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Comment by lucb1e | Hacker News Reader

The charging confuses me. Of course you pay to get gas at the pump, don't you pay to get electricity?

I've always wondered that, seeing cars charge on the street or in parking lots, how does the system know whom to charge... or is it government-sponsored to promote electric cars?

Edit: Relevant section

> The seller looked very puzzled at us and explained that it is not possible to refuel gasoline cars at home, and there are no free gas stations. We tried to explain our questions, in case he had misunderstood, but he insisted that you can not. Apparently you have to several times a month drive to the gas station to recharge your petrol car at extortionate prices – there are no alternatives!

Edit 2: I should clarify, I'm from the Netherlands (Europe).

View on HN

In relative terms, charging an electric car from home is cheap. It is even negligible enough to where the companies that sell you electric cars will do so by comparing the purchase price of an electric car to the cost of a normal gasoline car plus the gasoline over the next several years.

The charging stations on the street usually belong to a consortium with a membership card that unlocks the charging port or it may also belong to your local energy company. Subsidies may also apply to the energy supplied by them.

Yes. When comparing electric cars to gasoline cars, just assume the electricity is free.

The real money for the electric car is the depreciation of the battery pack. A penny or two per mile is a rounding error compared to that.

I pay $0.21/kWh for electricity (electricity generation and distribution charges combined) and usually get between 3.0 and 3.6 miles/kWh (lower in winter; hope to be somewhat higher in summer).

So, electricity is costing me 6-7 cents per mile before considering the inefficiencies of the charger, so likely 7-9 cents/mile at the meter.

For a typical 12K miles/year driver, those costs are order of magnitude the same as the battery pack depletion (for my LEAF anyway).

There are a number of places currently where the government will subsidize electricity used for cars.

In Bowling Green, Ohio for example city parking lots have a couple electric car chargers that are free. Park your car & pay the meter (the parking isn't free!), plug it in, and walk downtown for some eatery.

http://bgsujournalism.com/j4200/bowling-green-grows-fond-of-...

http://www.bgsu.edu/campus-sustainability/transportation/ele...

> There are a number of places currently where the government will subsidize electricity used for cars.

You can hardly call subsidies "free". Everyone pays them in the end.

That is also true for the higher environmental costs of fossil fuels and health costs of exhausts fumes.

True. But let's not forget how electricity is generated. In the US 68% is generated from fossil fuels (coal and gas). One also (indirectly) burns fossil fuels when driving an electric car.

>There are a number of places currently where the government will subsidize electricity used for cars.

So both the car and electricity are subsidized by hard working tax payers? Well, that can't last forever, so what's the REAL cost here? I think when we remove the welfare the cutsey "OMG GAS COSTS MONEY" argument will be dismissed as hyperbolic nonsense it truly is.

I think the "electric is cheaper" argument is complete bunk without government welfare. The real cost of that giant Lithium-Ion battery and energy is non-trivial. Lets remember we're talking about a $100,000 Tesla here. That's not affordable by most.

Not to mention, the money vs time cost. When I take a roadtrip or a long drive I can drive 300+miles, no issue, and refill in a couple minutes. With an electric I need to stop often and spend god knows how long getting a full charge, then go again. Imagine the costs here associated with long range trucking, delivery vehicles, etc. Or just time cut from my precious vacation time. Unless there's a massive breakthrough in battery cost, you're actually paying a lot more than an ICE car for day to day driving.

Gasoline is so energy dense, so plentiful, and so easy to work with, its going to be VERY difficult getting off it. I pity the electric guys. They know its a uphill battle and lodging themselves into the luxury high end for economic survival is very telling. The "low" end is still a $35k+ car with quarter the range of the Tesla, which is terrible from pretty much any rational metric.

All energy forms receive massive subsidies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies#United_States

Hear hear. According to these stats, in 2013 renewable energy was receiving subsidies of about $7 billion per year and fossil fuels about $3 billion, but over the previous 6 decades fossil fuels received an average of $9.9 billion per year in 2010 dollars (with oil being 62% of that). Whether or not you believe in government subsidies, it can be argued that they have been the norm over the past half century regardless of whether you're talking about fossil fuels or alternatives.

Give me those stats per kWh.

Yes, but note from the linked wikipedia article:

"Oil, natural gas, and coal benefited most from percentage depletion allowances and other tax-based subsidies"

It seems disingenuous to directly compare taxing someone less than you theoretically could have vs the "direct federal expenditures" on renewable energy.

