4 ms·

It's kinda impossible to answer without knowing: - your price per kWh of electricity - the car you drive and the efficiency of it - the amount you drive But

It's kinda impossible to answer without knowing: - your price per kWh of electricity - the car you drive and the efficiency of it - the amount you drive But I'll give it a go with our EV(Volkswagen e-Up). - our price for electricity at the moment is £0.16/kWh - the efficiency is about 3-4 miles/kWh most of the time, it can go as high as 6 miles/kWh in the summer. - we drive about 8000 miles per year. Based on that(and using the most pessimistic numbers for calculations), you need: 8000/3 = 2666kWh to travel per year. At 16p/kWh that's £427 per year, or about £36 per month(which is actually spot on with what I see on my bills). As to how that compares with an ICE.......a petrol Volkswagen UP gets about 6L/100km(6L/60 miles - I'm using that unit for simplicity of calculation so we don't have to mess with gallons. And yes 6L/100km is a big high for the UP, but I'm using pessimistic numbers again). So assuming that 6L/100km, you would need (8000/60)*6 = 800 litres of fuel to cover 8000 miles per year. At the average cost of £1.40/litre it would cost us £1210 in fuel alone to drive for a year(or about £100 per month). So just in fuel vs Electricity alone, the e-Up is about 3x times as cheap as a petrol one. And the servicing is much cheaper, and it doesn't really use consumables like brake pads, they will last a lot longer. On the other hand I've noticed it uses tyres quite quickly(at 10k miles fronts were down to 3mm, which is a good point to replace them), so it might end up being a wash. And yes, we are lucky that - we can charge at home - our home tariff is pretty cheap If we could only charge at public charging points(which at the moment are usually all £0.50/kWh if not more), then that entire saving would disappear, and it would probably be cheaper to drive a petrol version of the same car.

_ea1k 3y ago
> It's kinda impossible to answer without knowing: TBH, I'm kind of amazed at the way people talk about electricity. It seems like about twice a year I see a couple of threads on local Facebook groups about how much electricity has gone up. Once after the coldest month, and again after the hottest month. I like to ask their $/kwh, and I've never once gotten an answer. But the US is sort of backward in general. I use an energy coop where how much my car costs to charge is directly affected by how much insulation I have in my attic.
- ryandrake 3y ago
  Electric companies have gotten very good at hiding and obfuscating their $/kwh. I can tell you instantly how expensive auto gasoline is in my area because prices are written in giant numbers on billboards next to each station. If you wanted me to quote my electricity costs, I’d have to scrutinize 12 months of bills, find the numbers in the small print, do some averaging because the cost varies throughout the day and has a complex tier system, then do more averaging across the year.
  - SoftTalker 3y ago
    Interesting, the cost per kW⋅h is clearly included on my electric bill. I had assumed that was a regulatory requirement. But I have a flat rate electric service. I could see that if you have demand-based or time-of-day rates it would be complicated to express anything other than an overall average cost per kW⋅h .
    - gambiting 3y ago
      We used to be on a tariff where the cost could change every 30 minutes, in theory it meant that you could get very cheap electricity because the cost was directly linked to local demand, I've seen it where at night it was going into negative numbers(so they were paying us to use electricity), but at peak times it could be absolutely brutal too, you had to be careful and really monitor it almost real-time. We've since changed to a tariff where the cost changes daily, but the cost for the next day is announced around 1pm the day before, so I can plan things like charging my car or running appliances depending on what the tomorrow's cost is going to be.
    - WorldMaker 3y ago
      Keep in mind that especially in the US every state has different regulatory requirements for electricity and some states are better than others at forcing transparency in their utility's processes.
    - _ea1k 3y ago
      It isn't that complicated. Just separate them into line items. off-peak == 1,234 kwh @ $.07/kwh, total: x on-peak == 242 kwh @ $.29/kwh, total: y

_ea1k 3y ago

> It's kinda impossible to answer without knowing: TBH, I'm kind of amazed at the way people talk about electricity. It seems like about twice a year I see a couple of threads on local Facebook groups about how much electricity has gone up. Once after the coldest month, and again after the hottest month. I like to ask their $/kwh, and I've never once gotten an answer. But the US is sort of backward in general. I use an energy coop where how much my car costs to charge is directly affected by how much insulation I have in my attic.

ryandrake 3y ago
Electric companies have gotten very good at hiding and obfuscating their $/kwh. I can tell you instantly how expensive auto gasoline is in my area because prices are written in giant numbers on billboards next to each station. If you wanted me to quote my electricity costs, I’d have to scrutinize 12 months of bills, find the numbers in the small print, do some averaging because the cost varies throughout the day and has a complex tier system, then do more averaging across the year.
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  Interesting, the cost per kW⋅h is clearly included on my electric bill. I had assumed that was a regulatory requirement. But I have a flat rate electric service. I could see that if you have demand-based or time-of-day rates it would be complicated to express anything other than an overall average cost per kW⋅h .
  - gambiting 3y ago
    We used to be on a tariff where the cost could change every 30 minutes, in theory it meant that you could get very cheap electricity because the cost was directly linked to local demand, I've seen it where at night it was going into negative numbers(so they were paying us to use electricity), but at peak times it could be absolutely brutal too, you had to be careful and really monitor it almost real-time. We've since changed to a tariff where the cost changes daily, but the cost for the next day is announced around 1pm the day before, so I can plan things like charging my car or running appliances depending on what the tomorrow's cost is going to be.
  - WorldMaker 3y ago
    Keep in mind that especially in the US every state has different regulatory requirements for electricity and some states are better than others at forcing transparency in their utility's processes.
  - _ea1k 3y ago
    It isn't that complicated. Just separate them into line items. off-peak == 1,234 kwh @ $.07/kwh, total: x on-peak == 242 kwh @ $.29/kwh, total: y