EV Charging Points in America Are Finally Making Money
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oilprice.com
If we really care about climate change, Electric vehicles and infrastructure should be incredible not profitable for 10+ years. We need more incentives and ways so the focus is on expansion of infrastructure, not profitability.
I don’t know where you are located, but I’d have to imagine your residential utility rates are a fraction of Electrify Americas rates.
Cars spend most of their time sitting around, the real infrastructure gap is that we don’t have enough cheap slow chargers located where they usually end up sitting: home, work, shopping centers, etc.
More importantly, EVs are currently a luxury product. Seemingly built like other popular luxury products, too (designed to be hard/expensive to repair). We shouldn't be building EVs as if they were disposable smartphones, intended to be upgraded as soon as the screen gets cracked or the battery degrades somewhat.
Something big needs to change if we want to see wider adoption of EVs, and overpriced EV 'fuel' certainly won't help.
The wealthy with large suburban homes can charge at home no problem. But not everyone can afford to have their own personal parking/charging space, so may be forced to use overpriced public chargers.
(For those who are unfamiliar a “fast” charger is over 50 KW and often rated for up to 150 or 350 KW speeds)
And you don't need a "large suburban home". Even the most cramped townhouse has a driveway you can run a cord from the house to. It's just apartment complexes that have this problem. If you don't have somewhere to charge your car overnight, EVs aren't practical at the moment, and no amount of subsidizing public charging could change that.
We needed to build out the public charging network for road trips and last minute “whoops I don’t have enough charge” use cases, but we really gotta take advantage of that fact the cars are only in use a small fraction at a time.
Once people are used to high prices and simply accept them, it will be the new normal. EVs won't turn out to be as cheap to operate in such a future as is currently assumed. That's what we seem to be headed for.
I would be surprised if the charger operators end up being very profitable, too much competition to get good margins.
What doesn't have to be on the horizon is high cost for consumers, because you're absolutely right that concern over charging stations is a drag on EV adoption.
There are grants to build EV charging stations, but what's less clear to me are operation grants. Ideally we'd see grants for operation that cover the majority of the cost for a period of time, reduce consumer cost and reward good operation (most stations being open, etc.)
We'd also ideally see incentives for solar installations or other green energy offsets for EV charging stations with grants that phase out.
Grants also would ideally be more about distance from existing charging stations, to incentivize spreading out chargers and rewarding "first movers".
There are still lots of issues with chargers from an operator perspective. While electricity is cheap and cheaper to run than building a gas station, the operating expenses are still there when it comes to maintenance and security, and there's the fact that charging takes significantly longer than filling a tank with gasoline, meaning that one needs more space to service the same number of vehicles.
Some costs do need to be handed back to the consumer, such as cost of using the space at a charging station. If not, then they could become de-facto parking lots.
Vice versa, too. If a parking lot already charges $15/hour, it seems like an extra hidden fee if charging also costs an additional $2/hour. As charging becomes more common it makes more sense to roll the costs together into a single advertised price.
> there's the fact that charging takes significantly longer than filling a tank with gasoline, meaning that one needs more space to service the same number of vehicles.
Though all of that space doesn't need to be in the same sorts of places. Home and destination charging shake up the need for centralized "stations". Cars already spend most of their time parked, electrifying more existing parking lots and garages where cars already spend most of their time should be common sense. (And if it happens to economically profitable that should just make easy economic sense, circling back to the topic in the article. We probably need to make L1 and L2 destination charging "just profitable enough" without high cost for consumers, too.)
Let me put it another way - do we think that getting people to convert from ICE to EVs will only view fast charging as a convenience? or will they view it as a necessity? In the fullness of time we can view DC fast charging as a luxury, but not right now (which is my point I suppose)
There are mix of personas. Friend of mine was loaned an EV and didn't have a charger. They changed their habits to go grocery shopping at a place with an EV charger. Since they were there for 30-45 minutes, lower rate. That was a shift in perspective which is the issue here. The person doing a cannonball run across the US will never buy an EV and that's ok too.
