5 ms·

Would love to hear fast how charging stations will scale in a way that beats the current price and speed of filling up a car with gasoline. I mean, even in a s

Would love to hear fast how charging stations will scale in a way that beats the current price and speed of filling up a car with gasoline. I mean, even in a small town with, say, three gas stations, there are peak times when all the spots are taken. Average fueling time is probably a few minutes. How to switch that to an all-electric system? + build a significantly higher number of fast electric charges than there are gas pumps. But apparently fast charging stations are rather expensive to build, and that's reflected in prices-- they are higher than current gas prices. There's also the significant increase in the time to fuel the vehicle compared to gas, and that's not going to change any time soon. + ramp up at-home charging as well as "at-business" charging for things like landscapers/etc. who use a lot of vehicles. But if you do this at scale electricity costs go through the roof and you're back to the same pricing problem as above. I'm just thinking of this in terms of a kind of soft-realtime system. You've got something like "blocks" of vehicles all of which need to be fueled on deadlines which can generally get met currently. If there's a massive switch to EV I don't see how those deadlines get met without an enormous increase in charging prices. And without massive subsidies there's no way to build the infrastructure needed to meet the deadlines. (And let's just assume zero risk of a fast-charger monopoly or cartel...)

thrtythreeforty 3y ago
I have no data, but I suspect we underestimate the impact of at-home charging. Essentially, all vehicles parked at a residence start every day with a full charge. This eliminates most of the demand on fast-charge stations for around-town use. Granted, they still consume power that the grid has to supply, so pricing may change, but I suspect gas station traffic will go way down, in aggregate, as EV adoption climbs. One thing the government hasn't noticed yet (afaik) is that electric cars aren't taxed like gasoline cars. The per-gallon tax (which pays for important things like roads) is a substantial portion of the overall cost. Nobody factors that eventual cost in when they claim EVs are sooo much cheaper. They will probably continue to be cheaper, just less aggressively cheaper than Tesla claims.
- dreamcompiler 3y ago
  Oh they've definitely noticed. https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2023/05/16/texas-ev-registration-fee-abbott/70224830007/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2023/05/16/texas-e...
- steveBK123 3y ago
  Yup, I have had an EV for 5 years and I now fast charge on the road only about 2x/year. If you can charge at home, work, or both.. you will likely end up in a similar position.
- _ea1k 3y ago
  Not only have politicians noticed this, but the conniving little jerks have already started framing the problem in a way that implies EVs should be paying far more than gas cars. Many states are pushing for tag fees based upon the average revenue per gas/disel vehicle per year without regard to those vehicles MPG. Given that a lot of EVs are replacing high MPG vehicles, the formulations are incredibly unfair. But they still have a few years before EV owners are a substantial constituency, so there's a chance to jam through unfair taxation (in the false name of fairness) before that happens.
  - ComputerGuru 3y ago
    > Many states are pushing for tag fees based upon the average revenue per gas/disel vehicle per year without regard to those vehicles MPG. Given that a lot of EVs are replacing high MPG vehicles, the formulations are incredibly unfair. Is it, though? Does the taxation rate matter more than the total collected per year distributed by the number of users? If you aren’t counting/won’t count miles driven, this seems like a fair alternative. The idea isn’t to tax 21 cents a gallon - that’s the implementation detail - the idea is to collect $xx billion a year to (ostensibly) pay for transportation related costs. To use a logical proof instead, assume all cars are converted to EV with the flick of a wand. Do you think your proposal would seriously last? The same amount (modulo some percentage) needs to be collected to pay for whatever costs are relying on that tax to be funded. The rate (not the total price) has to go up for EV users. Now if gas at the pump included an explicit carbon tax then absolutely, that shouldn’t be ported over to the rate EV users are charged.
abakker 3y ago
as an EV owner, I suspect the answer is: home charging. Most people with EVs can start their day with a full charge, every day, so maybe the answer is that the gas station model will be relevant to many fewer people - e.g. people who have to drive more than their range every day, people with no plugs at home, etc).
- dangus 3y ago
  For distance travel: yes, interstate rest stops will have a lot of chargers, many more than the number of gas pumps at those stations today. I am not sure why there’s an assumption that crowded stalls are an indicator that the whole idea of EV vehicles is going to collapse. In reality, it’s an indicator that many more new stalls are going to be built.
