car crime wave".

And the evidence? "There has been a recent rise in reports of thefts of cables for EVs and plug-in hybrids (PHEVs)". No numbers. No link, just a statement.

The fact that there has been a "recent rise" in purchases of EVs and plug-in hybrids seems plausibly related, no? Not covered.

That's just awful, sorry. I mean, all journalism has perspective, everyone disagrees about some stuff, truth is hard, but that's just completely shameless.

Perhaps these citations will be more to your liking:

https://news.google.com/search?q=ev+charger+theft

None of these strike me as an epidemic, just a note that they're made of copper and stolen like other things made of copper. This doesn't look like a serious, decision-changing issue.

Really? Easy to steal, definitely not cheap or simple to replace, and usually wouldn't be covered by insurance.

Their next story: microwave theft up infinity percent in the last 75 years.

At least in the USA, catalytic converter theft is rampant, and not just theoretical. If I had to choose which I'd rather have stolen, I'd rather have the charger stolen. A car charger is far faster, easier, and cheaper to replace than a catalytic converter that has been hacked out of the exhaust system.

is it possible to get a locking charging plug or an anti-theft device?

A very brief search resulted in my finding that Kia EVs automatically lock the charging plug in place while charging. My guess is other manufacturers do as well or will.

I would think they probably do (garages or driveways), but don't forget the other options: charging at ~7-22kWh chargers at supermarkets, workplaces, etc.

There are 29000 slow/medium (3-22kWh) public charging points in Britain, and 7000 fast/ultrafast (25kWh+) points. The article only covers the latter.

Most if not all the slower chargers I know of are at or above the domestic capped rate of £0.34/kWh. Sadly the days of a free charge seem to have gone (but were good when they lasted, thanks Tesco!)

I have a Model X on the east coast of the USA. I charge at home, and only use superchargers when away from home (even though I have free supercharging). In the last year, just 4% of my car's energy has come from superchargers.

The Tesla app, which may be biased, says that I've saved $639 vs gasoline in the last 12 months.

They must be comparing you to a performance ICE car? Or you log lots of miles?

I only spend around $300 a year on gas for my Prius, though I'm only logging 4000 miles a year on average. 50MPG goes a long way.

Likely, yeah. The market equivalent to an X would be something like a Porsche Cayenne getting 23mpg. It's absolutely true that plugins doing around-town driving are going to get very close to an EV in energy costs (though still burning a lot of real fuel; you can buy renewable electricity, but not gas yet).

It's interesting how much more variable "fuel" costs are for EVs than for ICE vehicles. In Georgia, you can get residential EV charging for as low as 1.5¢ per kwh overnight. I've heard some areas you can get it for free overnight. But not every power company offers EV rates, and residential rates over 25¢ per kwh aren't uncommon in some parts of the country. Then there's retail charging which can be over 40¢ per kwh. That's quite a spread compared to gasoline, which appears to currently range from about $2.40/gallon to $4.50/gallon. Even when accounting for taxes and meter fees on residential EV charging, the cost spread for charging is still much larger than that of gasoline.

That's probably because electricity costs themselves are extremely variable. And that is likely because electricity cannot economically be stored or transported, unlike oil or gasoline or even (natural) gas. Thus, every electricity market is its own little thing, there is no "global market for electricity."

This is why we need Tres Amigas, higher capacity high voltage lines, and further grid connectivity improvements.

Many energy generation projects are stranded due to the grid in their county being unable to transport the power generated to ratepayers with need. Larger grids result in lower costs, as scale and the ability to lean on many diverse energy sources lowers the cost and increases reliability for each grid operator.

Which we're not gonna get cause NIMBY

The problem is that fast chargers are being installed by companies whose goal is to make money from their charging networks, and they are doing exactly that.

I think the end-state for EV charging will be installation of chargers at places people want to stop on longer trips. It takes long enough for a good charge that the human(s) will need something to do, which means bathrooms, restaurants, or maybe shopping. I predict EV road trips will be economical in the US when McDonalds installs chargers at their locations along the interstates, as a convenience to customers rather than a primary revenue source. IMHO this will require next-gen DC fast chargers as well, as the current models are still rather clunky and expensive for McD's.

> companies whose goal is to make money from their charging networks

Yes but remember, nationalisation is bad, public infrastructure are bad, only the invisible hand of the free market can bring you salvation !