Also, "many of the 'subsidies' available to the oil and gas industries are general business opportunity credits, available to all US businesses"

That's more than made up for the fact that fossil fuels receive enormous subsidies in the form of being allowed to pollute without paying anything close to the costs generated by that pollution. If you actually charged the fossil fuel industry for their externalities, the subsidies listed here would fade into insignificance by comparison.

I really feel like you're getting to the point though, where the word subsidy has no meaning. (via the wikipedia entry and the discussion here, it seem's that any time the government isn't taxing you 100% and seizing all your assets you are getting a "subsidy").

In that light, I'd like to see the numbers a different way. How about the difference in direct cash injections. I have no idea where to find it, but it might show a different story.

Also, when it comes to externalities that are hard to measure, isn't there a good chance that the enormous increases in human quality of life due to abundant and relatively cheap access to energy are greater than the costs generated by pollution.

I think it would be useful to have words that distinguish direct "government writes you a check" subsidies from the more subtle kind. But it's useful to discuss the more subtle kind too, and I don't know what else to call it.

I don't think looking at direct cash injections is useful here, because they tell such a small part of the story.

For an example, consider the case where the government takes your money and gives it to some company. That's an obvious subsidy.

Now consider the case where the government doesn't take your money themselves, but rather declares that the company has the right to come into your house and help themselves to $AMOUNT. It's no longer explicit, but it's still pretty clearly a subsidy.

Now let's say that they're in the business of disposing trash, and the government has declared that they can dump trash on your lawn for no compensation, when normally it would cost $AMOUNT. Ultimate effect is the same as above.

Now let's say they're in some other business, that just happens to generate a lot of trash. The government declares that they can dump trash on your lawn for no compensation when normally it would cost $AMOUNT, making their other business much more cost effective. Again, it's ultimately the same as above.

This last one is the fossil fuel situation. The government has decided that certain waste generated by burning fossil fuels can be disposed on other people's land, air, and water without compensation. The costs involved are enormous, but the users of fossil fuels don't pay. The end result is that fossil fuel prices are effectively subsidized by the population at large.

I'm sure the enormous increase in the human quality of life has more than compensated for this damage. But that's not an argument for ignoring the externalities. If it's a net benefit then the total benefit will exceed the total cost including externalities. If the total benefit does not exceed that total cost then it's not a net benefit.

It's especially important now when we're looking at transitioning to other sources of energy. If fossil fuels are only cheaper because of these externalities, then that means the net benefit to humanity is higher with alternatives.

> the enormous increases in human quality of life due to abundant and relatively cheap access to energy are greater than the costs generated by pollution.

I dare you to write down that thought, seal the envelope and tell your children to open it in 40 years.

Try this one weird trick; Future generations hate us!

As a small investor in an oil company I'd be surprised if there was any net subsidy of the oil industry. If you tax a company $10 but then give back $2 in allowances you are not subsidising it by $2, you are taxing it $8. In the UK of what you pay at the pump for petrol about 60% goes in tax.

The USG is not giving me $10,000 to buy a ICE Ford (between fed and state, this is what I would receive). Your argument is fairly disingenuous considering the massive EV tax breaks in existence to today, that are temporary and have done nothing to lower the cost of high capacity Lithium-Ion batteries.

We're 12 years in with thie absurd corporate welfare and still no cheap EV car that can remotely compete with ICE. I'm getting a little sick of hearing "Elon will figure it out in the next 18-24 months." EV enthusiasts have been saying that for YEARS now.

I'm all for letting Tesla try to compete as-is. They've eaten enough corporate welfare. They clearly cannot compete with ICE. Luxury electrics should not be subsidized by the working poor, middle class families, etc.

> "have done nothing to lower the cost of high capacity Lithium-Ion batteries."

What's the evidence for this claim? What I see is expansion availability of Lithium Ion batteries for average consumers in the form of the recently announced PowerWall, and EVs other than the Tesla. Could I have bought a 10kWh battery for $3,500 ten years ago? Five?

It's possible, of course, that this would have happened without the subsidies, but given the rapid growth of this industry in the last few years, I think the burden is on you to offer some evidence that it's totally unrelated to the subsidies.

They probably do increase ratio of electric cars, which in turn increases supply of infrastructure, which will lead to increased demand for electric cars even when the subsidies run out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_the_2008%E2%80%9310_...

It's called subsidizing a positive externality, and it actually creates utility and eliminates deadweight loss. It's not "government welfare", it's the economically wise thing to do!

http://www.economicshelp.org/micro-economic-essays/marketfai...

I have a Nissan Leaf. It retails at $29k, before the tax incentive. They can be leased with no down payment for $250/mo. It's fun to drive, well-made, I absolutely love it.

