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How long do you suppose it's going to take to make back their investment? For it to pay off in ten years they'd have to be making fifty dollars a month from arb

by causi 4y ago

How long do you suppose it's going to take to make back their investment? For it to pay off in ten years they'd have to be making fifty dollars a month from arbitrage.

CyanLite4 4y ago
People that buy $100k EVs aren’t worried about ROI. FWIW, Ford has sold out of these for the next 2 years, so they must be doing something right.
- protomyth 4y ago
  Or very, very wrong, since it's Ford and they cannot meet demand for a truck.
  - vl 4y ago
    Even Tesla can’t meet demand for EVs.
    - protomyth 4y ago
      With all due respect, Ford has long experience in manufacturing and they are not meeting demand for the F150 Electric or the Maverick. They also had problems with the Bronco (non EV).
bryanlarsen 4y ago
An 15 mpg gasoline truck might use $100,000 in fuel over its lifetime. Buying a $40,000 electric truck pays off really quick. Selling power back to the grid is just gravy.
- bushbaba 4y ago
  Electricity isn’t free. You should include that in your comparison costs.
  - johnrgrace 4y ago
    Overnight in Texas it often is free in the wholesale markets.
  - bryanlarsen 4y ago
    It also varies. It can be over 50 cents some places and under 5 cents in others. In comparison, people complain how much more gasoline costs in California compared to elsewhere, but the difference between $6 and $4 doesn't really affect my $100,000 figure all that much. So I can do the electricity math for myself, but not for others.
- bluGill 4y ago
  That is 300,000 miles at $5/gallon. I don't know what gas prices will go to, but very few trucks go that far before they are scrapped - they absolutely can go a a lot more than that, but most do not.
  - bryanlarsen 4y ago
    Yes, "might" is carrying a lot of weight in my comment. A good number of trucks do hit 300,000 miles.
pengaru 4y ago
In Texas should electricity prices go sideways again it might take very little time. But honestly I don't know, it's not something I've looked into. If prices become increasingly variable coupled to demand and impact of generation source at time of use, I imagine it could be quite lucrative and that might be a useful incentive to get effectively decentralized peaker plants in the form of grid-tied residential batteries caching cheap cleanly-sourced electricity.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Mvandenbergh 4y ago
Assuming that no more than 50% of the 100kWh battery is used, and a full use of the 50kWh every day as part of diurnal power management, that's $0.032 / kWh. $32 / MWh wholesale is an arbitrage that could be done on many days in CAISO today. I don't particularly think that people will use that much of their battery or do so every day of course but it does show that it's not an orders of magnitude implausible scenario either.
- singhrac 4y ago
  If you use the battery for internal use (i.e. use it to run your AC during the day) you'll save more than the wholesale price difference from your utility bill (since consumer prices are higher than wholesale). A lot of this thinking assumes that you'll have the battery plugged in ready to operate all the time though, and doesn't consider accelerated depreciation on the battery (if that's a problem, I'm not sure).

by causi 4y ago

How long do you suppose it's going to take to make back their investment? For it to pay off in ten years they'd have to be making fifty dollars a month from arbitrage.

CyanLite4 4y ago

People that buy $100k EVs aren’t worried about ROI. FWIW, Ford has sold out of these for the next 2 years, so they must be doing something right.

protomyth 4y ago
Or very, very wrong, since it's Ford and they cannot meet demand for a truck.
- vl 4y ago
  Even Tesla can’t meet demand for EVs.
  - protomyth 4y ago
    With all due respect, Ford has long experience in manufacturing and they are not meeting demand for the F150 Electric or the Maverick. They also had problems with the Bronco (non EV).

bryanlarsen 4y ago

An 15 mpg gasoline truck might use $100,000 in fuel over its lifetime. Buying a $40,000 electric truck pays off really quick. Selling power back to the grid is just gravy.

bushbaba 4y ago
Electricity isn’t free. You should include that in your comparison costs.
- johnrgrace 4y ago
  Overnight in Texas it often is free in the wholesale markets.
- bryanlarsen 4y ago
  It also varies. It can be over 50 cents some places and under 5 cents in others. In comparison, people complain how much more gasoline costs in California compared to elsewhere, but the difference between $6 and $4 doesn't really affect my $100,000 figure all that much. So I can do the electricity math for myself, but not for others.
bluGill 4y ago
That is 300,000 miles at $5/gallon. I don't know what gas prices will go to, but very few trucks go that far before they are scrapped - they absolutely can go a a lot more than that, but most do not.
- bryanlarsen 4y ago
  Yes, "might" is carrying a lot of weight in my comment. A good number of trucks do hit 300,000 miles.

pengaru 4y ago

In Texas should electricity prices go sideways again it might take very little time. But honestly I don't know, it's not something I've looked into. If prices become increasingly variable coupled to demand and impact of generation source at time of use, I imagine it could be quite lucrative and that might be a useful incentive to get effectively decentralized peaker plants in the form of grid-tied residential batteries caching cheap cleanly-sourced electricity.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Mvandenbergh 4y ago

Assuming that no more than 50% of the 100kWh battery is used, and a full use of the 50kWh every day as part of diurnal power management, that's $0.032 / kWh. $32 / MWh wholesale is an arbitrage that could be done on many days in CAISO today. I don't particularly think that people will use that much of their battery or do so every day of course but it does show that it's not an orders of magnitude implausible scenario either.

singhrac 4y ago
If you use the battery for internal use (i.e. use it to run your AC during the day) you'll save more than the wholesale price difference from your utility bill (since consumer prices are higher than wholesale). A lot of this thinking assumes that you'll have the battery plugged in ready to operate all the time though, and doesn't consider accelerated depreciation on the battery (if that's a problem, I'm not sure).