> I predict EV road trips will be economical in the US when McDonalds installs chargers at their locations along the interstates, as a convenience to customers rather than a primary revenue source.

I've been offering it as free advice for a while that the company wanting the most to be the next McDonald's for the All American Road Trip will be the fast food chain that goes all in on electrifying their parking spaces.

(I think one of the businesses that could most easily push into that is actually the Sonic chain. They already electrify most of their parking spots, they just need to add charger cables. There's some interesting retro irony in how their outdated/outmoded throwback diner style becomes relevant in a new way there.)

> IMHO this will require next-gen DC fast chargers as well, as the current models are still rather clunky and expensive for McD's.

Expense seems to be a matter of scale. A chain making a big enough (risky enough) bet at a large enough national scale would have all manner of power to bring in economies of scale with current models.

I think a lot of the same applies to clunkiness. I think a lot of the clunkiness is "intentional" by the current purchasers of chargers. They aren't pushing back hard enough on the user experience because they win a little by chargers still seeming "exotic" and "new" and "exciting" and the clunkiness seems to me as much an accident of charging still trying to compete with old business models and new early adopter customers rather than just being boring parts of everyday life than an inhereent technology problem. Something like a restaurant making a big bet on charging, wanting to roll it out to every parking lot they own, with as few maintenance/OpEx costs as possible, and wanting to make sure that it is the least hassle possible to their customers to encourage even more money to be spent inside on food: that would have a lot of incentive power to eliminate a lot of clunkiness really quickly.

Related "free" advice, just because it amuses me: it might not even be fast food that wins "this round", it could be a category more like "fast casual". Current charging times suggest to me that a slower sit-down restaurant could still "win big" as the roadside stop while traveling in an EV. Perhaps especially if it has got a good "exit through the gift shop" strategy. EV chargers are perhaps counter to Cracker Barrel's whole brand aesthetic, but that's also another one that jumps out to me that if they made an EV play they could really take advantage of it.

Some of the old brands of "fast casual" chains got stripped for parts in recent economies and you possibly resuscitate one on the cheap with this very idea in mind. I'd invest tens, maybe hundreds of dollars, if I heard someone was planning something like that.

Sonics has been terrible to deal with as an EV owner. Plug in at a stall adjacent to Sonics, walk over after ordering online 25 minutes ahead of time, 50/50 chance they will refuse to fulfil the order since they are car only.

When they do fulfil the order, you need to stand at the door they go out and take it from them, no waiting in a stall or at the tables outside as a pedestrian. Sonics is a true believer in ICE car culture, and your lucky to get your order if you don't have a car.

Sonics in Mt Vernon does have a single EV charger, but it is 120v and is not useful even in the most energy efficient EVs.

Safeway keeps coming in clutch tho, free Volta charging while I go hit their hot food section is awesome and easy.

Oh yeah, I'm not expecting Sonic to become EV friendly any time soon, I'm just thinking it's funny that they almost have a business model setup to be EV friendly since they already wire their parking lots with all those intercoms putting a charger along with that almost makes too much sense. It would be a funny way for a relic of a weirder era of ICE car culture to be more relevant in the EV era but I'm sure that irony escapes most of their current executives.

It's a perpetual frustration to me thay electricity is so much more expensive than gas. It feels like we have to be doing something wrong that processing & trucking fuel out to people os so much cheaper a form of energy than what we get from the electrical grid.

If we take the EPAs 33.4 kWh to a gallon equivalency, and say gas costs $5/gallon, that'd be $0.15/kWh. A good portion of America doesnt even have power to the home at that rate.

Does this factor in the energy loss in transmission?

> that'd be $0.15/kWh. A good portion of America doesnt even have power to the home at that rate.

The majority of Americans pay less than that for retail electricity to the home: https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/

Right... basically Hawaii, California, and New England pay more than that - most of the rest of the country is at or under $0.10/kwh. I worked for a small business in Texas that used a fair amount of electricity and we were paying $0.04/kwh peak and $0.035/kwh overnight..

News to me. My PGE bill in Oregon totals out to 14.3 cents per kwh.

$0.21 USD/kWh here in Australia.

That converts to 8.82 kWh per litre, since this is about the UK.