Teslas are expensive, but if you want an electric car there are many affordable options.

You pay for it with range though in the less expensive options. Even as a second car, 80 mile battery range is pretty much useless for me. Yeah, I could run some local errands or commute to my office but I couldn't even drive in to the city for dinner or some other evening activity (a bit over 40 miles each way).

If you can charge while you do your evening activity (becoming pretty common these days) then it would be practical for that.

I don't mean to argue that this makes the EV perfect, but it's something to consider just on the off chance that you'd otherwise want to buy one.

Not really an option. It's typically street parking. I'd seriously consider an affordable and nice to drive EV but my range threshold is probably 200 miles--at least 150. Otherwise, there would be too much "Do I have enough range?" fiddling for my common use cases--especially once the battery degrades a bit.

I'm pretty much with you. If and when the prophesied $30,000 200-mile EV happens, it'll really change the game.

I do see a lot of Leafs charging around here in various places, so it does seem like a reasonably practical alternative for many. I get nervous if I have to charge away from home, myself.

I have a sporty 2-seater Honda del Sol that gets great gas mileage (but which was apparently too impractical for the typical Civic buyer and not enough of a sports car for the typical Miata etc. buyer). An EV would be a perfect replacement if it holds out long enough. But the range needs to be able to cover all my local area drives even if I'm willing to forgo using it for longer drives out to the mountains in favor of my SUV.

Why was this post downvoted anyway?

Probably because his tone is hyperbolic, yet many of his points are flat out wrong. Not a good look.

I think the biggest difference, speaking from my experience as a Leaf owner, is that electricity is much cheaper than petrol, more predictable in price/not as volatile as petrol prices, and the car itself is much more efficient than a gas car would be thanks to aerodynamics, regenerative braking and otherwise high efficiency in electric motors when compared to internal combustion engines.

I'm not really sure about absolute price/J of energy comparison between electricity and gasoline

However an electrical car is more efficient than a gasoline one (gas engines are inefficient, diesel not so much)

1l of gasoline stores 9.5 kWh [1]

Typical fuel efficiency is 20% (with up to 37%) [2], so let's be optimistic and say 31.5% because that will mean that we would get 3kWh of energy out of every litre of gasoline in energy that is actually used to move the car.

The efficiency of an electric vehicle is much higher, 86% was measured for the Tesla Roadster [3]. Assuming the same figure for a Model S, the effective battery capacity is 73kWh.

Thus, the 85 kWh battery of a Tesla Model S corresponds to a 24.3 litre (6.4 US gallons) gas tank.

In Germany, at 25ct/kWh, that's 21.25€ for the electricity or 34€ for the gasoline (at 1.40€/litre)

[1] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28gasoline+density+*+1...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_efficiency#Fuel_efficienc...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Roadster#Energy_efficien...

Here's a quick version for my local rates.

An EV will use about 300Wh of electricity per mile. This varies a bit depending on the car (a massive Model S will use more than a Leaf) and how you drive it, but it's a decent approximation. I pay about 13 cents/kWh. That makes my energy cost for driving an EV about 3.9 cents/mile. I believe that's 300Wh out of the battery, so you probably want to add another 10% or so for charging inefficiency, but I'm not sure exactly what the numbers are there so I'll leave them be.

My last car got 40MPG. At current local gas costs of $2.50/gallon, that's 6.25 cents/mile.

And of course, a lot of people think that current gas prices are anomalously low and won't last.

Interesting. That's obviously a good case number for an ICE vehicle (although it's pretty close to my current car at today's gas prices) but I hadn't realized that, from a "fuel" perspective, EVs aren't actually all that cheaper. Yes, 50% is a lot, but it's not multiples. (And, yes, there are some free charging options available but those aren't necessarily available to most people on a regular basis.)

I think most people would be quite pleased if gas prices were half of their current level (especially in Europe, where they are significantly higher than in the US). Plus you don't have to do oil changes ;)

According to the car computer over the last few days, my e-Golf got between 3.5 and 4.1 miles/kWh so your estimate is pretty close.

I did about 130 miles in the Model S yesterday and averaged 308Wh/mile. That also fits with a big one doing a bit worse than a smaller EV.

Tesla S has a range of 400 km. This makes the cost 5.31 € per 100 km. An average ICE car of the same size uses, let's say, 8 L per 100 km. The cost for the ICE is then 11.2 €. Twice as much. Don't forget that: you can charge at free stations, charge at a free supercharger, and you can charge the car at night when the electricity price is lower( 25ct is quite high btw ), while the price for the petrol is always the same.

you can charge the car at night when the electricity price is lower

Only if you have a garage. Plenty of people park on the street overnight, which is a non-trivial problem.