People are not great at doing a full comparison. I'm sure people who have a Costco card never consider the price of membership into their gallon of gas pricing which is where educating future EV owners come in. Charging at home is cheap, charging while on a road trip you are trading time/money like a toll road. Rates will go down over time and I'm waiting for a Buccees sized EV charging stop where you have the time to stop.
I've also seen DCFC stalls near other large rest stops. Not all of them yet by any margin, but lots. Electrify America also tends to have a lot in the big Walmarts near the highways. The last road trip I did in my EV we usually went into Walmart and ate at the restaurant there or got stuff from the deli.
As an example, if I were to buy an EV, fast charging would absolutely be a necessity. I couldn't charge at home, so I'd have to use commercial charging stations. Carving out a large block of time to devote to charging would be a nonstarter, and it's something I'd have to do without fast charging. I don't spend enough time parked doing shopping and the like to make it possible to rely on those times to do my charging.
I would be opposed to the idea of a law requiring properties to install chargers, though. It would make rents increase even more than they already are, and that would only make the housing crisis worse.
The issue is we have anti-ev articles, blogs, newscasts, magazines that take every opportunity to try and find a "gotcha" for why EVs are actually the worst thing ever.
DCFC will (probably) never be as fast or as convenient as gas. However, gas will never be less time consuming or as cheap as idle charging.
The additional challenge is building the trust in the infrastructure required to make a lot of folks, myself included, satisfied that they'll be able to charge when they need to. My experience here in the Bay Area is that it's hit-or-miss as to whether the chargers actually work, let alone whether they're duly occupied for that purpose.
With some hope, now that there's a potential for profit motive, we'll start seeing the level of service improve to meet expectations as required to make people like me migrate away from burning hydrocarbons.
I very desperately want to like EVs, but so far, the appetite hasn't been there because of issues, nay, subscriptions like this.
https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-superchargers-us-dc-ev-fast-...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/12/1...
It minimally isn't something I'd build out as a loss leader unless I had additional financial support to make it work.
> There are 1,974 Tesla Supercharger stations in the U.S. housing 21,852 Tesla Supercharger ports, according to data collected by the U.S. Department of Energy. That’s roughly a quarter of all DC Fast (the quickest type of EV charger) EV charging stations in the country and nearly two-thirds of all DC Fast EV charging ports.
https://www.fool.com/research/tesla-supercharger-stations/
https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/electricity_locations.html#/fi...
But home charging (18.5¢/kWh for me) or L2 charging at a workplace is much cheaper and can bring that cost down from $2,250 to <$700/yr.
Many tradespeople and salespeople sleep at home every day, and the work vehicle (van or car) is parked at home. They can charge it at home — there are already systems to allow the employer to reimburse for the cost of electricity.
For people with occasional nights spent elsewhere fast chargers or destination chargers might be sufficient. Same for the vacation.
For someone who travels all over the place all the time, a petrol vehicle is probably still more convenient. That's OK, electric vehicles don't need to solve 100% of usage patterns just yet.
A lot of those people are going from their suburban house to their office job for 99% of their miles.
There’s something that doesn’t seem to belong on that list.
However a sizable portion of the population (35%) live in apartments - which are notoriously against any upgrades.
Without that population EVs will not be "mainstream". It's a chicken/egg problem where you need affordable EV chargers for that population to migrate to EVs and EV density so EV charger build-out can be justified.
Governments typically front this kind of shift (e.g.: 2022 IRA - mild support).
Sure, there's lots of solar potential during the day, but that's also the peak energy use by a good amount. You're already wanting solar to smooth out that curve instead of making that demand peak even peakier.
At these prices it's even cheaper to buy gas in the most expensive places in Europe (it you do not have a gas guzzler).
Diesel used to be a lot cheaper than gasoline because it was something of a waste product: the refining process produced an oversupply. Refining technology improved and now we can make more gasoline and less diesel from a barrel of oil. So diesel has become more expensive, but roughly equivalent to gasoline if you consider the energy content per gallon.