Average petrol price is currently £1.50/L, so the figure is £0.17/kWh.

£0.17/kWh was a typical price a few years ago, but nowadays you'll only get that at night (with a suitable meter to measure time-of-day usage). Another comment claims 10p/kWh at night on a special tariff for EV owners.

Can you share what provider you are getting £0.17 at night from? I can't get better than £0.27 currently.

British Gas are offering 12p/kWh on the Electric Vehicle tariff.

Octopus go as low as 10p/kWh, although with "please call" maybe it isn't available.

If you actually need to fast charge the majority of the time, then an EV is probably not the best option right now. The difference is that you can easily drive to a cheaper petrol station near the highway while fast chargers are always expensive regardless.

I'm saying this as an Opel Ampera-e owner whose wife who doesn't drive has permanent range anxiety anxiety though I don't ;-)

If you would need to fast charge an EV a lot, look at a PHEV instead.

Was on my way to visit the family 180 miles away yesterday and so I pulled in to a supercharger with about 8% left, got it up to 65% when it told me I'm good to continue the trip, and paid £32.55 for the pleasure. Jesus christ.

For occasional use, that doesn't seem like it would be a problem?

It's still a chunk less than a ~180 mile train ticket.

There are actually a lot of reasons why a train ticket won't work for many types of trips, but the biggest ones are that you need to carry more than one person which multiplies the price, the train doesn't go where you need to go, or that it's quite inconvenient in that it doesn't leave or arrive when you need to.

The price was just given as a comparison.

A poorer person, who can't afford a car at all, has a £40 per-person advance-booked direct train as the optimum case. Their real cost is likely to be more with connections, or the time could be a lot more with a bus (£15-20) instead.

Even cheaper than a flight and chump change compared to a private helicopter. Apples to oranges.

Somewhat cheaper than a personal jetpack.

You can fly in Europe for $20. Not all destinations, obviously.

> It's still a chunk less than a ~180 mile train ticket

Yes, after you've paid a premium for the vehicle. By the same logic is cheaper to take the bicycle, but we are not comparing apples to oranges.

I can go Manchester to London return tomorrow morning, 210 miles each way, change at Crewe, take about 3 hours each way, costs £36.30. £46.70 if I want to get there for 10am.

Petrol alone would cost about £65 in my car, parking another £20 at least, and it would be an hour slower each way.

In my country trains are very slow because the infrastructure wasn't properly maintained. So the train is only an option for very poor people and the homeless, with the latter not buying any tickets. Last time I used the train, it took 18 hours gfr a 700 km trip which we'd normally do in 11 hours by car. Nowadays it takes 20+ hours.

Is that high? It sounds pretty similar to California.

It looks like Tesla is charging $0.50 in California and 67p ($0.81) in the UK during peak times. That's a pretty big difference in charge (62% higher). Even the off-peak 54p is $0.66 and 32% higher.

A 57% charge on a Model Y Long Range would be 188 miles of range (US EPA estimate). UK petrol prices are £1.54/litre or $7.03/US gallon. Assuming a 30-MPG car, 188 miles would be $44. They paid $39.59 for that distance of electricity. Hybrids and plug-in hybrids will do a lot better than 30-MPG so the Superchargers aren't cheap compared to other available options. The average UK petrol vehicle gets over 35-MPG (6.7l/100km) so that would come in at $37.76 for the 188 mile range and cheaper than the Supercharger for an average petrol car, though it can be slightly hard to compare since different countries have slightly different fuel economy evaluations.

It is higher than California by a decent amount and home energy rates are high too. They're a lot cheaper than petrol, but at 22.8p ($0.277) per kWh, it's nearly double what I'm paying on the east coast, but it looks like California rates might be comparable.

It's not outrageous, but it is definitely higher than California and can mean that the Superchargers are more expensive than petrol stations.

Sources: https://electrek.co/2022/09/28/tesla-hikes-supercharger-pric..., https://www.carmagazine.co.uk/electric/tesla-supercharger/, https://www.iea.org/articles/fuel-economy-in-the-united-king..., https://powercompare.co.uk/electricity-prices/

If it's similar to California, it's high.

I know diesel owners overbrim with smugness reading these articles but I've driven 14,0000 miles in the UK in my electric car this year and the total cost was £280.