I'm not familiar with taxation in Germany. How are taxes on electricity and on gasoline? Maybe without taxes the costs are not too different, and taxes could be shifted from gas to electricity if gas cars usage plummets (they have to get taxes from something...)

Leaving aside the carbon tax issue, Germany in particular is less likely to shift the tax burden around as Germany has almost no domestic oil production.

I researched it. These data are both from 2014:

http://www.dw.de/german-electricity-price-is-half-taxes-and-...

"A typical household that uses 3,500 kilowatt hours of power per year pays about 85 euros ($113) a month for electricity." "About 45 euros, just over half the monthly total, is composed of taxes and special levies imposed by government."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_tax#Germany

"Fuel taxes in Germany are €0.4704 per litre for ultra-low sulphur Diesel and €0.6545 per litre for conventional unleaded petrol, plus Value Added Tax (19%) on the fuel itself and the Fuel Tax. That adds up to prices of €1.12 per litre for ultra-low sulphur Diesel and €1.27 per litre (approximately US$6,14 per US gallon) for unleaded petrol"

So petrol and electricity are taxed about the same but diesel is a little "cheaper". Chances are that taxes won't change much even if all of them switch to electric cars tomorrow.

How do you compare? Fuel in Germany is around €1.50, that means 75 to 85% of the final price are taxes, compared to 52% for electricity.

I'm using the prices in the Wikipedia page. I assumed they were correct in 2014.

While your other points are perfectly valid, improved aero isn't an advantage unique to electric cars.

You are correct that electric cars are not inherently more aerodynamic, but in practice it is easier to engineer them to be more aerodynamic. Not needing a big intake grill at the front makes a substantial difference, as does being able to easily seal off the bottom of the vehicle with a smooth flat surface.

Intake helps, correct, but on the latter point, most newer cars are coming with removable underbody paneling for just that reason. Aero is just improving across the board.

The Nissan Leaf, for example, has a drag coefficient of around .28. While that's good, it's in the same ballpark as the current ICE Honda Fit.

Oh yeah, you are right to criticize the Leaf on that front. You would think if they were going to make a really weird looking car like that, they could at least take advantage of the relaxed design constraints and make it super efficient...

The Tesla Model S on the other hand clocks in at 0.24, which is literally the best you can get on any production car right now. Admittedly this advantage might be partially cancelled out by the larger frontal area, but I think it's still noteworthy.

Cost to operate the vehicle (gas) isn't the whole story. How much do these vehicles cost to insure and is it comparable with a gas car at a similar price point? (Not being snarky, just curious)

Insurance costs are pretty comparable, yes, from what I've heard. (I won't try to talk about my personal experience, since a single data point is just about pointless when discussing insurance, but it's comparable for me too.)

The big problem for Model S insurance is that the body is aluminum, which is a lot more expensive to repair, especially since Tesla wants to exercise a great deal of control over the whole process. This seems to be compensated for by the excellent safety, which reduces potential medical costs.

If you can amortize the battery cost over the miles driven, electric cars ought to be cheaper than gas cars. Less maintenance (no spark plugs or oil changes), less consumables, and the purchase price is about the same (see my first phrase).

If Better Place had worked out, it would have let people shift the battery ownership elsewhere. But it didn't.

Our electricity costs are certainly more predictable: always going up.

You don't pay at Tesla stations

You don't pay at Tesla stations, because you've prepaid for the supercharging option. They may have recently eliminated it as a separate ~$2,000 option with the introduction of the 70D, but that just means it is rolled into the price of the car.

> that just means it is rolled into the price of the car.

True. But if there were an option for all-you-can-eat fossil fuel, a lot of the market would probably consider it very seriously, especially if it were less than 5% of the cost of the car.

I guess those must have a Tesla logo? I've never seen any of those (I live in the Netherlands).

Edit: Those? http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger I guess we don't have these, I would surely have recognized them.

http://www.teslamotors.com/findus#/bounds/53.6756,7.22714050...

http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger

Not sure if it's going to be in Europe

If you scroll down, and click Europe, you see that almost all of western europe is already awash in Superchargers, and Tesla continues to push east over the next 6-18 months.

Thanks, it shows the US for me in the map, and it can't be dragged

Europe Superchargers:

Today: https://i.imgur.com/229ZJIg.png

By End Of 2015: https://i.imgur.com/p5D3K0w.png

2016: https://i.imgur.com/0Q9nKzp.png

Interactive Europe Map: http://www.teslamotors.com/findus#/bounds/65,55,34,-11?searc...