The availability of reliable high speed chargers in other places will be crucial for EV adoption. Last time I had an EV rental car, multiple chargers that I tried to use simply didn't work at all.
When I've brought this up to people making this argument, they suddenly switch tacks to "well, just charge at the public locations, they are everywhere!" Every time I respond by asking, well sure - but would you make that same compromise if this was your only vehicle and you didn't have DCFC at home? Guess their response...
People living in cities would most likely not agree with you, which is more than half of the world population.
The parking where I live in Copenhagen has two spots with chargers, and they (like all the spots) are reserved for specific cars. I suspect the people paid at least part of the installation cost. They were installed 7-8 years ago. The electricity cost should be very low. This is no different to owning a house.
More recently I've seen commercial low-power (~7kW, standard three-phase supply in Europe) overnight chargers by apartment buildings, in the parking reserved for residents. Presumably people try and get one of these spots often enough, but as demand increases they will need to install more. The electricity cost is probably a bit more, to cover the overheads of the company maintaining the charger. If the spots are a free-for-all, I'd not want to rely on needing one every night, but it could be OK for a car that only needs charging once a week or so.
Also, most of those who already choose to not own a car are already in that 35%, so of "people looking to buy a car" its even more weighted towards that 65% who don't live in an apartment.
Roughly 8% of US households have zero cars. What do you imagine the breakdown is between apartment and single-family households? I'd guess probably all dense apartment, the main cohort we're talking about that would lack charging access. So for those actually looking to charge a car, if 50% of single family homes moved to an EV that would in reality be even more than just ~33% of the market, because 8 of the 35% of apartment dwellers weren't shopping for a car to begin with. It is really more like 27% of households want a car and live in an apartment that would be challenging to charge a car in. But hey unless we solve it for 27% of the population it just can't possibly be considered "mainstream".
I'm not an EV owner, but I would definitely plan my charging around meal stops if I knew that some restaurant always had chargers for customers.
I always see EV chargers put in spots that I would never want to spend 30 minutes.
Otoh, a gas pump install is in that range. I know that the non-profit that manages my local airport had to pay around $50k CAD to get a new cardlock system, and that didn't even include the pumps.
If we really cared about climate change, might consumers also bear at least some of that lack of profitability? Maybe it costs us a few more cents per mile for the next 10 years to bootstrap the world into sustainable transportation.
https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/fuels-enforcment-pr...
https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/state-gas-tax-rates...
Longer term we might see some reduction in Russian crude oil exports because they have been under investing in exploration and infrastructure maintenance. Their system is slowly breaking down without the support they used to receive from more competent foreign oil companies. But that isn't impacting the current market yet.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-gas-prices-expensive-116467...
https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2023/10/the-ukraine-wars-eff...
There’s also been global inflation since then for various reasons, not least of which is that destabilization in Europe has ripple effects. It’s not the sole reason, but it’s a big one and energy markets are tied even if the commodity is different (e.g cut off natural gas to Europe & their demand for other sources of energy goes up & higher prices there means higher prices for their goods and refineries). Prices have come down because Biden released strategic oil reserves to combat higher prices.
Your explanations explain why gas is higher in California than the rest of the country, but fails to explain why it’s also higher US-wide and globally.
And yes, it does matter how the fungible commodity gets out - if India / China were a better price, Russia would have been sending their crude there in the first place. That means India / China is more expensive whether it’s because it has to be shipped a longer and more expensive route or because the partner’s form of payment is not as valuable (e.g. Russia tried accepting the Rupee for oil payments for a while but has since stopped). So yes, while there are headwinds that mitigate the impact, there is still a negative impact to price.
Anyway, my main point was that there are geographic locales where EVs are cheaper regardless of whatever local and geopolitical factors are involved.
The key word is 'voluntary', ie without coercion, force or manipulation. If you don't pay taxes, you will be forced to pay, regardless of whether you agree with the attack (not defence) budget, or whether you would like the money to be used on actual communally valued goals as opposed to lining an ever increasing number of government workers' pockets, or the cradle-to-grave propaganda effort, etc.
