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Comment by mixmastamyk | Hacker News Reader

Let's hear the electric bill before/after new car.

Both my wife and I charge at home. We're probably spending somewhere in the neighborhood of $50-80 or so a month in charging versus the $200 or so we'd spend on gas (Texas has relatively cheap electricity rates, but our gas is also fairly cheap)

I'd rather just see the kwh usage. Rates vary wildly in the US, even within the same state. Some states with average prices have utilities with cheap power.

And others with overall low rates have dumb utilities that charge high rates if you use more than 1000kwh, which most EV owners certainly do.

Yes rates vary, the point is to have ballpark figures to compare against the cost of gasoline. Without that the conversation is not particularly useful.

If we know the kwh, we can extrapolate both that and situation specific numbers. Average $/kwh in the US is ~$.15.

This is just like a gas car, where the conversation would start with mpg, not "What's your gas cost per month before and after getting gas car?" It is precisely because of the variation in both gas price and usage that it is important to start from consumption per mile and not a total price.

Asking a random person for their kwh usage is not realistic. Dollars per month change (where they haven't changed driving drastically) is more practical.

But you aren't asking random people. You are asking EV owners on Hacker News.

In general, EV owners are pretty savvy. More than most actually know what they pay per kwh and have a pretty good idea of their consumption. The biggest common mistake that I see is net vs gross.

I was asking brightball.

Best answer I can give: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38879366

It's tough to isolate because we've been charging for a while. Rates where I am are currently $0.12 / KWh. Last time I did the math they were closer to $0.08 / KWh.

I've got a Tesla Model 3. My wife had a Pacifica Plugin Hybrid. Any given point of the day, one of them is probably plugged in if we're at home.

It took 2-3 hours to recharge the Pacifica for it's 35 mile range. Full recharge on the Tesla is about 5 hours if it's totally drained but the Tesla has much better battery management so you typically set the maximum charge to 80% of the battery for daily driving. Typically, I'll plug the Tesla in when it's still got 50-60% of the battery left.

Looking at a graph of the usage at my house from the utility company is pretty hilly and coincides with weather. Goes up a lot during the hotter months as my AC kicks on. I don't notice anything significant from it though.

I'm also enrolled in a bill normalization program with my utility company where they give me the same bill every month throughout the year so that we don't get surprise spikes as the weather changes.

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