asynchronous 3y ago
> they are higher than current gas prices I am not aware of any electric charging station on the planet that costs more than gas does in the same area.
- enragedcacti 3y ago
  It's true in most of the US right now depending on how efficient either vehicle is. I can't check supercharger rates but EA pricing is mostly the same across the country: EA membership pricing: $0.36/kWh California gas prices: $4.86/gal ($4.86/gallon)/(x mpg)=$0.36/1kwh *(29kwh/100mi) x=46.6 mpg to break even with the Chevy Bolt's efficiency in the worst case scenario for gas in the US. A Prius and many other hybrid passenger cars easily beat that with mpg to spare. The Nat'l average gas price of $3.58 means your car only has to beat 34.3 mpg for fuel to be cheaper than EA membership pricing or 25.7 mpg to beat guest pricing of $0.48. If we use 24kwh/100mi for the most efficient production EV in the US at California prices the break even is 56.2 mpg, lower than the combined EPA of the most efficient hybrid (Ioniq Blue, 58 mpg). https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%28%244.86%2Fgallon%29%2F%28x+mpg%29%3D%240.36%2F1kwh+*%2829kwh%2F100mi%29\\\\\\\ https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%28%244.86%2Fgallon%29%...*
  - jancsika 3y ago
    So how does something like a plug-in hybrid compare here? https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=42814 https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=42814 You've got a much smaller battery so the at-home charging cost should be less. But look at that combined mpge! They seem like a nice idea for this transitional period but it appears they are just becoming luxury vehicles that are produced in small quantities.
    - enragedcacti 3y ago
      Important to note that any appreciable amount of home charging makes it a lot harder for gas to beat EVs or PHEVs most places and my calculations above are for 100% fast charging. PHEVs are hard to calculate for because where they land between hybrids and full EVs is basically entirely dependent on the user but the upshot (ignoring emissions) is that the best PHEVs aren't much worse than the best hybrids or the best EVs so you can choose the cheapest fuel on a day-to-day basis and potentially come out ahead. https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=42814&id=42808&id=43821&id=43571 https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=42814&...
vel0city 3y ago
> How to switch that to an all-electric system? Simple, most residents of the town won't be at those stations regularly. Most of my DCFC charging sessions have been because I've been wanting to try out different locations and charging equipment, not because I needed the DCFC. In reality, the vast majority of miles my EV will do will not need any public charging infrastructure, at all. Meanwhile, 100% of the miles on my ICE will need public fueling infrastructure. I inherently need to go to a pump sometime to get gas. > But if you do this at scale electricity costs go through the roof and you're back to the same pricing problem as above I don't think its as big of a deal as you're thinking it will be. Sure, some percentage of homes out there don't have >100A service at home and will probably need some kind of upgrade to their home service necessitating new equipment up the chain. But for my household to swap out an EV? About 15 feet of power cable, a circuit breaker, a double-gang box, and a NEMA 14-50 outlet was all that was needed. My peak power usage in the house didn't change at all adding the EV. My EV uses the same amount of power as running a burner on the stove while doing my laundry (electric dryer). Meanwhile my house (and the rest of the grid up the line) was designed for me to pull enough power for me to cook in the oven, on the stove, do my laundry, run the AC, power all the lights in my house, and more. Guess what, I'm not often cooking and doing laundry at 2AM, and I probably already got my house cooled down by then so the AC isn't often cranking that hard at that time. Take a guess when my car charges. So how much did it cost the grid to add my car? $0.
- itsoktocry 3y ago
  >So how much did it cost the grid to add my car? $0. As you say, you are now "running the laundry and cooking" for hours at night to charge your car. How do you conclude this doesn't add cost to the grid?
  - vel0city 3y ago