The superchargers arrived in Norway almost 2 years ago:

http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/tesla-motors-brings-revoluti...

You see a lot of Teslas around in Norway, relatively speaking. The favourable tax (discount) helps I imagine, given the punitive tax on private IC vehicles.

There's quite a few in Germany and the Netherlands, according to the map

>You don't pay at Tesla stations

Tesla is a money losing company and its cars and its own funding are subsidized by the US taxpayer. $108m in losses last quarter.

Yeah, its neat they can pull this trick, but its meaningless as its clearly non-sustainable. Show me profitability, especially when they're off corporate welfare from my tax dollars. Why are the working poor and middle class families being taxed to make luxury $100,000 cars cheaper for the top 10%?

I'm getting a little sick of paying for a rich person's tax break on a $100,000 car. The reality, regardless of hysterical fanboy HN downvotes, is that EV's make no economic sense for the average car buyer. The market is choosing against them for a reason, and not because everyone else in the world, but you the EV enthusiast, is ignorant.

Personally, I think Lithium-Ion just isn't there from a cost/capacity perspective and will never get there. ICE alternatives are still forming and we'll probably look back at the crazy Tesla days the same way we look back at other oddball cars like the Delorean. Middle-aged millenials will be fixing them up in 20+ years and enjoying their kitschy value.

Heck, even if we get cost down to ICE levels (and we wont) we still have major wear issues to worry about:

The results of an Idaho National Laboratory study released in March found that the test LEAFs lost 22-26% of their initial capacity after just 40,000 miles.

http://www.torquenews.com/2250/how-long-will-electric-vehicl...

So on a hot day with the AC on, what am I getting in range from a $30,000+ EV with 40,000 miles? 30-40 miles maybe? There's a reason no one is buying these things.

tldr; ICE will die someday, but it wont be lithium-ion that kills it.

If you look at their strategy, they're aiming to make profit around 2020 when the Gigafactory is at full capacity and the Model 3 is shipping at full capacity. At that point, the government subsidy expires for Tesla (100,000 cars shipped by one manu) and they make full profits on their own dime. If they were really unsustainable, nobody would be investing in TSLA right now.

The tax subsidy applies to all electric cars, and has made the Leaf and other cars in its class affordable for many Americans, which has pushed electric car adoption.

Even in the case of Tesla, there are plenty of people who couldn't afford a Tesla if it weren't for the $7,500 tax credit. It seems silly, but it's a big chunk of money, and when you're stretching your budget to afford a nice, eco-friendly and American-produced car, the extra subsidy really helps.

Tesla is opening the door for sustainable transit in the U.S., has pushed other car manufacturers to follow suit, and is creating a buttload of jobs with their domestic factory, the Gigafactory 1, their local service centers, and whatever comes next.

It is frustrating to see tax money thrown at corporations, but hey, Tesla didn't take a multi-billion dollar bailout when they made poor business decisions and were going to cost America millions of jobs. Just something to put this in perspective.

>has pushed other car manufacturers to follow suit,

This is Tesla's biggest accomplishment, in my opinion. And we will all benefit greatly from it.

The gigafactory concept is just domestic manufacturing. It cannot change how much Lithium there is in the ground, how hard it is to get to it in these quantities, and how expensive it is to turn into batteries, etc. Its nice that Elon has his own manufacturing, but the cost savings compared to outsourcing are probably going to be trivial.

Unless he can get prices down to a 1/10th of what it costs today, he won't ever be competitive outside of the luxury market. Lets start calling a turkey a turkey here. EV's as the affordable family car is just not going to happen. When do the taxpayers say enough is enough? I think its time. Lets let Elon use his PERSONAL billions to run this turkey. If he did, we both know he'd shut down in a second.

The "scales of industry" argument is fairly bunk considering their previous source was Panasonic, who knows full well how to make cheap lithium-ion. There's only so much we can do to cheapen them. We're probably very close to the minium manufacture cost. Cutting out the middle-man will save Elon, what, 5% maybe, 10% if everything goes perfectly? He needs a minimum of 60-80% to compete with ICE.

Heck, the "gigafactory" is just a legal shell for panasonic to come in with their engineers and their patents and their processes under Elon's US company. Elon is just putting on his top hat and monocole and playing landlord, he is not engineering these batteries:

http://www.teslamotors.com/en_AU/blog/panasonic-and-tesla-si...