With roads, in the first place these existed before the state adopted the infrastructure - someone made these. New roads were created to encourage a specific type of corporate industrialisation, with petrol companies heavily supporting gas burning cars. And nowadays, roads are being constrained and pedestrianised to discourage cars - so this infrastructure (that has already been paid for) is being rolled back (at further expense). So, how is that a good use of money; what value is the state adding here? By the way, having an extensive road network is probably why we don't have flying cars.
Water systems and sanitation are sort of the same thing. Perhaps you think taking all the sewage and grouping it into a river of muck to then discharge it at sea is a good idea. I don't. Have you considered that human excrement might be processed more locally, and then re-used as fertiliser - as we do for animal waste? Probably this is how things were done (I know this was the case even recently in China) but instead we are taught the gross story that 300 years ago people in cities threw their sewage into the streets, walking into their homes, etc. I'm sure some of that occurred - forced industrialisation happened very quickly, moving people off common (acts of enclosure, etc - this is state sanctioned theft, btw) forced people into cities. I'm sure peoples' peasant habits could not work in the city.
Force, brutality and tight control underlie the state system. Humans are perfectly capable of managing things without state intervention - but once you force people from a more natural state (living near the land to living in densely populated cities), the state seems to be the only management option. The state is not actually there to help - it only needs to appear to be 'doing its best'. It is there to collectivise and harness the efforts of many people, regardless of how they feel about it. Most people simply accept the reality that they are presented and are happy to do what it tells them. The state uses schooling, culture etc to create the idea that it is beneficent, that it has a moral right to force another - it literally teaches people to adopt its self-serving immorality - and it works! Mostly.
I'm not trying to argue with you about the merits of our current population size. But what I'm trying to point out is that your solutions of "local problems should have local solutions" don't work very well when you have 10,000 people in a 1000x1000 area. Suppose you were in New York City, where would you put the sewage to be processed by those 10,000 within that 1000x1000 area? I'm starting to wonder if you are considering these problems, or if you rather have a pet philosophy and a utopia that you want everything to conform to.
Just to let you know, utopias are not "ideal" in the sense that they are great societies to live in and I can think of examples of utopias that are very very bad for individuals. It's not something to be strived for it's a tool for thought experiment. You might appreciate most the concept of an Industrialist utopia, where all time is measured, efficiency is maximised, workers are tools, and resources are meant to be extracted.
To address one of your points regarding sanitation: we do not "[take] all the sewage and [group] it into a river of muck to discharge it at sea." If you look at how a modern sanitation system works, the sewage is very highly treated before discharge, and it flows through entirely separate, self-contained underground waterways before it reaches the processing center. To liken this to dumping untreated sewage into the sea is very disingenuous. Solids, chemicals, bacteria, salts, and other undesirable elements are extracted either in settling ponds or via aerobic or osmotic extraction. And it's utterly impossible to build and maintain something like this for a community without levying some tax from that community. Even something as simple as a community septic system requires ongoing maintenance and repair.
But everyone in the community benefits from not getting the diseases that are associated with having untreated sewage flowing on top of the ground. If one person in that community is allowed to opt out, what would they do with their sewage? In the worst case they might dump it on the ground, which makes everyone around them sick. What you propose is that they should be allowed to ignore externalities and do their own thing. That's not fair to the other 9,999 people in the 1000x1000 block who don't want to get cholera and typhoid and anything else from that 1 person's untreated sewage.
Industrial civilization must stop. full stop.
I'm not "parroting Big Oil propaganda". They're one of the worst culprits, who managed to addict us to cheap energy. Now everybody expects access to cars, planes, and electric grids, no matter how destructive they are.
The whole reason anyone should care about climate change is that it's going to make life worse for ourselves and our descendants. If your pitch for addressing climate change is "let's make our lives worse, proactively", then you're never going to win popular support.
Good messaging is "We can make our lives better, and give future generations the opportunity for even better lives, without fossil fuels". Anything else is inadvertently advocating for nihilistic hedonism as the world burns.
