13 ms·

EV charging stations shouldn't be making money yet! In my neck of the woods Electrify America prices are around $.64 / kw. I am still on the free plan but if I

EV charging stations shouldn't be making money yet! In my neck of the woods Electrify America prices are around $.64 / kw. I am still on the free plan but if I was paying for that a fill up from 20-80% that would be ~ $30. GAS IS THAT CHEAP for that amount of energy, effectively. How can we get the middle majority off of gas vehicles if, effectively, gas ends up being cheaper and more convenient? If we really care about climate change, Electric vehicles and infrastructure should be incredible not profitable for 10+ years. We need more incentives and ways so the focus is on expansion of infrastructure, not profitability.

consp 3y ago
> $.64 / kw At these prices it's even cheaper to buy gas in the most expensive places in Europe (it you do not have a gas guzzler).
notyourwork 3y ago
Subsidies are the way but that requires majority alignment which seems unlikely in the political climate.
- burkaman 3y ago
  The IRA already got this started, it's certainly achievable: https://apnews.com/article/electric-vehicle-charging-station-biden-buttigieg-infrastructure-5b5c7708f98fa30a50837d92a205fcc2 https://apnews.com/article/electric-vehicle-charging-station...
- ryandrake 3y ago
  It will be tough to get the public on the side of taxing gas to subsidize electric charging. At least where I am, Teslas and other fancy electric cars are still seen as a "rich person's flex." Poor and middle class people tend to drive gas cars and rich people tend to drive electric. So asking people to vote to increase gasoline tax on themselves so that a few rich EV owners can be subsidized--you can imagine how that will go down.
verisimi 3y ago
You want people's taxes to subsidise cheap charging. Of course you are fine with taxes on gas. I guess whatever the state says, goes. Reality be damned. The state's reality be blessed.
- harshaw 3y ago
  I would like the earth to not get Warmer. full stop.
  - realreality 3y ago
    If that's the case, EVs aren't the answer, either. Industrial civilization must stop. full stop.
    - OkayPhysicist 3y ago
      That's doomer nonsense parroting Big Oil propaganda. Mass electrification, a mixed grid of nuclear and renewables, and some concerted, but far from unachievable, investment into carbon capture (burying charcoal) could easily get us to a "not making things any worse" level.
      - realreality 3y ago
        Industrial civilization is a lifestyle that can never be sustainable. I'm not "parroting Big Oil propaganda". They're one of the worst culprits, who managed to addict us to cheap energy. Now everybody expects access to cars, planes, and electric grids, no matter how destructive they are.
        OkayPhysicist 3y ago
        The oil companies have realized they're losing the fight on "global warming doesn't exist". That just leaves "global warming is bad, but giving up on fossil fuels would be worse", which is exactly what you're (presumably unintentionally) spreading. The whole reason anyone should care about climate change is that it's going to make life worse for ourselves and our descendants. If your pitch for addressing climate change is "let's make our lives worse, proactively", then you're never going to win popular support. Good messaging is "We can make our lives better, and give future generations the opportunity for even better lives, without fossil fuels". Anything else is inadvertently advocating for nihilistic hedonism as the world burns.
emacsen 3y ago
So long as the incentives to build and maintain charge stations is private, then profit needs to be on the horizon for operators. What doesn't have to be on the horizon is high cost for consumers, because you're absolutely right that concern over charging stations is a drag on EV adoption. There are grants to build EV charging stations, but what's less clear to me are operation grants. Ideally we'd see grants for operation that cover the majority of the cost for a period of time, reduce consumer cost and reward good operation (most stations being open, etc.) We'd also ideally see incentives for solar installations or other green energy offsets for EV charging stations with grants that phase out. Grants also would ideally be more about distance from existing charging stations, to incentivize spreading out chargers and rewarding "first movers". There are still lots of issues with chargers from an operator perspective. While electricity is cheap and cheaper to run than building a gas station, the operating expenses are still there when it comes to maintenance and security, and there's the fact that charging takes significantly longer than filling a tank with gasoline, meaning that one needs more space to service the same number of vehicles. Some costs do need to be handed back to the consumer, such as cost of using the space at a charging station. If not, then they could become de-facto parking lots.
