For some electric vehicle owners, recharging now more costly than filling up | Hacker News Reader

For some electric vehicle owners, recharging now more costly than filling up

cbsnews.com

18 pointslxm31 comments

I wish there was more emphasis on EV efficiency, many manufacturers make the MPGe hard to find on their websites just like mpg is often hard to find for ICE cars. And I wish they’d publish miles/kWh alongside MPGe (I know it’s a simple conversion but I have to look up the constant each time I do the conversion) to make it easier estimate operating costs.

I think MPGe should absolute be far better promotes. Strong agreement.

But, at the same time, I think the much better efficiency also cloaks a very real issue about what energy costs, which seems like a huge problem. It just seems inexcusable that energy from the pump, likely at best drilled for, piped, shipped, refined, piped again, trucked to stations, and then pumped to your car should be way cheaper than local renewables.

But often, gas is way cheaper per unit of energy, and that seems wrong. According to https://gasprices.aaa.com/ the average gas price in the US is $3.416/gallon. The EPA declares that a gallon of gas is equal to 33.7 kWh. So gas is available right now at 0.10136$/kWh equivalent.

I can't be too outraged, because turning gas to electricity has a very significant loss, where-as what you get from an electric charger may well end up being 90%+ efficient in converting to motive power; that's those MPGe's kicking in. But it still feels maddeningly wild. Why is such an inefficient & far-off, refinement-intensive & crude source of power so much cheaper (for so many) than the power-grid, which has such higher generation efficiency even with fuels, and has such altogether mild distribution losses? How can we scale up renewables faster, in a way that brings prices down? And gas prices have remained absurdly mild for so long.

It's likely that the two most important metrics for an EV for most consumers are cost and range. The easiest way to keep price down and range up is efficiency. So efficiency is a key consideration for manufacturers to succeed.

It's not a coincidence that Hyundai and Tesla are the Western mass producers with both the highest margins and the highest eficiencies.

High gas prices are great for renewable energy providers. They drive up overall electricity prices without increasing their cost. So, that means huge fat returns on investment. Same for homeowners installing solar and batteries in their houses of course.

It's bad news for gas energy providers, however. They basically get less competitive the higher the prices get. Also, there's the notion of shutting down expensive generation when there's a surplus of cheaper renewable energy. More renewables means this happens more frequently. This is why coal, and increasingly gas plants as well, are having a hard time in the market. They basically get forced into a secondary role where hey only spin up to full capacity if there's a shortage instead of operating at peak capacity most of the time.

Of course the reason gas prices are trending up is increased exports of LNG to Europe. This is likely to continue for the next few years.

The consequence for EV owners is that road side charging is going to be expensive but there may be much cheaper ways to charge the car at home or at anywhere you can leverage non grid, renewable power directly. Even road side chargers can reduce their dependence on grid pricing by supplementing grid energy with e.g. solar and batteries. They'll be competing on charging cost for vehicle owners. The higher the cost, the greater the incentive for vehicle owners to detour to cheaper chargers.

Energy has always been a convertible resource, the markets take time to catch up and I think we will start seeing pricing parity between gasoline and electricity.

For some reason I'd always thought that Tesla charged for free. I never saw any type of point of sale gear on them, but in retrospect maybe they just read the car's data when charging and bill the user? Can anybody chime in on this?

Currently, a new VW ID.4 gives you 3 years free charging with their network (Electrify America). Some limitations on how much charging you can do, but with fast charge, 30 minutes is a lot.

Even though I own one, I probably won't use it a lot as I don't do a lot of long haul trips, and charging is free at work (and easy at home). Also the closest network charger is 20 miles away.

First of all, love the username. Second, generally are these costs subsidized through manufacturer or state rebates maybe? I'm curious how it's sustainable at an individual office level to have free charging for all, given that the energy ultimately comes from somewhere and has to be accounted for somehow.

Where I work it's basically a perk I suppose, plus an investment in green energy. There are 20 Charge Point hookups (10 stations, 2 outlets) and we are free for the first 4 hours.

I look forward to the day when it's "Where is a gas station?" and not "Where is a charging station?"

PS Was deemed worthy by pugs some years ago - ergo the name

thanks for the reply, that's pretty neat :) take care of them pugs

Every Tesla vehicle sold up until 2016 had free supercharging for life (ask me how I know). They've floated the perk again for some Model 3 configurations upon the initial release.

One is required to have a valid credit card on their Tesla app (even if supercharging is free, idle fees are not) and it's tied to the VIN of the vehicle.

This is correct.

There's a lot of references to calculations made but no actual data in this article. The Prius Prime gets just over 4 miles per kwh on battery alone. The same car averages 54 mpg when in hybrid mode. The article references $3.40/gallon for gas. Average price of electricity in MA is 23.66c/kwh. So for the price of a gallon of gas, you can get 14.37kwh, or 57.48 miles, so still beating out gas (54 miles) even on an extremely efficient vehicle.

They found a couple of places in the world were gas < kWh / mile. Shouldn't you report the mean or median? Guess you wouldn't have a story then though.

A lot of people won’t need to charge away from home or work, though. I’m looking to lease a car in the coming year, and one of the reasons it’s almost certainly going to be electric is because with my usage, I’ll never need to stop by a charging station.

It can be set up to charge at off-peak times which where I live is about $0.04/kWh, far cheaper than gas.

Where in the USA is that? What utility and rate plan are you on? That’s a pretty amazing rate to have year round

Is the United States still tapping their strategic fuel reserves? Perhaps they are keeping gas costs low while other energy prices aren’t seeing any relief

> Is the United States still tapping their strategic fuel reserves?

No, in fact in December it started doing the opposite, buying oil to restock the SPR.

Looks like it was drained recently: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-13/us-to-sel...

Based on the state of the union, oil producers have been telling Biden they can't do new exploration due to the language of phasing out oil in 10 years. If anything oil is higher because the future markets are higher because of the oil hostility.

44 cents per kilowatt-hour seems really steep.

Hey at least they don't live in San Diego where it's 53 cents off peak and 64 cents on peak.

https://www.sdge.com/residential/pricing-plans/about-our-pri...

Come to Europe, where Ionity is charging for 0.79 EUR per kWh

I was in the position to sell my car. Best thing I did since throwing out my television. Extremely fuel efficient too.

... where electricity is provided by methane-burning plants that are hit hardest by the war in Ukraine.

WTF, I wish my electric bill was $400

In a 900sqft house, the bill last month was $650

In San Diego! Not ass freeze New England...

It really amazes me how eager americans are to be fucked by the petro mafia

Oh Ukraine Ukraine!! We gonna need to need to fuck you just a little more...

Nationalize the whole fucking criminal organization...

And wait until they have to pay to replace degrading battery packs on mass.

EV is a scam of the highest order, next to the cough. Charlatans and snake oil sales men.

As an owner of a BEV I agree with you. EVs in current setup are unviable for most of population and I am looking to get rid of mine. What an expensive experience.

Wait until you hear about the fossile fuel industry!

Yeah, artificially inflated prices and yet very little to the people that own the land.

I was thinking more along the lines of lying about climate change for profit, but you make a good point as well!

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