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Comment by coryfklein | Hacker News Reader

> It took me an afternoon hanging out with my electrician cousin and about $400 in parts from Amazon to build our own at-home electric refuelling station.

This is a big reason I haven't even considered an EV. How I'd find someone to do this work on my garage, and how much it would cost is a huge unknown, and that's just enough friction to simply not consider getting an EV.

My vehicles are first and foremost utilitarian; I use them to get from A to B. EVs make that simple equation "complicated", and I have other issues maintaining a household that demand my attention.

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it depends on how much charging you want. all EV's can charge off of a slower 115vac 15amp circuit. At my last place I had a dedicated 40amp 230vac socket much like you'd have installed for a big electric heater in a garage or a pool heater or a dryer. Good recharge times which I actually have only needed once in my life.

At my current place I'm just using an extension cord to my outdoor outlet and I give it the 1500 watt option. You can even cut that in half if you don't want the "my this cord is warm.." effect.

In the end, the slower charge is the better charge, so my laziness has been winning. I don't see installing a 230vac socket any time soon given how well it's been working.

I've got an older phev that originally only got 14 miles of pure electric @ up to 79 mph, it's battery is down to about 9 miles expected. And that isn't a lot, but it is enough for 90% of my trips around town. Where you REALLY see this working well is if you have to go out every day to pick something or someone up locally. The amount of fuel burned on warmup cycles and local trips is not insubstantial.

The gas tank needle just LOVES to move with every small trip otherwise.

I sometimes go months without buying gas using that tiny miniscule range.

the question I can never find anyone answering is pretty straightforward.

is it cheaper paying the electricity for charging? I can't imagine it is, but while everyone talks about things like only having to gas up once every 4 months now, it's not as if the electricity comes for free.

There are several people in this thread explaining it is about 10x cheaper.

A base Tesla 3 is 70kWh * 5¢/kWh (my Toronto overnight rate) is ~$3.50 CAD for ~400km range. Gas in my Volvo C30 would be 400km * 8l/100km * $1/l = $32 CAD.

If you drive every day, a plugin-electric can save you a LOT of money. And that's before the savings in oil, brakes, and other maintenance.

I'm stuck with street parking, so it is much less appealing to me.

EVs still have brakes.

Yes, but they wear slower since more energy is captured instead of wearing the rotors and pads.

> There are several people in this thread explaining it is about 10x cheaper.

Well, no. It depends on all the variables. It may or may not be cheaper.

Your case is quite extreme with nearly free electricity! Sure, EV will be cheaper to run for sure.

Here in California with overnight rates around 30c/kWh and day rates over 70c/kWh, the numbers come out different.

Ouch. I forget how mad California is. No wonder rooftop solar is so attractive.

Peak rates are ~20¢/kWh here, but there is a largish fixed per-customer monthly hit for various debts and obligations. And people regularly complain we're the highest cost province in Canada. 70¢/kWh (in BIG dollars!!!) is just insane.

It's "free" if you have excess solar energy you're not burning on something else.

It’s not free, you have to include the price of the solar panels you bought excess of in the cost because you can just remove those and sell them if they’re not needed. You essentially installed greater solar capacity to fuel an EV, so not free!

Selling solar panels is going to recover very little of the cost. Most of the cost is the labor and permitting. A lot of the rest is the wiring and inverters. Might as well use the excess power you generate to run a space heater/crypto miner, or net-meter it to the grid.

You could’ve avoided buying them. Point is, you can’t ignore the cost of something and proclaim that charging your EV is free.

Average US price for electricity is ~$.15/kwh. A Model 3 will use ~330 wh/mile at highway speeds, and if you charged _very_ inefficiently (level 1), you'd see gross of around 360 wh/mile.

Compared to a gas car that can get 40 mpg on the highway this works out to: 40 mpg == 1 gallon == ~$2.85 (current price here) == 0.07125/mile EV == .360 * .15 == .054/mile

Of course, if you have time of use rates, you might pay half that for the EV. If you drive in town, your efficiency might be more like 270wh/mile too.

Similarly, that MPG is... very arbitrary. But the bottom line is that most people are getting a significantly lower $/mile purely on energy usage.

Gasoline is very expensive. If it wasn't so expensive, we'd burn it to make electricity.

We do, it's called an alternator.

Well, yeah, and people use gas generators in remote places occasionally. But I meant at utility scale. :)

> is it cheaper paying the electricity for charging?