- WorldMaker 3y ago
  > Some costs do need to be handed back to the consumer, such as cost of using the space at a charging station. If not, then they could become de-facto parking lots. Vice versa, too. If a parking lot already charges $15/hour, it seems like an extra hidden fee if charging also costs an additional $2/hour. As charging becomes more common it makes more sense to roll the costs together into a single advertised price. > there's the fact that charging takes significantly longer than filling a tank with gasoline, meaning that one needs more space to service the same number of vehicles. Though all of that space doesn't need to be in the same sorts of places. Home and destination charging shake up the need for centralized "stations". Cars already spend most of their time parked, electrifying more existing parking lots and garages where cars already spend most of their time should be common sense. (And if it happens to economically profitable that should just make easy economic sense, circling back to the topic in the article. We probably need to make L1 and L2 destination charging "just profitable enough" without high cost for consumers, too.)
xnx 3y ago
Most of the money in non-Tesla charging stations was in collecting government subsidies to install them. There's no incentive to see them utilized or even keep them working.
- jauntywundrkind 3y ago
  Last year there was a big update, creating a National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Standards and Requirements trust anyone getting federal money needs to meet. Reliability requirements are added, and chargers need public realtime & historical status reporting, so consumers can make informed choices about charging. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/02/28/2023-03500/national-electric-vehicle-infrastructure-standards-and-requirements https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/02/28/2023-03...
nrr 3y ago
The challenge is balancing competing incentives: you need the infrastructure to be built, but you also need people to consider EVs as their next vehicles. The additional challenge is building the trust in the infrastructure required to make a lot of folks, myself included, satisfied that they'll be able to charge when they need to. My experience here in the Bay Area is that it's hit-or-miss as to whether the chargers actually work, let alone whether they're duly occupied for that purpose. With some hope, now that there's a potential for profit motive, we'll start seeing the level of service improve to meet expectations as required to make people like me migrate away from burning hydrocarbons. I very desperately want to like EVs, but so far, the appetite hasn't been there because of issues, nay, subscriptions like this.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  It's why Tesla built Superchargers; no one would buy EVs if they were beholden to non Tesla fast DC charging financial fundamentals and user experience. Electrify America built their network as part of VW's Dieselgate settlement. They had no incentive to make it work, only to spend the money and build it. https://supercharge.info/map https://supercharge.info/map https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-superchargers-us-dc-ev-fast-charger-ramp/ https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-superchargers-us-dc-ev-fast-... https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/12/13/electrify-america-ev-charger-broken/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/12/1...
  - nrr 3y ago
    Bingo, but Tesla also likely wouldn't have built those without sizable grants to do so, just as Electrify America did with settlement money. I'm unsure whether that's a high-enough margin part of their business to warrant that kind of outlay for charging infrastructure otherwise. It minimally isn't something I'd build out as a loss leader unless I had additional financial support to make it work.
    - toomuchtodo 3y ago
      Tesla spent ~$1B of their own capital to build the global network without including subsidies.
ezfe 3y ago
Yes, you're completely correct that 64¢/kWh is more expensive than a similar sized gas car. A Toyota Corolla has an annual fuel cost of $1,000 versus a Hyundai IONIQ 6 at $2,250 (using 64¢/kWh and $3.27/gal). But home charging (18.5¢/kWh for me) or L2 charging at a workplace is much cheaper and can bring that cost down from $2,250 to <$700/yr.
- slashdev 3y ago
  I think the reality is that most people home charge. You typically only use fast chargers when you go on road trips, or do an unusual amount of driving.
  - harshaw 3y ago
    Sure. I home charge. But many American's drive for work. Trades people, people going on vacation, sales people. Many vehicles can't just charge at home. Because there is no home, or apartments, or whatever. Get out on the road and see the broad mix of vehicles out there. I see tons of people flying down the road in F-150s getting maybe 8 / mpg. Those people - and those are most of the people out there - will never move to electric vehicles unless it is so fucking easy to charge, gas has to be prohibitively expensive, and you can charge anywhere and not think about it.
    - comte7092 3y ago
      > many American's drive for work. Trades people, people going on vacation, sales people. There’s something that doesn’t seem to belong on that list.
    - nradov 3y ago
      You're way off with Ford F-150 fuel economy. The least efficient new model has a combined fuel economy of 16 mpg and would only get down in the 8 mpg range when towing a heavy trailer. Even the older models didn't burn 8 mpg in normal use.
      - 3y ago
SoftTalker 3y ago
In the end they are selling you BTUs which limits how much price difference there can be. Diesel used to be a lot cheaper than gasoline because it was something of a waste product: the refining process produced an oversupply. Refining technology improved and now we can make more gasoline and less diesel from a barrel of oil. So diesel has become more expensive, but roughly equivalent to gasoline if you consider the energy content per gallon.
thelastgallon 3y ago
Nearly everyone can charge at home. EV charging is for those rare trips when you need to top up. Like drinking water at home (home charging) vs water bottle from a vending machine, $1.50.
