At home charging has been a total game changer for me and is one of the reasons I don't think I can ever go back to an ICE.
- 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.