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Cost of ultra-rapid EV charging increases by almost 50%
- moistly 4y agoA lot of comments in this thread illustrate why battery-swap technology might be the best way to go: many people, and perhaps the majority, do not have access to at-home charging. Swappable batteries solve this.
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- AgentK20 4y agoOf course it is. EV charging doesn’t exist in a vacuum, nor do gasoline prices. In most situations the electricity is still derived from fossil fuels of some form, with peak power coming from natural gas plants. Until the grid itself is primarily powered by renewables, we won’t see divergence between fossil fuel prices and electrical prices.
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- dijonman2 4y agoeven more reason to keep up with projects like keystone xl
- pineconewarrior 4y agoit'd be so cool if they'd stop trying to build pipelines in insanely valuable freshwater areas and sacred native lands
- gaganyaan 4y agoNo thank you
- jjtheblunt 4y ago>Until ... we won't see divergence between fossil fuel prices and electrical prices will we see that divergence even then, as subtle collusion could prop prices to that which the market has already borne, namely fossil fuel prices?
- nanidin 4y agoI just got an EV this week and I’ve been planning out some road trips. Projected cost for a 362 mile trip is $5.30. Cost for gas for the same trip is about $72 now. It that’s not diverged, I’d be interested to know what you would consider as diverged?
- alphabettsy 4y agoWhat vehicle did you buy?
- nanidin 4y agoTesla Model Y, loving it so far. It made driving fun again!
- alphabettsy 4y agoNice. I looked at the 3. It seemed like any cost savings are quickly eaten up by the difference in price over a comparable vehicle. I’m hoping that changes.
- nanidin 4y agoMy previous car took premium gas, which is now over $5 in the Midwest. My insurance went up by about $30/month, but my last car was a 2009. I wanted to like the 3 but the seat position relative to the visor and headliner didn’t work for me as a tall person. I had to slouch to drive the car with the seat all the way down.
- greenthrow 4y agoEven if the cost of charging my EV increased 500% it would still be cheaper than putting gas in my ICE vehicle.
- riku_iki 4y agoIn California it may be already more expensive if comparing to hybrid vehicle. Even if not talking about superchargers.
- fnordpiglet 4y agoAhhhh makes me glad I got a Tesla right before they ended the life time free super charging promotion :-)
- modeless 4y agoI thought I would never use it. Then I lost work charging. It's been a lifesaver.
- dubswithus 4y agoIs it for the life time of the car?
- modeless 4y agoIt depends. Older Model Ss may have free charging for the life of the car. Older Model 3s and newer Model Ss have free charging for life but for the original owner only. Once the car is transferred the free charging is lost.
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- lupire 4y agoThat still costs more than buying a non-Tesla EV.
- fnordpiglet 4y agoAt that time there was no 350+ range EVs other than Tesla.
- birken 4y agoUltra-rapid fast charging really should only be used on long road trips, which is likely a fraction of the average driver's mileage. The vast majority of EV charging should be slow charging at home, where the owner should be able to time their electricity usage so they are always paying around the cheapest rate. So even if this is true, it probably will only have a negligible effect on the total operating cost for an EV.
- dogma1138 4y agoMany people don’t have off street parking where they can install their own charger. Even in the UK many terraced and semi detached houses don’t have parking especially in cities and dense suburban areas. Then you have those who live in apartments. You have a very skewed view of how most people live. Pretty much everyone I personally know with an EV doesn’t charge at home because they can’t. They either charge overnight using an on street charger or they charge the same way people fuel up their cars and that is going one a week to a fast charger.
- ajross 4y agoNot "negligible", but yeah, relative to the opportunity cost of a $50k+ vehicle, it's pretty much noise. Over the year I've owned my Model Y, it's driven 11k miles (including three 1000+ mile road trips) and per TelsaMate[1] 70% of its charging has been on my home electricity service. [1] One of the hidden gems of owning these vehicles is the amazing community of analytic software you get to play with.
- pornel 4y agoAnd if you're lucky to have solar panels too, then the marginal cost of charging the car remains free.
- rektide 4y agoSo 26.10pounds * (1.26 dollar/1pound) / (64kWh * 0.8)... that's $0.63/kWh. At EPA specified 33.7kWh equivalent per gallon of gas, that'd be 21.56$/"gallon" of electricity. On average! Yikes. We direly need to invest in scaling up environmentally friendly energy generation, in delivering it. I don't have huge sympathy for drivers per se, but civilization needs energy, and we haven't invested enough effort into scaling out alternative energy.
