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Once you switch, it's hard to imagine ever going back. No more gas stations, dramatic drop in fuel cost, always ready to go fully charged each morning. I'm ad

Once you switch, it's hard to imagine ever going back. No more gas stations, dramatic drop in fuel cost, always ready to go fully charged each morning. I'm addicted.

dylan604 5y ago
Do you live in a house with your own dedicated charger? How does this apply to someone living in an apartment or other similar situation to not having dedicated chargers?
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  Sure, there will always be some folks that cannot, for whatever cause, enjoy overnight charging where they park. For those folks, it is essentially a lateral move. They can enjoy the performance benefits, of course, but their running costs and convenience probably won't be any better with an EV. Who knows, though, maybe one-plug-per-spot will become enough of a selling point that apartment owners will start to deploy the infrastructure. I don't think it will affect EV adoption one way or the other, however, at least not for a number of years. Apartment dwellers are just a fraction of car owners.
- xeromal 5y ago
  I live in an apartment in SoCal and have an EV. I just charge on the weekend and haven't had much issues, but yeah, it can be an inconvenience. My "full tank" is only 7$ though so I can't complain. lol
  - dylan604 5y ago
    Not being an EV owner or someone seriously considering getting one enough to research the cost of a "full tank". Does that full tank charge (in $$ not volts) come out to the same if it's a super/hyper charger vs charging at home? I'd assume using it would be more expensive at a public charger since it is a business providing a service so markups on electricity would be expected. Just hadn't thought of it in those terms before.
    - xeromal 5y ago
      Your hunch is correct. At-home charging tends to be the cheapest while supercharging is going to command the highest premium. I live in SoCal which has high EV adoption with loads of chargers everywhere and off the top of my head. Off-peak home charging costs about 7 cents / KWh. My car's battery has about a 71KWh capacity so that's about $5 for a full charge. Super charging prices vary on the time of day and region, but let's pick the worse time. You'll see about a 20-40 cents charge / KWh. That will cost me about $15-30. You can see those prices go down if you're charging at good hours though. Tesla will have morning incentives for instance. Supercharging costs are higher because: * Supercharging stations (for Tesla) cost about 300-400k USD per unit. * Electricity providers charge a premium for higher amps/volt service. As far as I know, Tesla doesn't try to make a profit with chargers. They keep it close to cost.
      - vel0city 5y ago
        > Electricity providers charge a premium for higher amps/volt service. This can somewhat vary and can depend on your time horizon and usage. Energy providers like reliable usage, they don't usually like massive swings in usage. If you're able to reliably tell the energy providers how much energy you're going to be using at which times, you can sometimes get your per-kWh price cheaper than the regular wholesale rates even though you're pulling a large amount of energy. Then if you're timescale is long enough the higher upfront cost of the equipment to deliver the power really isn't crazy expensive compared to the full cost of all the energy you've pulled through it over a decade. Obviously this varies quite a bit even in the US, there's lots of variations between the states and even then there can be some variation within a state. I can definitely say though that the datacenters down the street from me pay waaaaay less per kWh than I do. I know because I know the retail prices they charge, which is still way less than my residential service meanwhile they've got redundant grid connections, generators, and giant batteries to pay for as well.

Once you switch, it's hard to imagine ever going back. No more gas stations, dramatic drop in fuel cost, always ready to go fully charged each morning. I'm addicted.

dylan604 5y ago

Do you live in a house with your own dedicated charger? How does this apply to someone living in an apartment or other similar situation to not having dedicated chargers?

rootusrootus 5y ago
Sure, there will always be some folks that cannot, for whatever cause, enjoy overnight charging where they park. For those folks, it is essentially a lateral move. They can enjoy the performance benefits, of course, but their running costs and convenience probably won't be any better with an EV. Who knows, though, maybe one-plug-per-spot will become enough of a selling point that apartment owners will start to deploy the infrastructure. I don't think it will affect EV adoption one way or the other, however, at least not for a number of years. Apartment dwellers are just a fraction of car owners.
xeromal 5y ago
I live in an apartment in SoCal and have an EV. I just charge on the weekend and haven't had much issues, but yeah, it can be an inconvenience. My "full tank" is only 7$ though so I can't complain. lol
- dylan604 5y ago
  Not being an EV owner or someone seriously considering getting one enough to research the cost of a "full tank". Does that full tank charge (in $$ not volts) come out to the same if it's a super/hyper charger vs charging at home? I'd assume using it would be more expensive at a public charger since it is a business providing a service so markups on electricity would be expected. Just hadn't thought of it in those terms before.
  - xeromal 5y ago
    Your hunch is correct. At-home charging tends to be the cheapest while supercharging is going to command the highest premium. I live in SoCal which has high EV adoption with loads of chargers everywhere and off the top of my head. Off-peak home charging costs about 7 cents / KWh. My car's battery has about a 71KWh capacity so that's about $5 for a full charge. Super charging prices vary on the time of day and region, but let's pick the worse time. You'll see about a 20-40 cents charge / KWh. That will cost me about $15-30. You can see those prices go down if you're charging at good hours though. Tesla will have morning incentives for instance. Supercharging costs are higher because: * Supercharging stations (for Tesla) cost about 300-400k USD per unit. * Electricity providers charge a premium for higher amps/volt service. As far as I know, Tesla doesn't try to make a profit with chargers. They keep it close to cost.
    - vel0city 5y ago
      > Electricity providers charge a premium for higher amps/volt service. This can somewhat vary and can depend on your time horizon and usage. Energy providers like reliable usage, they don't usually like massive swings in usage. If you're able to reliably tell the energy providers how much energy you're going to be using at which times, you can sometimes get your per-kWh price cheaper than the regular wholesale rates even though you're pulling a large amount of energy. Then if you're timescale is long enough the higher upfront cost of the equipment to deliver the power really isn't crazy expensive compared to the full cost of all the energy you've pulled through it over a decade. Obviously this varies quite a bit even in the US, there's lots of variations between the states and even then there can be some variation within a state. I can definitely say though that the datacenters down the street from me pay waaaaay less per kWh than I do. I know because I know the retail prices they charge, which is still way less than my residential service meanwhile they've got redundant grid connections, generators, and giant batteries to pay for as well.