"According to the agreement, Tesla will prepare, provide and manage the land, buildings and utilities. Panasonic will manufacture and supply cylindrical lithium-ion cells and invest in the associated equipment, machinery, and other manufacturing tools based on their mutual approval."

tldr; Lithium-ion just isnt cost competitive (and has major wear issues). ICE is winning for a reason. We need something better to defeat ICE.

edit: downvotes with zero cites, zero cost arguments against my thesis but wishful thinking? Stay classy HN.

> EV's as the affordable family car is just not going to happen

The average price of a used car last year was $15,900. For that you can buy a 2012/2013 Nissan Leaf with low miles and still have a few grand in your pocket.

EVs as the affordable family car has already happened.

Of course the Gigafactory can change the cost of battery manufacturing. The economies of scale apply here, as the Gigafactory will (roughly) double the world's production of LiIon batteries.

You continue to make these baseless claims in this thread, which makes me question the sincereness of your participation in this discussion.

>The economies of scale apply here

You honestly think mega manufacturers like Panasonic don't have the proper scale for lithium-ion? I'm not denying Elon can cut costs by uber-specializing and cutting out middle-men, but we're looking at maybe 5% or even 10% or so, not 70-80%. Which is what you need to be comparable to ICE cars.

Heck, panasonic is literally making the batteries INSIDE HIS FACTORY. So don't expect big cuts:

http://www.teslamotors.com/en_AU/blog/panasonic-and-tesla-si...

"You honestly think mega manufacturers like Panasonic don't have the proper scale for lithium-ion?"

What is the proper scale? The scale of this factory is the same size as all the other lithium battery plants in the world combined. And do you think Panasonic would be throwing money at it if it thought the numbers were that wrong? This is constantly being presented by some people as a sort of majestic con being perpetrated by Elon, which is just ridiculous when you consider the other players involved.

Its not a con, he knows he can save $trivial_amount domestically. He can probably hit 5% and have ownership of this thing, which is great, but he's not hitting ICE price levels. He's still hitting luxury car price levels. Tesla is a luxury car maker, why is that so hard for people to understand? He competes against Mercedes, Jaguar, etc and wants to sell better to buyers in that class, hence the gigafactory.

He cannot compete with Honda, Chevy, etc. ICE makes far too much sense.

Did you really make a big cite-free post, and then complain that people are posting disagreements without cites?

'I don't want to be paying X subsidies' is very tired rhetoric which can be applied to every industry under the sun, and you are describing a class of people who you have almost no knowledge of as ignorant.

Furthermore, the profitability criticisms you level are clearly not valid for a growth company. If Tesla wanted to they could be profitable tomorrow, but they're investing in the company so they aren't.

Your numerous comments on this thread all overlook (as far as I see) the fact that Tesla is not the only EV on the market. There are others that are much cheaper, including plug-in hybrids, electric/gasoline hybrids" like the Volt and BMW i3, and fully electric vehicles like the Nissan Leaf.

I think that all these other examples make clear that, if nothing else, the Tesla's high price tag is not exclusively (or even primarily) driven by the cost of its battery. The Tesla, after all, is also a very high end luxury vehicle. Equivalent ICE vehicles are not drastically cheaper. The growth of this category also suggests that the market may not be "choosing against [EVs]" in the way that you claim.

Cost is standardized on range. There's no cheap 250 mile EV. Using Tesla as a comparison against ICE is 100% fair. They all use the same lithium-ion tech and li-ion prices are consistent and nothing is going to make them drop down 70% to be competitive with ICE.

The only thing "consistent" about LiIon prices is their relentless decrease. If you think battery technology is going to hit some plateau in the short run I think you need to seriously re-evaluate that assumption. The path we are taking is exactly the technological progress that you would expect to see and in fact is happening much faster than anyone expected 10 years ago.

The article was obviously part satire and baiting this kind of response but I'd encourage you to walk into a Tesla showroom and look at the marvelous simplicity of the vehicle construction and components. It certainly will revolutionize how cars are made and there's no question reliability and economics will eventually trounce ICE, and again a lot sooner than anyone would have expected.

Tesla has capitalized on the zeitgeist with this, and say what you want about Elon, but that's all irrelevant. Say what you want about the environmental externalities, but ultimately when it comes to mainstream adoption they are irrelevant as well. The economic argument is that cars will be safer, faster, more reliable, and cheaper to operate, in the long run, without an ICE in them.

Ultimately it's a good thing that this will play out over 50 years, since there's a hell of a lot of infrastructure that needs to be built and even more which will become obsolete.