That's 10x less than even the most efficient mid size car before you even factor in service costs.

The reality that these articles obfuscate for the sake of clicks is that most electric car owners are still massively in front on fuel costs.

Presumably most of the charging done at home? It seems to be when you're reliant on premium (fast) public chargers that the costs add up. At home you can take advantage of things like the Octopus EV tariff and pay 10p/kWh overnight for EV charging.

The article is talking about public chargers.

I don't have an EV.. but my driving pattern would put me at 99% home charging. Basically I'd never need to use a public charger other than 4-5 road trips a year.

That's correct. It's like arguing that food is too expensive when you only eat premium take-out. For most people it's something you do maybe once a month.

Is it safe to assume that you have a small, relatively inexpensive EV?

For a lot of the big luxury EVs that manufacturers prefer to advertise, the upfront cost difference means that it will take 5+ years to catch up if you "only" drive 14,000 miles per year.

I have a Tesla Model 3. Your reasoning only holds true if you assume that the alternative to buying an electric car was to buy no car at all. In reality if it wasn't a Tesla it would have been an ICE car in a similar market segment such as a BMW 3 Series. That means similar initial cost + all the fuel and servicing it needs. It ends up way more expensive.

USA cars, USA gallons, and USA dollars:

The cheapest Model 3 available near me is $58k according to Tesla's site (Dual Motor LR). A BMW 330i xDrive has a base price of $46k and includes the first 3 years of maintenance costs for free. Now, it's a BMW so you need to buy a bunch of options just to get front seats and a steering wheel. Should we put it up at $50k for the equivalent equipment level as a $58k Model 3?

How much does 14,000 miles worth of 3-series gas cost? If you average about 28mpg (it's rated for 33mpg highway), you'll use 500 gallons. If you're paying $4 per gallon, that's $2000. The Model 3 is apparently a few hundred dollars in electricity for the same distance - let's say $300? So, (58000-50000)/(2000-300) = 4.7 years to break even.

I'm not arguing against getting an EV. But you need to drive a lot of miles before you pay off that really big battery. Smaller, cheaper EVs that don't need such big batteries pay off a lot sooner. If that kind of car works for you ;)

>> In reality if it wasn't a Tesla it would have been an ICE car in a similar market segment such as a BMW 3 Series.

I see this comparison proposed very often. But I don't think it's fair -- a model 3 is expensive but it's not a luxury car in anything other than price. I think you can argue that an equally fair comparison is a Toyota Corolla or similar, which is in a very different total cost of ownership class.

I'd no longer say 'massively' in front.

I have a Renault Zoe - 2020, 50kWh battery, gets 200 miles in the summer, and was down to about 120 miles when it was sub-zero here.

On the current 34p/kWh home charging, that works out to 8.5p per mile on the high range, and 14p / mile when it's cold.

I also have a Renault Trafic that I get 39mpg on similar driving routes. That's about 19.5p/mile.

However, we sold a Citroen DS3 1.6HDi to get the zoe. That gave about 60mpg, and that works out to around 13p/mile...

I know I'm doing the right thing having the EV (and I love it), but it was a bloody expensive purchase for us, and is currently not going to get anywhere near making up the £15k or so extra that we had to put in to change from the DS to the Zoe.

Had we not had the home charger put in (which cost £1100!), then we'd be way down, as the nearest fast charger is now 50p/kWh, which would have taken the costs to 12.5p/mile and 20.8p/mile respectively - more expensive than my 240,000 mile 2.5 DCI van!

There are plenty of tariffs that offer cheaper home charging than that. I get 6 hours of 7.5p/kWh. On a 7kW charger that's enough for a 0-80% charge every night.

Is that an Octopus plan? If not, are you able to share the name of the provider and the tariff?

Is that open to new customers?

Forget the car -- topping up a 20kWh battery for £1.50 a day sounds like a great deal for people paying 34p per unit at the moment, would save £150 a month.

I can't find any plans that are actually accepting new customers for less than £0.27/kWh overnight. I'm pretty sure anything as cheap as £0.075/kWh is grandfathered into a legacy plan.

I would be happy to be proven wrong, I'd love to switch plans right now.

Intelligent Octopus is open for signups (I believe!) and offers 10p/kWh for some hours overnight and longer for the EV if you let them schedule the charge.

