TPPF Releases Study Exposing the True Cost of Electric Vehicles

A few excerpts:

>> When we pay for a gallon of gasoline, we are paying for the entire infrastructure to refine, transport, and market that gasoline. When an EV owner connects to the electric grid, how much are they paying for the extra generation, transmission, and distribution costs that they are imposing on the grid, and will those embedded costs rise over time?

Citation needed on that. Electric costs already cover this. And negative externalities of both methods of power are generally not accounted for. I'm not aware of any broad subsidy to electricity in general, since EV charging is just done using... any electricity. It's not special electricity at a special price.

>> The second set of federal standards are the GHG emissions standards established by the EPA. Just as concerns about the U.S. running out of oil abated thanks to the shale revolution that began in the mid-2000s, another dubious public good was rising up to justify improving the fuel economy of the U.S. vehicle fleet: reducing emissions of GHGs from vehicles to appease those who believe it will mitigate climate change. Transportation accounted for 28% of total U.S. GHG emissions in 2021 (EPA, n.d.) and U.S. emissions accounted for a 13% (and declining) share of global emissions in 2020 (Crippa et al., 2021, p. 239), which means U.S. transportation accounts for only a fraction of the global total.

28% of total US emissions from transportation seems like an enormous portion of US GHG emissions. I'm not sure on what planet these people live that saying "we shouldn't consider cutting emissions on something in the US that contributes to 1/3 of our portion" makes any sense.

>> Despite the current incentives in place, the Ford Motor Company is losing over $70,000 on each EV it currently sells (Bryce, 2023) and inventory is stacking up in dealer lots for several brands as sales are not keeping pace with govern-ment-mandated production (Muller, 2023).

This is a deliberate misunderstanding of how operating expenses work. Ford is 'losing' $70k/car right now from their EV division because they spent billions getting the factories operational in CapEx, and then that gets divided amongst the cars they sold. It's not like the actual bill of materials costs them MSRP+70k right now.

>> Many EV buyers will not meet the income eligibility requirements, but since this analysis covers the average EV, irrespective of the location or situation of the buyer, we assume the EV receives the full $7,500 credit.

I'm not sure how you can possibly talk about 'average' and then just ignore a subsection of buyers that do not receive the credit. The Hyundai/Kia EVs (both of which seem to be quite popular) do not receive the tax credit at all. And income limits do impact averages.

>> An EV charging that same amount in 20 minutes at a fast charging station pulls down 120 kW, about as much electricity as an average grocery store consumes (EIA, n.d.-b, Table C22). The cost to the utility to serve this load—including replacement and upgrade of transformers, circuits, feeders, and transmission lines, as well as extra overhead costs like metering and billing required to service the charging stations—is socialized across all the utility’s ratepayers and not directly charged to the EV owners.

Citation needed. My understanding generally is that extremely large transformers needed for special installation of something like an EV fast charger is generally paid for by the charger installer.

>> There are also significant losses in the charging process, both in the power electronics and in the battery itself. A comprehensive study in the journal Energy found that such losses usually add up to about 20% of the power supplied to the charging outlet (Apostolaki-Iosifidou et al., 2017, p. 736, Table 6).

The article cited has numerous flaws, and the "about 20%" figure isn't even what the article itself states. They use a BMW Mini E for their tests, and also they do numerous 'discharging' tests into AC loads which are irrelevant for charging cars. The actual quoted efficiency is 12%, assuming you charge at a reasonable current of 40A. Charging at low current (10A) seems to incur additional losses due to their extremely large building transformer (300kVA) that has horrible losses at low currents. Also, modern EVs have much better efficiency. A Model 3 (even an old one) should be about ~92-95% efficient in AC -> DC charging, or 5-8% efficiency loss.

>> We also add $4.95/month, which comes out to $591 over a 10-year vehicle life, for the cost of a utility to meter the extra power consumed by an EV and bill the customer for it. There is not a national standard for how to meter the power consumed by EVs, which can draw much more power than the rest of the home they sit in when charging

There's no national standard for this because... you don't need one? It's metered with the rest of your house, generally, and therefore there's no extra fee needed. Some EV-specific metering is offered by some power companies, but it generally is only cost-beneficial to you (due to cheap charging rates at certain times of the day), not an extra cost.

I could go on...

I hope you never are involved with science: where the fundamental is being shown you're wrong by people you disagree with.

Not saying the report is well done, or that we should always listen to the "other side".

But they appear to list some real issues. For example they say EVs don't pay petrol tax so they don't pay for their road usage so that needs to be recognised.

I was reading about the subsidies (in Finland?) where the wealthy are getting EV subsidies because the poor don't buy new EV cars. Nice. And when those EV cars end up costing less in fuel costs, the wealthy are getting a double advantage over time. Even nicer.