> Why are the working poor and middle class families being taxes to make luxury $100,000 cars cheaper for the top 10%?

2 points here - 1) there are electric cars that aren't 100k Teslas and 2) the 'working poor' don't typically wind up paying federal income tax in the US (as long as they file a return properly - which sucks but..) In fact with the EITC low income families may actually see a negative income tax...

It's not sustainable ATM, no, but it's using a similar strategy as all the hip startups on HN use - get users first, money comes later. In Tesla's case, their initial investment is just several orders of magnitude larger than hip startup X.

And it will pay off. They're building hard to become the world's largest battery producer. And once their affordable model comes out, they will quickly grab a nontrivial share of the nearly one trillion car market.

So on the one side you're paying for the rich person's tax break. On the other you're paying for a greener future, independent of fuels - and you'll be driving an electric car yourself in 5-10 years, and hopefully think back with a smirk about how you made do with the old cars, like you probably do now with brick phones or a world without internet.

I have somewhat mixed feelings on the subsidies. On the one hand, I'm all for encouraging innovation in renewable power, energy conservation techniques, and electric vehicles. On the other hand, it's true that most of the "green" tax credits available to consumers--whether for electric cars, solar panels, or energy-efficient windows--do go to relatively high-income individuals. And it's not unreasonable to be discomfited by that fact.

That said, as others have mentioned, there are lots of subsidies for lots of things and the premise of these ones seems laudable for the most part however they're delivered.

> get users first, money comes later.

Its been 12 years and lithium-ion prices are fairly stable, there's nothing that can lower them to ICE competitive levels. If this was any other company you guys would be screaming the usual libertarian take of "OMG MY TAXES" instead of this mindless fanboy worship Elon seems to evoke.

I am impressed by Tesla, but by their marketing. They make smart people sound very, very stupid by advocating for a $100,000 car as the Model T of our time.

I can't answer your question, but i can tell you that engery prices will rise, if more people need more electricity to charge their cars. Electricity cost is so "low" because most cars don't need this type of Engery.

To solve this issue people need to charge their cars at home with solar power.

Electricity costs are low because electricity is inherently cheaper to generate and distribute than gasoline. Big, centralized power plants enjoy economies of scale that allow them to be much more efficient and operate more cheaply. They can also use fuels that are impractical for mobile use (basically all of them). Cars don't use gasoline because it's cheap, cars use gasoline because it's dense. If you don't need density then you can use much cheaper stuff, like coal, natural gas, uranium, sunlight, water trapped in a big lake, etc.

If everybody switched to electric cars tomorrow, electricity use would go up about 30%. This is far from trivial, but it's not the sort of thing that would cause prices to spike.

Answering the grandparent, payment varies. At home, you obviously just pay it in your electric bill. When charging away from home, some chargers are free. Businesses often put them in to attract customers, and Tesla operates a vast network of chargers whose operating costs are covered by car sales. (These chargers only work on Teslas, and electricity costs are low enough that they can afford to provide lifetime charging for their customers.) Some chargers are paid, and that's typically done with an RFID card (either a regular credit card with RFID, or a card specifically for the charging network) or a smartphone app.

Playing the "what if" game, has anybody discussed how large-scale adoption of charge-at-home EVs would change the collection of fuel taxes? The federal and state additions to a gallon of gasoline here in the US are non-trivial. Would home users eventually be expected to self-report or use a special meter for the purpose of paying equivalent taxes?

That's a good question. We're already playing that game a bit. Virginia, for example, introduced an extra registration tax on hybrid and electric vehicles, with the rationale that they're not paying their fair share of road maintenance from fuel taxes. It was subsequently repealed under the theory that the benefit from not polluting so much outweighs the tax losses.

My random guess is that we'll go to plain old mileage reporting. Fuel taxes for road maintenance may have made sense a long time ago, but fuel use and road wear are fairly weakly correlated now even among gasoline cars, since efficiency can vary so much now.

The problem with a mileage tax is that it would need to either be backed up with tracking (so an Illinois driver wouldn't be on the hook for miles driven in Michigan, as an example), or it would have to be a federal-level tax.

A possible alternative would be to tax the electricity at the charger, but that also opens up more cans of worms.

Another thing to consider is that, beyond normal weathering, most road damage comes from heavy (and often overweight) trucks.

I wouldn't be surprised if tracking happened. Pretty much every new car comes with GPS now, and it could be made to self-report. People would fight it (and I might agree with them) but I think it could happen.

I don't see taxing electricity at the charger as being viable, because it's too decentralized. You can tax gasoline because it's distributed by relatively few places. You can charge a car off a normal 240V outlet (or 120V if you don't mind it being slow) so it'll be way too easy to dodge.