EV promoters will say it is always cheaper but you need to do the math. Depends on your fuel cost vs. electricity costs vs. your gas car mileage.

For example my first EV (Fiat 500) was more expensive to run than my gas car that got over 40MPG. This is in CA with extremely high PG&E electricity rates (but also high fuel costs).

So, it depends.

Also if you use public chraging stations they usually charge a premium for profit. You can see your local charging station rates on e.g. chargepoint website. Use the actual numbers and do the math to be sure.

Charging at home is difficult compared to driving to a gas station?

This is all moot. Sodium ion and lfp and newer battery techs will increase range and drop the initial purchase price of EVs under what an ICE can compete with

Some snap in time clickbait article won't change the technological tsunami. Even if the US drags it's feet, the rest of the world will eagerly adopt them. EVs promise energy independent and cheap transport combined with wind / solar.

Every automaker knows this to differing levels of organizational denial, but they all feel it coming.

You realize this isn’t the first EV hype cycle yes? They’ve been tried before and as the article states the early adopter market is saturated worldwide.

There are some very real problems that can’t be solved by battery tech, and only by removing the battery and switching to an alternative fuel source.

The only reason EVs are succeeding now given all their shortcomings is because we’re being forced into them. Remove that force and I don’t see EVs seeing mass adoption.

Oh there were 400 mile cars cheaper than ice cars before?

Look Tesla can already build EVs at price parity with ices, they are currently sitting here n their profit margin. This isn't a hype cycle, Chinese EV makers and battery suppliers have 200+ wh/kg lfp and 150 wh/kg sodium ion in mass production scaling.

This isn't a hype cycle, there are entire car companies in mass production with equal to ice costs now, and the cheaper than ice can ever be is in production scaling.

Yes it won't be over night, but if you are doing production planning, financing, stock prediction and other 5-10 year planning, the writing now on the wall.

This is without solid state and sulfur techs. Im only talking about the CATL LFP and sodium ion techs. Those alone will beat ices on cost at initial purchase, to say nothing of cheaper permile "fuel" and maintenance costs.

And keep me n me and wind / solar is STILL dropping in cost, under what any old school power generation method has been. EV costs will only drop.

" Very real problems"

Please name one

> Oh there were 400 mile cars cheaper than ice cars before?

Neither gas nor electric cars got that kind of range when they first launched in the early 1900s. But as is true today, gasoline engines got about 20% more range than the electric and were easy to fill.

> This isn't a hype cycle, there are entire car companies in mass production with equal to ice costs now, and the cheaper than ice can ever be is in production scaling.

As there was before. Entire car companies went out of business because they chose to make electric cars instead of gas.

> Very real problems

I’ll name a few:

Battery decreases range with ambient temperature changes

Cannot refuel outside of a charging station

Battery degrades with every charge

Fire hazard having that much energy in a battery that it’s not an if it will fail but a when

Towing anything

>Charging at home is difficult compared to driving to a gas station?

It absolutely could be. Ever lived in an apartment?

I suppose it depends on the length of your commute and what vehicle, but I’ve found that a standard Level 1 charger plugged into a regular outlet, if plugged in all of the time, was more than enough for daily EV commuting. Slow charging is also better for the battery. A lot of people likely don’t need a high powered charger install.

> Slow charging is also better for the battery.

My understanding is that this is largely a myth, at least with modern BEVs with intercooled battery packs. My understanding is that modern battery packs can Level 2 charge with no additional degradation, because they don't get any hotter than during a Level 1 charge.

Level 3 charging is different, but even then, the degradation in battery life isn't as much as you think -- I've heard numbers as low as just 3% faster degradation.

That makes sense, my experience is with a first gen VW e-golf which just has plain batteries- no cooling.

I actually do that with my phone- I use a fast charger with a peltier cooler, that can rapidly charge the phone while keeping it cold. Family/friends think I'm crazy for caring about it, lol

> How I'd find someone to do this work on my garage, and how much it would cost is a huge unknown, and that's just enough friction to simply not consider getting an EV.

Car dealerships will sell the hookups and have connections with local companies who will install for you. No effort required on your part .

Plug it into any AC outlet. I gain around 50 miles overnight, which is plenty for my commute/errands.

If you own a home, you should learn how to locate local trade workers you can trust. You're going to need an electrician eventually, might as well find one before an emergency.

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