- your price per kWh of electricity
- the car you drive and the efficiency of it
- the amount you drive
But I'll give it a go with our EV(Volkswagen e-Up).
- our price for electricity at the moment is £0.16/kWh
- the efficiency is about 3-4 miles/kWh most of the time, it can go as high as 6 miles/kWh in the summer.
- we drive about 8000 miles per year.
Based on that(and using the most pessimistic numbers for calculations), you need:
8000/3 = 2666kWh to travel per year. At 16p/kWh that's £427 per year, or about £36 per month(which is actually spot on with what I see on my bills).
As to how that compares with an ICE.......a petrol Volkswagen UP gets about 6L/100km(6L/60 miles - I'm using that unit for simplicity of calculation so we don't have to mess with gallons. And yes 6L/100km is a big high for the UP, but I'm using pessimistic numbers again).
So assuming that 6L/100km, you would need (8000/60)*6 = 800 litres of fuel to cover 8000 miles per year. At the average cost of £1.40/litre it would cost us £1210 in fuel alone to drive for a year(or about £100 per month).
So just in fuel vs Electricity alone, the e-Up is about 3x times as cheap as a petrol one. And the servicing is much cheaper, and it doesn't really use consumables like brake pads, they will last a lot longer. On the other hand I've noticed it uses tyres quite quickly(at 10k miles fronts were down to 3mm, which is a good point to replace them), so it might end up being a wash.
And yes, we are lucky that
- we can charge at home
- our home tariff is pretty cheap
If we could only charge at public charging points(which at the moment are usually all £0.50/kWh if not more), then that entire saving would disappear, and it would probably be cheaper to drive a petrol version of the same car.
TBH, I'm kind of amazed at the way people talk about electricity. It seems like about twice a year I see a couple of threads on local Facebook groups about how much electricity has gone up. Once after the coldest month, and again after the hottest month. I like to ask their $/kwh, and I've never once gotten an answer.
But the US is sort of backward in general. I use an energy coop where how much my car costs to charge is directly affected by how much insulation I have in my attic.
My current coop charges at least four different costs. A monthly $25 fee, an energy charge for each kwh below 1,000, a significantly higher charge for each kwh above 1,000, and the taxes. They don't itemize any of it, it is just a single line item with the amount and rate code.
IMO, that shouldn't even be legal.
But I have a flat rate electric service. I could see that if you have demand-based or time-of-day rates it would be complicated to express anything other than an overall average cost per kW⋅h .
off-peak == 1,234 kwh @ $.07/kwh, total: x on-peak == 242 kwh @ $.29/kwh, total: y
My Danish bill is less clear. There are lines for electricity, tax, and other charges, rather than e.g. a single figure for usage and another for the connection.
[1] https://www.britishgas.co.uk/aem6/content/dam/britishgas/dow...
Luckily she has the home equity to finance and install mini splits. I helped her work through a home equity loan with the local bank.
Being poor is expensive. The people who need efficient houses the most often don't
You could use the same kWh on two different days but incur very different costs based on when the load occurred.
Something like a Model 3 will typically do <300 wh/mi (gross). At $.14/kwh (pretty close to average for the US), you'd be looking at about $0.042/mile.
Energy prices in the US vary between <$.05/kwh (usually off-peak) to ~$.49/kwh (PG&E if you didn't already guess that), so ymmv.
The average US driver drives ~13,000mi/yr. We'll make the math easier and just say you drive ~1,000mi/mo.
1000 mi / 3.5 mi/kWh = 285.7kWh per month. At $0.11/kWh, that's ~$31.43 added to the bill.
Gas around me has been around $3/gal for a while. Average US car fuel economy is like 25mpg, which is a bit better than the car my EV replaced. 1000 mi / 25mpg = 40 gallons of gas, * $3/gal gives ~$120 per month. If I had a 40mpg car, it would cost ~$75/mo in gas. I'd need close to 100mpg in an ICE car to get to the same fuel cost.
Diesel bill was £120 month. Electricity has gone up by £30.
There is a free charger within walking distance of my home, but it's always in use :(
To get a home charging setup, I assume I would want it parked in a semi-heated space, or at least out of the snow and sleet.