    It didn't take a single piece of new equipment to handle it. All of that equipment was built out to support my high demand loads, so it already existed and was ready to go. The power plants serving my house already had that capacity, the transformers could handle the load, all the lines were rated to handle far more power going to my house than the time I charge. Even if everyone on my street added an EV, it wouldn't take a single piece of new equipment to handle the load because all the equipment is already designed to handle more than that during other hours of the day. So long as people on average charge late at night or other off-peak times, it hasn't increased the peak loads on the grid at all, which is what they have to build to anyways. Sure, I'm buying energy at those hours of the night, but that's a low time of energy usage overall. So much of a low usage, spot prices at those hours in my area routinely go negative, i.e. there's so much spare energy they're giving it away. My REP makes money accepting electricity at negative rates for me to charge my car many nights of the year before even factoring in what I then pay them for it. Of course, this then figures into their overall rate contract they have for me, there's certainly hours in the day where my energy usage costs them more than what their contracted rate is for me.
dreamcompiler 3y ago
Currently the price of energy per mile at a Tesla Supercharger is about 1/3 to 1/2 the equivalent amount of gasoline. If you charge at home it's more like 1/4. A large fraction (probably more than half) of EV owners charge at home and rarely need a fast charger. Approximately zero ICE owners refuel at home. ICE cars must be refueled at gas stations. Demand for fast chargers will never be as high as demand for gas stations for this reason. Anybody with $10,000 can install PV panels and charge their EV at home for free forever. Fleet owners with $50,000 can charge their entire fleet for free forever. No impact on the grid with these latter options.
- jancsika 3y ago
  > Currently the price of energy per mile at a Tesla Supercharger is about 1/3 to 1/2 the equivalent amount of gasoline. Is there a citation for that? It was my understanding that fast chargers were much more expensive, but I could be wrong. > Approximately zero ICE owners refuel at home. Nor do they currently use the extra electricity needed to fuel their cars each night. Again, at scale that's going to have an effect on electricity costs. > Anybody with $10,000 can install PV panels and charge their EV at home for free forever. Edit: bonus if you have links to any youtube vids of people who have done this and are currently subsidizing the entire cost of daily commutes with solar. I don't know anything about solar and would love some citations if you have them.
  - dreamcompiler 3y ago
    Here's one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG_yIcLlzYk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG_yIcLlzYk This guy has an Aussie accent but I'm pretty sure he's talking about US dollars. His numbers look accurate to me. He's estimating $5000 for charging a long-range Model 3. I think that might be a bit optimistic so I'd stick with my original estimate of $10k. Caution: I strongly suggest you buy your PV panels from a company other than Tesla. Tesla's PV business is a bit of a clusterf*ck. Just get regular PV panels and a good inverter from a local installer. If you want to charge at night, you could either install a grid-tied system with net metering (which decreases your cost of grid power), or you could install a battery just for car-charging. In that case, the Tesla Powerwall battery is a perfectly suitable option. Tesla makes great batteries, but their PV offering is overpriced and they seem to have horrible customer service.
bkmrkr 3y ago
I have a Tesla ~10k miles and have not used supercharger yet because I just plug the car in at home once a week. If you estimate total pump time. IE 35 minutes on supercharger vs 10 minutes on gas (including time to drive to station) but take into account number of times you need to actually charge up the car at a super charger. IE once every 2 months vs 3x per month, you will see that you actually spend less total time in a charger station vs gas pump.
- chrisco255 3y ago
  It takes like 3 minutes tops to fill up a passenger car from near 0 to 100% range. I would have to stop for gas 10 times in a single month to use 30 minutes of pump time, which, for a car with 500 mile range, would imply 5000 miles of travel in a single month, which is almost non-stop driving at 50 mph. Driving to a station is never an issue, because gas stations are ubiquitous, and found along the route you're traveling anyways.
  - vel0city 3y ago
    I spend more time pumping gas for my ICE than I do waiting on my EV to charge, by hours a year. Lets say it takes 5 minutes on average to turn off to the gas station, go to the pump, pay to start the pump, get the handle into the car, actually pump the gas, return the pump handle, close it all up, get in the car, and rejoin traffic. In my testing its often more than 5 minutes from my times, but lets just say 5 to make things easy. I get gas about every other week in my ICE, so 5 minutes every other week, but I do take some vacations so lets round to a 50 week year, half of that is 25, times 5, 125. That's 125 minutes of pumping gas that I do every year. A little over 2 hours. And that's excluding any kind of road trips where I might have done several of those 5 minute stops in a single week. Guess how much time I had to spend waiting on public DCFC last year? I took a road trip and stopped for maybe 40 minutes total. Outside of that, 0 minutes. I spend more time waiting to recharge my ICE than I do my EV, by a good bit. Lets take a look at US averages though instead of just my use case. Average miles driven is what, ~13,500? Average range of a car is ~400mi? That means ~33.75 fill ups a year instead of just 25? 33.75 * 5 = 168.75 minutes, or 2.8 hours a year pumping gas. If someone can charge at home and public chargers where they're already going to be (work/shop/relax places), they might not ever even need to wait on a public charger, so 2.8 hours compared to literally 0 minutes waiting for charging.
