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Comment by burkaman | Hacker News Reader

> It's now more expensive to fuel a vehicle with electricity than gas

This is very hard to believe, what are you paying for electricity? California gas prices are also way above the national average at the moment. Here's a per-state comparison from last year, I'm sure it's a bit out of date but I doubt things have completed flipped in a single year: https://energyinnovation.org/2023/07/27/ev-fill-up-savings/

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I live in the Bay Area California and get electricity from PG&E. I use a minimal amount of electricity and I paid 43 cents/kWh last month. Gas from Costco is $4/gal right now. I have a plugin-hybrid which does 4miles/kwh and 45mpg or in terms of money: 9.3miles/$ on electricity and 11.25gas-miles/$ on gasoline.

But maybe you don't actually care about fuel efficiency, then you have an argument that it's cheaper to fuel a Tesla Model 3 instead of a BMW M3.

Thanks that's helpful, and just found an overview of current rates that matches what you're saying: https://www.pge.com/content/dam/pge/docs/account/rate-plans/...

I think it is still true in California that an average EV is cheaper to fuel than an average gas car, but if you have a very efficient hybrid then it's a bit cheaper than a pure EV.

"I paid 43 cents/kWh last month"

I live in the Bay Area as well and I have an EV (2015 Fiat 500e), and am on the PG& Home Charging EV2-A plan. I charge my car between 12am and 3pm and pay $0.28/kwh, 29kwh/100 miles and I should be getting about 12.3miles/$.

I think it's always instructive to break out all the costs of owning a car on a per mile basis.

I but about $700/year in gasoline. And pay about $600/year insurance. And drive about 6500 miles a year.

So insurance and gas are both about 10 cents a mile. I think depreciation and maintenance are higher at about 15 cents/mile. So 50 cents a mile. IRS says a business can write off 67 cents a mile.

That’s astonishingly cheap for petrol, wow. We’re paying at least four times in my country minimum…

Yes USA loves petroleum, that's for sure.

Wow, where is it 4x the price? Even in places like Norway, it's only double https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/gasoline_prices/

> I paid 43 cents/kWh last month

Whoooooa ok that makes more sense why folks are complaining; I paid 13 cents/kWh last month, less than 1/3 of what you're talking about.

Note for others, paying $0.45/kWh is highly unusual for the US as a whole; see the US Gov published stats on average electricity prices by region which puts the average at ~$0.17/kWh: https://www.bls.gov/regions/midwest/data/averageenergyprices...

Yeah we're getting shafted. Starts at $0.487 and goes up to $0.618 per KWh.

https://www.pge.com/tariffs/assets/pdf/tariffbook/ELEC_SCHED...

I’m posting 0.35/kwh in New England

PG&E is 62 cents/kwh for peak rate above-baseline, I believe 52 cents/kwh for off-peak (which most EV charging would be). Gas prices where I'm at are around $4.20/gal. I ran the numbers for my Mazda CX-90 PHEV SUV, which gets about 1.7 mi/kwh on electric and about 23 mpg gas. It's about 30 cents/mile on electric and about 18 cents/mile on gas.

For this tank only I have been charging at home (and at work, and anywhere I can), because I want to see how much mileage I can get out of a tank with full PHEV driving. In this regard it hasn't disappointed; I'm at 1200 miles and just passed half a tank of gas. But once I have a baseline for how much of my driving can be done on electric, I'll probably switch to just charging at work (where it's free) and using gas for most other driving, because it's so much cheaper.

I see what you're saying, that makes sense for that vehicle. I think pure EVs tend to get about twice as many miles per kWh as your car, so for an average pure EV compared to an average pure ICE I think the EV is still cheaper to fill up, although it is pretty close with these prices.

It's not really the pure EV vs. hybrid factor, it's the weight. The CX-90 is a really big (5200 lbs) 8-seater. Hence why its gas mileage is only about 23. It's also very heavily terrain & road dependent, eg. for roads with lots of stop signs in the hills, I get 0.6 mi/kwh or 8 mpg, but for flat highway driving it's about 3.0 mi/kwh or 40 mpg.

A typical EV would get more like 4 mi/kwh, but then, the equivalent ICE car would get more like 35 mpg. The delta's a little bit closer because of peculiarities of the CX-90's powertrain, but not a whole lot.

You should look into a PGE EV time of use rate plan if you can charge your car between 12am and 3pm - that should drop your rate for charge down to about 34 cents per kWh (though on my last bill mine was 28 cents per kWh).

https://www.pge.com/en/account/rate-plans/find-your-best-rat...

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