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Comment by throwaway2037 | Hacker News Reader

throwaway2037

    > I am able to charge cars at work

Nice perk! Does you know who pays for the electricty? Is this "virtue signalling" by the company or landlord... or a subsidy from the local/state/national gov't? To be clear, I am not making any value judgement about providing free charging for EVs. It seems like good gov't policy to promote the adoption of EVs.

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It costs $5-$10 for the electricity to charge a car using level 2 charging. It is a trivial "perk" for an employee that costs an order of magnitude more per hour of work.

Never mind that, the cost of an urban parking space is considerable.

Here's a £50k London parking space: https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/136662200#/?channel=R...

While that's an extreme, I would expect the cost of any urban parking space with a low speed charger to be dominated by the land, then the charger one-off install price, and thereafter electricity use is a pretty trivial cost.

Sydney will also charge you 3,000 $AUS annually for central parking spaces: https://www.revenue.nsw.gov.au/taxes-duties-levies-royalties...

Not trivial if they a bunch of chargers. I work for the state in California and we have chargers at work but are charged for them around $.29/kWh which is cheaper than Tesla I think.

Are they fast DC chargers or level 2 chargers? If it's the former, then that is cheap. If it's latter, then that is some expensive electricity.

I'm in Washington where electricity is cheaper, so 29 cents per kWh is not much cheaper than Tesla's superchargers. The closest one to me is 31 cents in the middle of the day and goes as low as 20 cents per kWh at night. I pay 8 cents per kWh at home, which is where I charge (at much slower speeds) unless I'm on a road trip.

Yeah, I was thinking the same. If you look on Google Maps, California has some epic large parking lots next to office complexes. If you had 100+ "free" EV chargers that could add up pretty fast with California's expensive daytime electricity prices.

it costs me ~$5 to charge my car overnight at home (level-2) thanks to a residential electricity plan that offers very cheap night/weekend rates in exchange for more expensive rates at peak hours

Often think about how the most expensive part of driving in Sydney, especially in an EV, is parking.

> Is this "virtue signalling"

> I am not making any value judgement

Calling something "virtue signalling" is a value judgement.

It’s a pretty nasty insult wrapped up in friendly-sounding language.

We have a company fleet which is being slowly converted to EV where possible in line with company net zero policy so there is good charging infrastructure that is extended to all employees. We also have other initiatives such as solar and biogas generation.

throwaway account and "virtue signalling" plus a dig at so called subsidies. Oh and "no value judgement" except for the value judgement. You are not helpful here.

Fair point: I work in an industry that checks social media before job offers, so it is not possible to have a public Internal persona. If you look at my profile, you will see that I have been here many here with a modest amount of "Internet points".

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