1970-01-01 3y ago
Battery tech is expected to improve to the point of 1000km in 20 minutes. This means 5 minutes will give you about 100 miles. The larger problem is how we will safely scale grid generation to meet the demand.
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  The average EV uses about 10 kWh of power a day. The average Air Conditioner uses about 10 kWh a day. Yes, the grid will need to expand, but it shouldn't be challenging. Unless your power grid is already broken for other reasons, (cough California).
  - becurious 3y ago
    But you would charge overnight, when the Air conditioner isn’t running.
_ea1k 3y ago
An 8 stall Tesla charging station has a throughput of ~24 cars per hour. A 4 lane interstate can handle ~8k per hour. So, to support peak throughput between cities, you'd need ~2700 stalls every 100 miles or so. But this assumes 100% EVs. With current growth projections, we'd half this ~12 years from now. That seems completely doable, tbh. Cost is an interesting issue. Capital costs aren't particularly excessive, at <$1M for a typical station. Ongoing costs are dominated by demand charges rather than usage charges. Demand charges amortize better as utilization increases. If anything, today might be the peak for DCFC cost as better utilization makes lower prices potentially profitable. And, of course, the bulk of charging is always at home or a workplace on L2. TBH, people underestimate fixed costs in our grid today. It isn't clear what will happen, but I wouldn't bet on increased utilization automatically leading to higher rates. EDIT: The above DCFC analysis assumes that 100% of those vehicles will need to charge. My guess is that this is radically high, even for big travel days. Real world might need a lot fewer stalls than that.
- jancsika 3y ago
  > It isn't clear what will happen, but I wouldn't bet on increased utilization automatically leading to higher rates. Why not? Especially considering that doing this at scale means having sufficient numbers of charging stations at apartment complexes, condos, etc.
  - _ea1k 3y ago
    My electricity as $/kwh has gone down over the past 10 years. All else being equal, my bill stayed the same. That's because the fixed $/month for maintenance _doubled_. I've since added an EV increasing my usage. It costs less than it would have 10 years ago. I've seen the same thing playing out with other utilities in my state and across the country. Increased kwh consumption with relatively flat peak demand[1] means that the fixed costs of running and maintaining utilities is a smaller overall percentage of energy costs. OTOH, increased demand drives higher prices which is a conflicting factor. At DCFC it is pretty easy to work this out, as good utilization always helps. At residences, the impacts are far less clear. [1] Interestingly, the bulk of EV charging is effectively addressable demand. We are already seeing a lot of utility experimentation in this area.
darksaints 3y ago
I’m with you on this. I think the only way to build out a network at this point is with EV manufacturers or governments subsidizing the costs. You can’t turn a profit selling the electricity because the gross margins are so much lower and the real estate costs are so much higher than petroleum-based products. The amount of profit earned per parked minute is going to be exponentially lower. And the grid connections are not a trivial problem to scale. At some point you exceed the capacity of normal grid connections and you start to require higher voltage feeds and bigger transformers, and that cost is massive. And as the network grows, you’ll need to scale the number or size of substations, which is also not trivial.
itsoktocry 3y ago
>I mean, even in a small town with, say, three gas stations, there are peak times when all the spots are taken. Average fueling time is probably a few minutes. I agree, and bring this up often. During arguments about charging versus refueling, the length of time to charge your EV is significantly greater than fueling up. EV proponents say, "what's the big deal? I just set my car to charge and stretch my legs for half-an-hour". That works when EVs are 1% of the cars on the road, but not when they're 50%. During road trip season, high traffic gas stations are backed up as it is. Will we need 3-5x the infrastructure (read: "pumps") to service that level of EVs? I mean, we'll get there, but it might be annoying for a long while.
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  There is a charging station in Beijing with over 600 stalls. Yes, we might need more charging stations than gas pumps. But since a charging station + infrastructure is a lot cheaper than a gas pump + infrastructure, what's the big deal?