- rootusrootus 4y ago> At EPA specified 33.7kWh per gallon, that'd be 21.56$/"gallon" of electricity. That's such a roundabout way of saying "fast charging in the UK costs the same as gasoline in the US"
- isaacg 4y agoUS average gas price is currently $4.60/gallon. UK average gas price is currently $7.99/gallon. Depends on how much more efficient the electric car is than the gas-powered car.
- cameldrv 4y agoElectric cars are usually about 4x as efficient as ICE in terms of energy input -> propulsive energy[1], so it's more like $5.50/gallon, but still pretty expensive. [1] http://www.afteroilev.com/Pub/EFF_Tank_to_Wheel.pdf http://www.afteroilev.com/Pub/EFF_Tank_to_Wheel.pdf
- clysm 4y agoWhile EVs are much more efficient, you don't factor in vehicle efficiency when calculating $/eGallon. $20/eGallon is huge. My cost at home to charge is $4.10/eGallon, regardless of the efficiency of the car using it.
- cameldrv 4y agoSure. However, IMO it's more useful to look at it from this standpoint: Most usage of energy has to go through a thermal->mechanical energy conversion step. Carnot efficiency practically limits this to 20-60% efficiency or so. In general, the smaller the engine, the worse the efficiency. If your energy input is electricity, this conversion has already happened at the power plant. If your energy input is gasoline, it happens in the car. It's sort of like comparing your salary pre-tax vs. post-tax if the tax rate is 70%. There's a big difference. Most of the other energy conversions like electrical->mechanical, mechanical->electrical, electrical->battery or battery->electrical can be done at 90%+ efficiency.
- kcplate 4y agoHere is my question, what is folks real experience with rapid vs. regular charging and time? I see folks at charging stations for a whole lot longer than I think I would be willing to wait. Seems to me you have to be ok with sitting in your car for 90 mins of time in my observation. That would likely drive me crazy. Where I live its a tropical climate and in the summer months sitting around in a car while it charged would be unpleasant if I couldn’t run the AC (or if running the AC slowed that charging process down even further).
- kcplate 4y agoI appreciate all the info. It’s nice to get real world opinion rather than published tech specs. I was considering replacing one of our vehicles with a Tesla pre-Covid, but Covid changed the equation due to both my wife and I being WFH permanently now. We ended up selling one car and just keeping a single vehicle. We take a fair amount of longer road trips and EVs to me just are not up to that task as time efficiently as I need them to be. If we ever go back to a commute—we will revisit the EV option.
- MauroIksem 4y agoIt takes about 25-30 min to get to 90% on a long range model 3. You can run ac and watch YouTube. It's not as bad as you think.
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- kmeisthax 4y agoI have no experience with EVs, but everything I've heard from people who own them is that they slow-charge them at home. You only need to use a rapid charger if you're driving very long distances or all day long. The newest cars combined with the best DC fast charge you can buy will fill the car up in about 10-20 minutes. The next tier down of charger and car battery is more like 30 minutes. This is from this video on the subject of EV roadtripping: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZOuz_laH9I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZOuz_laH9I
- dangrossman 4y ago
- option 4y agoBuild more nuclear.
- falcolas 4y agoYou also need power transfer infrastructure, not just generation. Even one 350kW charger will tax your average location's power delivery capabilities. For comparison, an average convenience store uses about 250k kWh a year. One dc fast charger at 20% utilization can consume over 600 kWh per year. https://www.eia.gov/consumption/commercial/data/2012/c&e/cfm/pba4.php https://www.eia.gov/consumption/commercial/data/2012/c&e/cfm...
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- jillesvangurp 4y agoThat would drive prices up further
- rektide 4y agoOnly if we failed to get good. We're stuck using 1970's technology & artisinally handcrafting each reactor. We're afraid & unwilling to try. Oh plus we're unwilling to do common sense things like fuel-reprocessing. Projects like Integral Fast Reactor were incredibly safe, and had amazing fuel-reprocessing capabilities that also avoided most enrichment concerns. But were just politically unpalatable, because an ignorant & tense world wouldn't get that you couldn't make weapons this way & everyone was in cold-war mania.
- option 4y agoThis is false. Compare electricity prices in France (over 70% nuclear) vs Germany (idiotic decision to close nuclear and depend on coal and Russian gas instead)
- jillesvangurp 4y agoFactor in the cleanup cost, storage cost, decommissioning, r&d, construction r&d and things look a lot less nice. French taxes are pretty steep.