There's also Agile Octopus if you just want cheap off-rate. You might need to sign up to Agile then switch to Intelligent if you can't do Intelligent directly.

Both require a working smart meter.

You'll need to call Octopus in order to switch, their online signups have been suspended (like everyone else). My referral ID is fresh-cub-249 if they'll accept it over the phone, gets us both £50 credit.

I searched about once a month, and couldn't find any that were taking new customers - other than Octopus who I don't have a compatible car for. Having looked again last night, I found that British Gas are doing a 5 hours of 10p/kWh deal, with more expensive peak electricity, but still enough to save me about £20/week overall.

Where do you get that deal?

Have you tried an EV tariff?

For example, picking a random address in London, British Gas offer:

  Standing charge: 33p/day
  Peak rate: 47p/kWh
  Off peak rate: 12p/kWh

They also say they'll install a smart meter for free.

Unless you're using a lot of daytime energy, that would more than half your EV costs.

Thanks - problem is that I've searched, but no suppliers seem to have been doing signups other than Octopus (who I can't use as I don't have a compatible car), and I hadn't seen British Gas until last night. They are doing a 42p/10p off-peak deal which will save me about £20 a week altogether, so thanks for nudging me to have another look.

Does that factor in the cost of replacing the battery system every so many years?

I've only looked at two wheelers i.e. electric scooters and the replacement cost of the battery pack is 40% of the cost of the vehicle, every three years.

The battery is warrantied for 120,000 miles or 8 years. The stated design life is 3-500,000 miles.

Diesel emissions are not particularly good for one’s health.

https://www.epa.gov/dera/learn-about-impacts-diesel-exhaust-...

> car owners are still massively in front on fuel costs

For me fuel cost is only half the story. Refuel time is the other half.

"Fast chargers" are anything but fast. I've got better things to do with my life than sit around twiddling my thumbs at some godforsaken recharge station for 40 minutes.

Meanwhile with petrol/diesel, I can turn up with the car on the red-line and I can be full to the brim in what, 5 minutes ? 10 max ? Especially if I'm paying using the app on my phone.

The other elephant in the room that the electric world carefully skirt around is that those massive batteries in their car are not exactly environmentally friendly, especially when it comes to EoL time.

For me the whole electric car thing is still a bit immature, I'll wait a bit longer.

I have never once waited for my car to charge. Between home charging and charging during errands it's never run out. I have wasted countless hours at gas stations waiting for my car to fill up, which was considerably more annoying than just plugging the car in when I get home or go to the grocery store.

Also from my experience: Arriving at a charger, have last 30km left and charger refuse to charge my car. No explanation given by a charger and car telling me to find some other charger. Both CCS.

That is something what can really screw your day and made my opinion on electric cars even more entrenched in "worthless piece of s..."

If somebody would like to know: Freshmile network north of Troyes, France. Was forced to go 50km/h down to Troyes to Ionity charger, network which always worked, but is bloody expensive. Wasted 4 hours on something what was supposed to be 1 hour charging stop.

14,000 miles would be about 4,700kWh at typical EV 330Wh per mile, or 6p per kWh.

Where are you getting electricity for 6p per kWh? Most people in the country are paying 35p now. Are you charging at home with rooftop solar?

The costs in this article do not apply to using the Tesla network in Oregon and Washington of the United States. Using the supercharger network frequently in 2022, charging costs were still significantly lower than gasoline.

It is a British website talking about Britain.

It's quite possible that British vehicle owners don't have as many garages (probably synonymous with the ability to easily charge at home) as owners in the US: https://worldofsynonym.com/qa/what-percentage-of-uk-homes-ha...

Even home electric prices are very high now: 34p per kWh:

https://www.nimblefins.co.uk/average-cost-electricity-kwh-uk

Most electric in the UK is green now, and with the continued forced elimination in fossil fuels' for home heating, it's going to keep going up. Of course, being green is literally cold comfort to old age pensioners who can't afford to heat their homes anymore.

you don't need a garage though though, you just need a driveway and that might be very unrelated to garages.

18 million, 65%, of Britain’s households have – or have the potential – enough off-street parking to accommodate at least one car or van

The reason electricity is so expensive at the moment is due to high fossil fuel (mainly gas) prices.

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