thrtythreeforty 3y ago

I have no data, but I suspect we underestimate the impact of at-home charging. Essentially, all vehicles parked at a residence start every day with a full charge. This eliminates most of the demand on fast-charge stations for around-town use. Granted, they still consume power that the grid has to supply, so pricing may change, but I suspect gas station traffic will go way down, in aggregate, as EV adoption climbs. One thing the government hasn't noticed yet (afaik) is that electric cars aren't taxed like gasoline cars. The per-gallon tax (which pays for important things like roads) is a substantial portion of the overall cost. Nobody factors that eventual cost in when they claim EVs are sooo much cheaper. They will probably continue to be cheaper, just less aggressively cheaper than Tesla claims.

dreamcompiler 3y ago
Oh they've definitely noticed. https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2023/05/16/texas-ev-registration-fee-abbott/70224830007/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2023/05/16/texas-e...
steveBK123 3y ago
Yup, I have had an EV for 5 years and I now fast charge on the road only about 2x/year. If you can charge at home, work, or both.. you will likely end up in a similar position.
_ea1k 3y ago
Not only have politicians noticed this, but the conniving little jerks have already started framing the problem in a way that implies EVs should be paying far more than gas cars. Many states are pushing for tag fees based upon the average revenue per gas/disel vehicle per year without regard to those vehicles MPG. Given that a lot of EVs are replacing high MPG vehicles, the formulations are incredibly unfair. But they still have a few years before EV owners are a substantial constituency, so there's a chance to jam through unfair taxation (in the false name of fairness) before that happens.
- ComputerGuru 3y ago
  > Many states are pushing for tag fees based upon the average revenue per gas/disel vehicle per year without regard to those vehicles MPG. Given that a lot of EVs are replacing high MPG vehicles, the formulations are incredibly unfair. Is it, though? Does the taxation rate matter more than the total collected per year distributed by the number of users? If you aren’t counting/won’t count miles driven, this seems like a fair alternative. The idea isn’t to tax 21 cents a gallon - that’s the implementation detail - the idea is to collect $xx billion a year to (ostensibly) pay for transportation related costs. To use a logical proof instead, assume all cars are converted to EV with the flick of a wand. Do you think your proposal would seriously last? The same amount (modulo some percentage) needs to be collected to pay for whatever costs are relying on that tax to be funded. The rate (not the total price) has to go up for EV users. Now if gas at the pump included an explicit carbon tax then absolutely, that shouldn’t be ported over to the rate EV users are charged.

abakker 3y ago

as an EV owner, I suspect the answer is: home charging. Most people with EVs can start their day with a full charge, every day, so maybe the answer is that the gas station model will be relevant to many fewer people - e.g. people who have to drive more than their range every day, people with no plugs at home, etc).

dangus 3y ago
For distance travel: yes, interstate rest stops will have a lot of chargers, many more than the number of gas pumps at those stations today. I am not sure why there’s an assumption that crowded stalls are an indicator that the whole idea of EV vehicles is going to collapse. In reality, it’s an indicator that many more new stalls are going to be built.

asynchronous 3y ago

> they are higher than current gas prices I am not aware of any electric charging station on the planet that costs more than gas does in the same area.

