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Comment by rurp | Hacker News Reader

A tesla owner I know recently mentioned saving money on fuel as a reason they love their car. I was curious about the difference and asked what they pay for the equivalent of a gas tank charge. They had no idea.

I have also heard it claimed by others that charging is much cheaper than gas, but they never back it up, it's just taken as a given.

Given the variance in both gas and electricity prices by time and region, the answer to which one costs less is almost certainly "it depends". Interesting that electricity being cheaper has largely become conventional wisdom.

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I don't think it "depends", at least not in the US and home charging. Take the worse condition of F-150 (16 mpg), F-150 lightning (2 miles/kWh). With the average gas price of $3.78 in the US, and $0.23 per kWh. For 100 miles, it'll cost $23.63 in gas, and $11.5 in electricity. This means that in order for electric car to cost more than an ICE, you need your electric price to be near $0.47 kWh. That's California price but gas also cost $5+ a gallon.

We can repeat this for a Versa compared to a Tesla Model 3. If we use the best conditions of 35 mpg and 4 mi/kWh. Repeating this exercise, you're paying $10.80 for 100 miles compared to $5.75 in electricity. Once again, your electric price needs to be $0.43/kWH for ICE to cost less.

Long story short, you're almost always saving around "2X" the "fuel" cost going electric. But that completely ignores the fact that EV cost more but fuel wise as the article talks about incorrectly, you're almost always on top if you charge at home for an EV.

Yeah, I have no idea where they are getting their numbers. I haven't run the real-world numbers recently, but my Model Y is rated at 4.0 miles/kwh. I pay about $0.16 per kwh to home charge. That's 25 miles/dollar (USD). My back of envelope calculation says that vs an ICE car getting 37 mpg, the break-even price for gas would be $1.48/gallon.

EVs usually require far less maintenance too. That needs to be factored in.

where do you get your numbers, and do they well approximate real life driving?

Because in most of the US, it is dramatically cheaper to charge an EV than fuel a similar gas vehicle.

These costs in this article are surprising to me, and very questionable without any actual numbers behind it. As a PHEV owner who can fuel with either gas or electricity, the 13c per kWh I pay is dramatically cheaper than gas at circa $3 a gallon, to drive any distance at all.

Confounding factors across the US may be that in some places using more electricity results in an increase in your marginal rate, in others it results in a decrease. Typically EV charging is not broken out as its own line item, so owners may not know exactly how many kWh their car is consuming. That doesn't change the fact that only a small number of places with very expensive electricity will have electric charging cost anywhere near gas.

For us a 400km recharge is $2 overnight at home or $15 at a supercharger.

Using numbers associated with running a Leaf over the last 6 yrs - 400km at 7km/kwh is about 57 kwh. 57 kwh at $0.14/kwh is $7.98 - call it $8 for 400 km. That overnight rate must be pretty good.

Some day I may upgrade to a 60kwh battery :-)

Yeah the overnight rate is about 1/3 the peak rate and they are going to make it even lower to incentivize overnight charging.

I pay $.04 per mile of charging on my Tesla Model 3 ($.12 per KWh in Maryland.) Right now premium gas averages $4.54 and regular unleaded $3.85. At those prices I'd need a gas car to get 96-113 MPG in order for gas to beat those prices.

Bottom line: This article is disinformation.

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