Tracking mileage and assigning to the state of registration might not be too bad. It won't be fully accurate, but the inaccuracies will balance out to an extent. Gas already suffers from this at a smaller level, since you can buy gas in one state and then drive a substantial distance in another state.

The fact that trucks are the ones doing all the damage is a big wrench in the works. Maybe the proper solution would be paying some by taxing truck mileage and making up the rest out of general taxes.

Presumably, any state that does annual safety inspections already has miles-driven info (whether or not it's actually centrally reported today). You'd still need to deal with ownership transfers, collections, etc. but that would be one mechanism to charge per mile without GPS tracking--which (optimistically) seems like a real political hot potato.

I think that another alternative would be to increase the cost of vehicle registration as a percent of the vehicle cost. This way it is progressive and untied to fuel usage. Multi-car discounts could be given much like insurance (cars after the 1st do not add a full car's miles driven).

I don't have a link offhand (my apologies), but there is a DOE report floating around out there from 1-2 years ago stating that almost 80% of the current light vehicle (cars) fleet in the US could be converted over to using the electric grid solely with existing generating capacity.

Combined with the relentless expansion of solar and wind in the US, I disagree with your assertion that energy prices will rise long-term. You'll probably see peaks and troughs as demand increases and supply comes online, but there is a lot of land left for renewables to be deployed to.

Generating capacity isn't the only concern. Distribution capacity is another issue. Thankfully, the vast majority of the projected 30% increase in consumption will not coincide with summertime peak ( air conditioning ) loads, but it may be enough to worry some utilities, especially in the congested Northeast corridor of the US.

Well, if energy prices rise a bit, solar becomes much more attractive economically. So it's a feedback loop that solves itself.

Why would the prices rise? We will consume more, and then we pay more, but why would the price per kWh change? In general things become cheaper to produce at scale (though I guess the current energy consumption is already at a big scale).

You could have a home distillery and use kitchen waste as the mash for the starter. Using kitchen waste to make fuel is so green not like those coal-fired electricty plants.

Tesla pays for charging at any of their Tesla SuperCharger stations. So free to the Tesla owner.

> Don't you pay to get electricity?

That depends. For example, Tesla operates Supercharger (that's what they actually call them) stations where you can charge your car for free. There are other free options as well.

However, most people will charge the car at home, so let's look at what it costs you to charge an electric car at home. I don't have this data for Europe, but I'm sure you can find it with some digging. In the US, the price of electricity is typically charged in kilowatt-hours (kWh), and varies based on your location. This table tells us the average cost per kWh by state:

http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm...

I live in Florida, and in a market where the cost per kWh is particularly low. For off-peak times, I pay $0.09/kWh. While that's exciting for me, let's round-off the Florida average to $0.12/kWh and do some math with that.

Some searching around on the internet tells me that a typical Tesla driver will get anywhere from 2.5 miles to 3.5 miles per kWh. Let's go with the median at a flat 3 miles/kWh.

From here, most people jump straight to equating cost per kWh to miles per kWh, but charging is not 100% efficient. I found a reasonably well researched source [1] that puts efficiency at around 80%, which we'll factor in to the cost.

Making some more assumptions, let's look at the cost to drive this theoretical electric car 12,000 miles per year:

Calculate annual kWh:

12,000/3 (total miles/miles per kWh) => 4,000 kWh

Factor in charging efficiency:

4,000/0.80 (annual kWh/charging efficiency): 5,000 kWh

Calculate the cost of electricity at local rates:

$0.12 x 5,000 kWh => $600 annually

Monthly?

$600/12 months => $50

Weekly?

$600/52 weeks => $11.54

How does this compare to petrol powered cars?

Calculate annual gallons of fuel:

12,000/30 (total miles/miles per gallon) => 400 gallons

Calculate cost of petrol at local rates:

$2.85 x 400 gallons => $1,140

Monthly?

$1,140/12 => $95.00

Weekly?

$1,140/52 => $21.92

So, do you pay? In most cases, yes. However, the monthly cost is lower by almost half. The value equation for electric cars is strongly dependent on the input factors. If you drive a lot more miles, or if you pay a lot more for petrol, your value equation changes significantly.

I published this comparison as a Google Spreadsheet as well [2].

1: http://www.teslarati.com/charging-tesla-model-s-cost-higher/

2: Published version:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15PbqSFB7ubis59AecCkV...

Source (can be copied):

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15PbqSFB7ubis59AecCkV...

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