enragedcacti 3y ago
It's true in most of the US right now depending on how efficient either vehicle is. I can't check supercharger rates but EA pricing is mostly the same across the country: EA membership pricing: $0.36/kWh California gas prices: $4.86/gal ($4.86/gallon)/(x mpg)=$0.36/1kwh *(29kwh/100mi) x=46.6 mpg to break even with the Chevy Bolt's efficiency in the worst case scenario for gas in the US. A Prius and many other hybrid passenger cars easily beat that with mpg to spare. The Nat'l average gas price of $3.58 means your car only has to beat 34.3 mpg for fuel to be cheaper than EA membership pricing or 25.7 mpg to beat guest pricing of $0.48. If we use 24kwh/100mi for the most efficient production EV in the US at California prices the break even is 56.2 mpg, lower than the combined EPA of the most efficient hybrid (Ioniq Blue, 58 mpg). https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%28%244.86%2Fgallon%29%2F%28x+mpg%29%3D%240.36%2F1kwh+*%2829kwh%2F100mi%29\\\\\\\ https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%28%244.86%2Fgallon%29%...*
- jancsika 3y ago
  So how does something like a plug-in hybrid compare here? https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=42814 https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=42814 You've got a much smaller battery so the at-home charging cost should be less. But look at that combined mpge! They seem like a nice idea for this transitional period but it appears they are just becoming luxury vehicles that are produced in small quantities.
  - enragedcacti 3y ago
    Important to note that any appreciable amount of home charging makes it a lot harder for gas to beat EVs or PHEVs most places and my calculations above are for 100% fast charging. PHEVs are hard to calculate for because where they land between hybrids and full EVs is basically entirely dependent on the user but the upshot (ignoring emissions) is that the best PHEVs aren't much worse than the best hybrids or the best EVs so you can choose the cheapest fuel on a day-to-day basis and potentially come out ahead. https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=42814&id=42808&id=43821&id=43571 https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=42814&...

vel0city 3y ago

> How to switch that to an all-electric system? Simple, most residents of the town won't be at those stations regularly. Most of my DCFC charging sessions have been because I've been wanting to try out different locations and charging equipment, not because I needed the DCFC. In reality, the vast majority of miles my EV will do will not need any public charging infrastructure, at all. Meanwhile, 100% of the miles on my ICE will need public fueling infrastructure. I inherently need to go to a pump sometime to get gas. > But if you do this at scale electricity costs go through the roof and you're back to the same pricing problem as above I don't think its as big of a deal as you're thinking it will be. Sure, some percentage of homes out there don't have >100A service at home and will probably need some kind of upgrade to their home service necessitating new equipment up the chain. But for my household to swap out an EV? About 15 feet of power cable, a circuit breaker, a double-gang box, and a NEMA 14-50 outlet was all that was needed. My peak power usage in the house didn't change at all adding the EV. My EV uses the same amount of power as running a burner on the stove while doing my laundry (electric dryer). Meanwhile my house (and the rest of the grid up the line) was designed for me to pull enough power for me to cook in the oven, on the stove, do my laundry, run the AC, power all the lights in my house, and more. Guess what, I'm not often cooking and doing laundry at 2AM, and I probably already got my house cooled down by then so the AC isn't often cranking that hard at that time. Take a guess when my car charges. So how much did it cost the grid to add my car? $0.

itsoktocry 3y ago
>So how much did it cost the grid to add my car? $0. As you say, you are now "running the laundry and cooking" for hours at night to charge your car. How do you conclude this doesn't add cost to the grid?
- vel0city 3y ago
  It didn't take a single piece of new equipment to handle it. All of that equipment was built out to support my high demand loads, so it already existed and was ready to go. The power plants serving my house already had that capacity, the transformers could handle the load, all the lines were rated to handle far more power going to my house than the time I charge. Even if everyone on my street added an EV, it wouldn't take a single piece of new equipment to handle the load because all the equipment is already designed to handle more than that during other hours of the day. So long as people on average charge late at night or other off-peak times, it hasn't increased the peak loads on the grid at all, which is what they have to build to anyways. Sure, I'm buying energy at those hours of the night, but that's a low time of energy usage overall. So much of a low usage, spot prices at those hours in my area routinely go negative, i.e. there's so much spare energy they're giving it away. My REP makes money accepting electricity at negative rates for me to charge my car many nights of the year before even factoring in what I then pay them for it. Of course, this then figures into their overall rate contract they have for me, there's certainly hours in the day where my energy usage costs them more than what their contracted rate is for me.