- nradov 3y ago
  I'm surprised to still see such uninformed claims. Many drivers have no practical way to charge at home due to lack of an available garage or even a dedicated parking space where a charger can be installed. The available of chargers in places like apartment complex parking lots and street spaces will gradually improve over time but this will take decades until "nearly everyone can charge at home." The availability of reliable high speed chargers in other places will be crucial for EV adoption. Last time I had an EV rental car, multiple chargers that I tried to use simply didn't work at all.
  - consp 3y ago
    As a bonus the public chargers are about 2-4x as expensive as home charging (at least where I live), and that is without possibilities like solar power etc.
- consp 3y ago
  > Nearly everyone can charge at home. People living in cities would most likely not agree with you, which is more than half of the world population.
  - vel0city 3y ago
    The majority of the US population lives in a single-family home or a duplex. These can almost always be easily upgraded to have home charging.
    - r00fus 3y ago
      About 35% of the US population lives in an apartment. Without that population you're never going to get mainstream EV adoption.
comte7092 3y ago
Fast chargers are the luxury fuel of EVs. I don’t know where you are located, but I’d have to imagine your residential utility rates are a fraction of Electrify Americas rates. Cars spend most of their time sitting around, the real infrastructure gap is that we don’t have enough cheap slow chargers located where they usually end up sitting: home, work, shopping centers, etc.
- bluescrn 3y ago
  > Fast chargers are the luxury fuel of EVs. More importantly, EVs are currently a luxury product. Seemingly built like other popular luxury products, too (designed to be hard/expensive to repair). We shouldn't be building EVs as if they were disposable smartphones, intended to be upgraded as soon as the screen gets cracked or the battery degrades somewhat. Something big needs to change if we want to see wider adoption of EVs, and overpriced EV 'fuel' certainly won't help. The wealthy with large suburban homes can charge at home no problem. But not everyone can afford to have their own personal parking/charging space, so may be forced to use overpriced public chargers.
  - comte7092 3y ago
    For reference, I live in an apartment and charge largely at work on a 3 KW charger. (For those who are unfamiliar a “fast” charger is over 50 KW and often rated for up to 150 or 350 KW speeds)
  - OkayPhysicist 3y ago
    I bought my Chevy Bolt new for $28k. With the cheapest new ICEs going for about ~$20k, that's hardly a "luxury product". And I don't really see your "hard to repair" argument: There's very few parts of my vehicle that could conceivably wear out, and most of them can be repaired trivially. The only big one is the battery, and that represents ~2/3 of the value of the vehicle. It's like an engine dying: the car's totaled. And you don't need a "large suburban home". Even the most cramped townhouse has a driveway you can run a cord from the house to. It's just apartment complexes that have this problem. If you don't have somewhere to charge your car overnight, EVs aren't practical at the moment, and no amount of subsidizing public charging could change that.
jabart 3y ago
Local, from the pole, rates are $0.12/kw. You're not pay $0.64/kw for electricity, you're paying that for the charger, the lack of full time usage, repairs, etc. A gallon of gasoline in the US is heavily optimized AND, Electrify America would not be a business without it charging a price comparable to filling up a tank of gas. Charging at home is the cost savings, charging while road-tripping has a convivence fee attached to the ability to charge.
- harshaw 3y ago
  of course. But people - real people - will compare DC Fast Charges with traditional gas stations. So you aren't really doing a fair comparison here. Let me put it another way - do we think that getting people to convert from ICE to EVs will only view fast charging as a convenience? or will they view it as a necessity? In the fullness of time we can view DC fast charging as a luxury, but not right now (which is my point I suppose)
  - cogman10 3y ago
    This is more an education/propaganda problem. The issue is we have anti-ev articles, blogs, newscasts, magazines that take every opportunity to try and find a "gotcha" for why EVs are actually the worst thing ever. DCFC will (probably) never be as fast or as convenient as gas. However, gas will never be less time consuming or as cheap as idle charging.
  - jabart 3y ago
    Like the other comment says, it's an education problem. Gas Stations used to not be the thing is is now. Our neighbor had the big glass fuel pump in their garage when you used to fill up a ICE car in your garage. Gas stations won except for commercial locations that still have that tank because it's convenient. There are mix of personas. Friend of mine was loaned an EV and didn't have a charger. They changed their habits to go grocery shopping at a place with an EV charger. Since they were there for 30-45 minutes, lower rate. That was a shift in perspective which is the issue here. The person doing a cannonball run across the US will never buy an EV and that's ok too. People are not great at doing a full comparison. I'm sure people who have a Costco card never consider the price of membership into their gallon of gas pricing which is where educating future EV owners come in. Charging at home is cheap, charging while on a road trip you are trading time/money like a toll road. Rates will go down over time and I'm waiting for a Buccees sized EV charging stop where you have the time to stop.
vlovich123 3y ago
Here in SF, electricity prices are $0.41/kWh while gas is ~$4.0-6.0 (depending on time of year and whether you are filling up regular or premium). So even $0.64/kWh seems quite competitive in California and gas prices are unlikely to lower until relations with Russia normalize and sanctions lift (seems unlikely but a Trump victory might change things). People make these kinds of decisions based on the feeling of conditions today + people also care about the environment and view electric cars as better for that (i.e. multiple decision axis and the price of the EV is going to matter more than the cost of fuel).
