Driving 100 Miles in an EV Is Now More Expensive Than in an ICE | Hacker News Reader

Driving 100 Miles in an EV Is Now More Expensive Than in an ICE

jalopnik.com

16 pointsnixass25 comments

Where are these assumptions coming from? What 'cost of chargers' is associated with commercial charging? Shouldn't that be $0? They already include 'deadhead miles' in their assumptions here, which should cover cost to transit to the chargers.

Also, if my eyeball-o-meter is correct, it looks like the ratio of energy cost to 'cost of chargers' is 5:3, which is insane.

Let's do some basic math I guess... they're counting this as the cost per 100 miles.

So, they're saying it costs $11.60 per 100 miles driven. For a 'mid-range' EV, you should be getting something like 250Wh/mi (some better, some worse). Let's assume worse, and go with 333Wh/mi (because the math is easy). So, 1kWh per 3 miles. So, it costs you 33.3kWh to go 100mi. If you did 250Wh/mi, that's 25 kWh to go 100mi.

At the terrible economy figure (333Wh/mi), you'd need to spend $0.34/kWh to account for their $11.60 cost, of which $0.21/kWh is actual electricity cost (using the 5:3 figure)...

At 250Wh/mi, you'd need to spend $0.46/kWh, of which $0.28/kWh is electricity cost.

That leaves 'cost of chargers' to be $4.35/100mi... which either means they assume you're spending $435/10k mi on a charger, or you're spending a one-time multi-thousand dollar cost on a charger and even then, only keeping the car for a few years. Even at an outrageous $4k to install a charger, that covers charging for 100k miles at the price they're proposing.

All-in-all, this seems like a flawed assumptions. Literally the only places where electricity costs that much are places like New England or California, and even then... the amount attributed to 'charger cost' is laughable at best.

The other thing, if you're in a state with super high electric cost... you also probably live in a state with higher than average gasoline cost. So their figure for gas cost is likely low.

Electricity cost is .15-.20kWh in my area in New England depending on which utility you are with. At the ratio you mentioned this means I'd be spending .30 kWh (taking .18 as the midpoint of local prices). New England also means cold weather. It's in the teens here pretty regularly but I don't know the numbers for how that'd effect EV efficiency.

Regardless, not as much of a difference in cost as I thought it would be. In my ICE vehicle I pay 10.50 per 100 miles at the current gas prices in my area.

The ratio I mention is what is BS, IMO. There's no reason why charging costs need to be that high. The way they're amortizing it seems flawed.

Usual PR spin from a "research and policy consulting group".

They adding things like the cost of your home charging equipment, which should be factored into the cost of the car rather than the cost of driving.

"Opportunity cost" for your time spent driving to and from charging stations, etc etc.

I can't imagine anyone using common sense would believe this based on their experience of driving an EV.

> "Opportunity cost" for your time spent driving to and from charging stations, etc etc.

This is particularly dishonest since if you're like most EV owners who charge at home, you spend less time driving to public chargers than ICE owners do driving to gas stations.

Hundreds of millions of people own a car and park them in public or semi-public areas that don’t have charging infrastructure. There is a massive opportunity cost to charging for these people, and that needs to be factored in to large-scale studies like this.

There are 2 problems with this argument.

1) There aren't hundreds of millions of electrics cars, so unless you're projecting to the future (possible) the argument doesn't hold water. If you are projecting, you also would need to project the change that charging facilities will grow as adoption increases.

2) I'm not sure where you are based, but when I was in the US, charging infrastructure was built into the parking lots where people regularly stop. Grocery store, shopping malls, etc etc.

So for these people, charging is more convenient than a gas station, as the car charges itself while you do what you need to do.

When at a gas station, I have to stay with the car while it refuels.

Bollocks. There will not be millions of chargers installed along every sidewalk with free street parking. Those people will be forced into something less convenient, more expensive, or both.

2. Is at gimmick levels. They aren’t ubiquitous by any means. Influencing where you go to shop. Often at the fancier grocery stores, that have chargers. Might be great for affluent shoppers that are already going for high end grocery, but a reduction in economic mobility for someone who already has less.