dreamcompiler 3y ago

Currently the price of energy per mile at a Tesla Supercharger is about 1/3 to 1/2 the equivalent amount of gasoline. If you charge at home it's more like 1/4. A large fraction (probably more than half) of EV owners charge at home and rarely need a fast charger. Approximately zero ICE owners refuel at home. ICE cars must be refueled at gas stations. Demand for fast chargers will never be as high as demand for gas stations for this reason. Anybody with $10,000 can install PV panels and charge their EV at home for free forever. Fleet owners with $50,000 can charge their entire fleet for free forever. No impact on the grid with these latter options.

jancsika 3y ago
> Currently the price of energy per mile at a Tesla Supercharger is about 1/3 to 1/2 the equivalent amount of gasoline. Is there a citation for that? It was my understanding that fast chargers were much more expensive, but I could be wrong. > Approximately zero ICE owners refuel at home. Nor do they currently use the extra electricity needed to fuel their cars each night. Again, at scale that's going to have an effect on electricity costs. > Anybody with $10,000 can install PV panels and charge their EV at home for free forever. Edit: bonus if you have links to any youtube vids of people who have done this and are currently subsidizing the entire cost of daily commutes with solar. I don't know anything about solar and would love some citations if you have them.
- dreamcompiler 3y ago
  Here's one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG_yIcLlzYk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG_yIcLlzYk This guy has an Aussie accent but I'm pretty sure he's talking about US dollars. His numbers look accurate to me. He's estimating $5000 for charging a long-range Model 3. I think that might be a bit optimistic so I'd stick with my original estimate of $10k. Caution: I strongly suggest you buy your PV panels from a company other than Tesla. Tesla's PV business is a bit of a clusterf*ck. Just get regular PV panels and a good inverter from a local installer. If you want to charge at night, you could either install a grid-tied system with net metering (which decreases your cost of grid power), or you could install a battery just for car-charging. In that case, the Tesla Powerwall battery is a perfectly suitable option. Tesla makes great batteries, but their PV offering is overpriced and they seem to have horrible customer service.

bkmrkr 3y ago

I have a Tesla ~10k miles and have not used supercharger yet because I just plug the car in at home once a week. If you estimate total pump time. IE 35 minutes on supercharger vs 10 minutes on gas (including time to drive to station) but take into account number of times you need to actually charge up the car at a super charger. IE once every 2 months vs 3x per month, you will see that you actually spend less total time in a charger station vs gas pump.

chrisco255 3y ago
It takes like 3 minutes tops to fill up a passenger car from near 0 to 100% range. I would have to stop for gas 10 times in a single month to use 30 minutes of pump time, which, for a car with 500 mile range, would imply 5000 miles of travel in a single month, which is almost non-stop driving at 50 mph. Driving to a station is never an issue, because gas stations are ubiquitous, and found along the route you're traveling anyways.
- vel0city 3y ago
  I spend more time pumping gas for my ICE than I do waiting on my EV to charge, by hours a year. Lets say it takes 5 minutes on average to turn off to the gas station, go to the pump, pay to start the pump, get the handle into the car, actually pump the gas, return the pump handle, close it all up, get in the car, and rejoin traffic. In my testing its often more than 5 minutes from my times, but lets just say 5 to make things easy. I get gas about every other week in my ICE, so 5 minutes every other week, but I do take some vacations so lets round to a 50 week year, half of that is 25, times 5, 125. That's 125 minutes of pumping gas that I do every year. A little over 2 hours. And that's excluding any kind of road trips where I might have done several of those 5 minute stops in a single week. Guess how much time I had to spend waiting on public DCFC last year? I took a road trip and stopped for maybe 40 minutes total. Outside of that, 0 minutes. I spend more time waiting to recharge my ICE than I do my EV, by a good bit. Lets take a look at US averages though instead of just my use case. Average miles driven is what, ~13,500? Average range of a car is ~400mi? That means ~33.75 fill ups a year instead of just 25? 33.75 * 5 = 168.75 minutes, or 2.8 hours a year pumping gas. If someone can charge at home and public chargers where they're already going to be (work/shop/relax places), they might not ever even need to wait on a public charger, so 2.8 hours compared to literally 0 minutes waiting for charging.