Rough back of the napkin math puts getting a home charger at around $20k... The payoff isn't even close yet.
And you should probably find some better electricians to get a quote on the home-charger thing - sometimes "I want to put a dryer plug here" gets a lower quote than "I want an EV charger here" (the latter signals money-spending-ability).
Also, do the math on what you really need for charging. Most people can charge at home overnight on a standard 120v outlet just fine - unless you're driving more than ~50 miles a day, every day, consistently.
As it is, I have a spare 60 amp line out to where the garage used to be (it was rather dilapidated and I haven't had spare funds to put a new one up yet).
So then its still ~$20k for a place to put an ICE car either way and not really connected to the cost for an EV. Since you already have a 60A line to where the garage was, the actual costs in the end for wiring up an EVSE is probably less than $1,000. An EVSE can be had for a few hundred bucks, a few dozen feet of romex and all the other odds and ends needed would be another couple hundred, and you'll have a charger that will last for decades. And chances are some of that cost can be subsidized with tax credits in the US.
We've been getting on fine without a garage because our cars are used and not expensive. They also don't have massive battery packs that would cost more than a used car to replace, either.
My car can pull up to 48A. At home my EVSE is set to 40A, but I can set it to 32A, 24A, and 16A with a little switch inside the box. Even at 24A, at 240V that's 5,760W of power going to the car. Even if in the cold I was getting 2mi/kWh, charging for 8 hours overnight gives 90mi of range. You should be able to install at least a 40A charger and still have a couple 15/20A circuits for lights, additional outlets, and a heatpump. 8 hours of charging at that amperage would get you >150mi of range.
Putting it in a garage isn't going to stop the salt from the roads from rusting out the car. The car being outside isn't going to really put any additional wear on the battery, especially if it is plugged most of the time while parked at home.
EDIT, somehow I was thinking it was an 80 amp line not 60. Still, a 60 amp line could run a 40A charger and some lighting in the garage, probably not a lot of heating though.
Like the other comment said, you don't need a covered or heated space - the connectors are water tolerant, you can plug them in in heavy rain/snow without any issues.
You also have to think how fast you really need to charge - for a lot of people a basic 220V socket is fine, so you just need to pay an electrician to fit one in, then you can usually use the charger bundled with the car - as long as you only need about 20-30kWh replenished overnight then you're fine. You can fit a faster multi-kW charger, but the cost shouldn't be anywhere near $20k for that.
The car can warm itself with the power, you don't need to put it in a semi-heated space.
You'll probably see some NACS at the end of this year. However, don't expect it everywhere until either next year or maybe even 2 more years.
It's not TOO big of an issue as NACS speaks CCS so even old models just need an adapter to start playing.
I requested the CCS adapter for my car but honestly, I might only use it once or twice a year if even that. I really doubt there will be much actual pain with this migration.
The biggest shift is just ongoing sales. EVs represent ~1% of cars on the road, but ~9% of sales. Even if there were no sales growth, charging demand would increase by ~9x over the next 5-10 years.
The big winners are likely to be complementary businesses.
I mean it seems right inline with California prices in general.
Being reliant on PG&E has definitely kept us from buying electric — no way am I ever trusting that company given their track record.
In order to go from early adopters to mainstream it not only needs to be cheaper, but it needs to be more convenient and otherwise advantageous, especially for renters.
I am watching as corporate profits on charging strips that away and it’s concerning. I have also watched electric vehicles get gutted by depreciation in the secondary market — losing half the value in three years as a category isn’t great.
If you raise these issues, the advocates bristle, but these are real headwinds for the industry and important to bear in mind. They can’t be ‘equivalent to gas’ as so many argue: they must be and remain a superior option.
https://www.solar.com/learn/pge-electric-rates/#:~:text=The%....
What logic is there in incentivizing personal vehicle use over other uses for this energy? Build gold plated public transit systems instead. It is much cheaper than trying to buy everyone a Tesla.
> Build gold plated public transit systems instead.