I'm not saying there will be millions of street chargers with free parking. But remember, the energy is a revenue stream.

Slowly, then all at once.

BTW, you seem angry about this change. You can try to fight it, but what would you gain by doing so?

With a Nissan Leaf, you can get ~4 miles per kW-h. For 100 miles, that would be 25 kW-hours. $0.14/kW-hr * 25 kW-hr = $3.50 / 100 miles. Then if you drive something less than about 40 miles per day, you can charge overnight from your standard 120V wall outlet, and wouldn't have the big yellow "cost of chargers" portion of the bar in the AEG report.

YMMV and YERMV:

https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...

These numbers are based on some very questionable assumptions. It cost me maybe a third of that or less.

The "article" is based off of a study by "Anderson Economic Group" which touts itself as an organization that "offers research and consulting in economics, valuation, market analysis, and public policy." One look at their "Energy and Environment" page should tell you everything you need to know: https://www.andersoneconomicgroup.com/expertise/industry-exp...

Their cost to drive an EV 100 miles is claiming $15, which is absolutely insane. I have a luxury SUV ev (Audi etron) and my cost for 100 miles is about 4 dollars based on 13c/kwh electricity. If I ONLY charged at public chargers it would be between $13.32 (40c/kwh) and $8.33 (25c/kwh). This article is bullshit.

The neat thing about pull-out-of-ass numbers like this is how far you can twist the numbers to say whatever you want. You can even create a way for EV costs to exactly equal ICE costs for vehicle lifetimes.

> EV drivers who charge up at home spend about $11.60 per 100 miles

I don't know which EV drivers they're talking about, but when I charge up at home, I spend $3.25 per 100 miles.

As someone who prefers to drive Japanese beaters I don’t see EVs ever really being a better deal, environment aside.

Prior to Covid you could get a 2003 Corolla for 3000-5000 dollars and drive it another 100K miles easily with basically oil changes only.

I’ll be pleasantly surprised if you could ever buy an EV for that price and drive it that much.

The 1st generation Nissan Leaf accomplished this a few years ago:

https://tiremeetsroad.com/2021/02/16/lots-of-cheap-2000-niss...

I don’t see how it’s comparable, it can only drive 30 miles and needs a new battery.

You didn't specify this. Well if you add the requirement of 200+ miles of range, then of course there are none. The only EV that is comparable in age and range with your 2000s era vehicle is the original Tesla Roadster, which is unfortunately a collectable and may never come down in price.

Agreed, though eventually reasonably priced EVs will be a thing.

As someone who drives a 2003 Corolla, it's tough to choose between getting a fun new EV, or watching the average cost of ownership of my car drop below $50/month.

Yes from my own experience - Skoda Enyaq iV80 through France and Italy. Charge cca 50EUR to get 70kWh on Ionity. Driving 130km/h for 2 hours - 260km range, then needed to charge again wasting roughly 40-60 minutes of my life usually standing in middle of nowhere or eating expensive junk food in local gas stop.

Driving in ICE would have been 8l/100km so on 260km I would consume ~21 liters of petrol. Average price in France is 1,81EUR / liter * 21 liters = 38EUR per 260km.

And before somebody chimes in to tell me that I could have registered on Ionity to get discount, I also did not registered on a gas pump to get a discount.

Edit: And this whole thing is crowned by a fact, that I need a stupid application to actually charge. Tell me when did you installed an application to get a petrol from a gas pump??

In Canada for us driving our EV has been much cheaper than the ICE vehicle it replaced. Rough math has it around 50% less. We charge at home.

TFA links to the actual source. It's short and worth a read before you waste your time hand wringing. TL;DR there's a wide spread of fueling costs and EV is just above/below ICE cars depending on the details of your usage and what you're comparing to.

Getting any kind of EV information from Jalopnik is akin to consulting Jeremy Clarkson on such matters, it's safe to assume they haven't actually vetted this "research" for accuracy. It's primarily a petrol-head hoonigan site...

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