1970-01-01 3y ago

Battery tech is expected to improve to the point of 1000km in 20 minutes. This means 5 minutes will give you about 100 miles. The larger problem is how we will safely scale grid generation to meet the demand.

bryanlarsen 3y ago
The average EV uses about 10 kWh of power a day. The average Air Conditioner uses about 10 kWh a day. Yes, the grid will need to expand, but it shouldn't be challenging. Unless your power grid is already broken for other reasons, (cough California).
- becurious 3y ago
  But you would charge overnight, when the Air conditioner isn’t running.

_ea1k 3y ago

An 8 stall Tesla charging station has a throughput of ~24 cars per hour. A 4 lane interstate can handle ~8k per hour. So, to support peak throughput between cities, you'd need ~2700 stalls every 100 miles or so. But this assumes 100% EVs. With current growth projections, we'd half this ~12 years from now. That seems completely doable, tbh. Cost is an interesting issue. Capital costs aren't particularly excessive, at <$1M for a typical station. Ongoing costs are dominated by demand charges rather than usage charges. Demand charges amortize better as utilization increases. If anything, today might be the peak for DCFC cost as better utilization makes lower prices potentially profitable. And, of course, the bulk of charging is always at home or a workplace on L2. TBH, people underestimate fixed costs in our grid today. It isn't clear what will happen, but I wouldn't bet on increased utilization automatically leading to higher rates. EDIT: The above DCFC analysis assumes that 100% of those vehicles will need to charge. My guess is that this is radically high, even for big travel days. Real world might need a lot fewer stalls than that.

jancsika 3y ago
> It isn't clear what will happen, but I wouldn't bet on increased utilization automatically leading to higher rates. Why not? Especially considering that doing this at scale means having sufficient numbers of charging stations at apartment complexes, condos, etc.
- _ea1k 3y ago
  My electricity as $/kwh has gone down over the past 10 years. All else being equal, my bill stayed the same. That's because the fixed $/month for maintenance _doubled_. I've since added an EV increasing my usage. It costs less than it would have 10 years ago. I've seen the same thing playing out with other utilities in my state and across the country. Increased kwh consumption with relatively flat peak demand[1] means that the fixed costs of running and maintaining utilities is a smaller overall percentage of energy costs. OTOH, increased demand drives higher prices which is a conflicting factor. At DCFC it is pretty easy to work this out, as good utilization always helps. At residences, the impacts are far less clear. [1] Interestingly, the bulk of EV charging is effectively addressable demand. We are already seeing a lot of utility experimentation in this area.

darksaints 3y ago

I’m with you on this. I think the only way to build out a network at this point is with EV manufacturers or governments subsidizing the costs. You can’t turn a profit selling the electricity because the gross margins are so much lower and the real estate costs are so much higher than petroleum-based products. The amount of profit earned per parked minute is going to be exponentially lower. And the grid connections are not a trivial problem to scale. At some point you exceed the capacity of normal grid connections and you start to require higher voltage feeds and bigger transformers, and that cost is massive. And as the network grows, you’ll need to scale the number or size of substations, which is also not trivial.

itsoktocry 3y ago

>I mean, even in a small town with, say, three gas stations, there are peak times when all the spots are taken. Average fueling time is probably a few minutes. I agree, and bring this up often. During arguments about charging versus refueling, the length of time to charge your EV is significantly greater than fueling up. EV proponents say, "what's the big deal? I just set my car to charge and stretch my legs for half-an-hour". That works when EVs are 1% of the cars on the road, but not when they're 50%. During road trip season, high traffic gas stations are backed up as it is. Will we need 3-5x the infrastructure (read: "pumps") to service that level of EVs? I mean, we'll get there, but it might be annoying for a long while.

bryanlarsen 3y ago
There is a charging station in Beijing with over 600 stalls. Yes, we might need more charging stations than gas pumps. But since a charging station + infrastructure is a lot cheaper than a gas pump + infrastructure, what's the big deal?