- nradov 3y ago
  Sanctions on Russia and US presidential politics have no significant impact on gasoline prices in California. Russian petroleum exports haven't been cut off, just redirected towards neutral countries like India and China. Crude oil is a (mostly) fungible commodity so from a world market standpoint it doesn't matter where the oil is going as long as it gets out somewhere. The USA didn't import much Russian oil even before the war. Gas prices are high in California almost entirely due to state government policies: taxes are the highest in the country, no new refineries have been approved for many years, and the CARB mandates a unique blend which isn't produced in significant quantities anywhere else (and which does little or nothing to reduce overall pollution relative to other blends). https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/fuels-enforcment-program/california-reformulated-gasoline https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/fuels-enforcment-pr... https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/state-gas-tax-rates-2023/ https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/state-gas-tax-rates... Longer term we might see some reduction in Russian crude oil exports because they have been under investing in exploration and infrastructure maintenance. Their system is slowly breaking down without the support they used to receive from more competent foreign oil companies. But that isn't impacting the current market yet.
  - vlovich123 3y ago
    And yet Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent gasoline and crude up: https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-gas-prices-expensive-11646767172 https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-gas-prices-expensive-116467... https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2023/10/the-ukraine-wars-effects-on-us-commodity-prices/ https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2023/10/the-ukraine-wars-eff... There’s also been global inflation since then for various reasons, not least of which is that destabilization in Europe has ripple effects. It’s not the sole reason, but it’s a big one and energy markets are tied even if the commodity is different (e.g cut off natural gas to Europe & their demand for other sources of energy goes up & higher prices there means higher prices for their goods and refineries). Prices have come down because Biden released strategic oil reserves to combat higher prices. Your explanations explain why gas is higher in California than the rest of the country, but fails to explain why it’s also higher US-wide and globally. And yes, it does matter how the fungible commodity gets out - if India / China were a better price, Russia would have been sending their crude there in the first place. That means India / China is more expensive whether it’s because it has to be shipped a longer and more expensive route or because the partner’s form of payment is not as valuable (e.g. Russia tried accepting the Rupee for oil payments for a while but has since stopped). So yes, while there are headwinds that mitigate the impact, there is still a negative impact to price. Anyway, my main point was that there are geographic locales where EVs are cheaper regardless of whatever local and geopolitical factors are involved.
dghlsakjg 3y ago
It surprises me that coffee shops, restaurants and rest stops haven't picked up on the gas station model of fuel/energy as loss leader/sold at cost, and making the money on a captive audience. Hell, even local business groups should be trying to get them on main streets of small towns. I'm not an EV owner, but I would definitely plan my charging around meal stops if I knew that some restaurant always had chargers for customers. I always see EV chargers put in spots that I would never want to spend 30 minutes.
- drewnick 3y ago
  Problem is, slow chargers are not fast enough to attract customers, and fast chargers are about $100k (an expensive loss leader) + maintenance.
  - dghlsakjg 3y ago
    Gotcha. Otoh, a gas pump install is in that range. I know that the non-profit that manages my local airport had to pay around $50k CAD to get a new cardlock system, and that didn't even include the pumps.
turtlebits 3y ago
Controversial take, but if you have an EV, should do most of your charging at home. If you're taking a trip sure, you'll have to pay more for charging stations, but in general, travel always costs more (food, housing, etc).
- lambdasquirrel 3y ago
  It depends. In California and all the sunshine belt states, it probably makes more sense to charge at work, in the long run.
  - r00fus 3y ago
    "it probably makes more sense" - only if your workplace cares about retention.
  - vel0city 3y ago
    With the large amount of wind energy in Texas the best time to start charging is like 1-2AM. You still have tons of wind energy, but the demand has fallen considerably. This is usually the time where Texas experiences negative wholesale electric rates. Sure, there's lots of solar potential during the day, but that's also the peak energy use by a good amount. You're already wanting solar to smooth out that curve instead of making that demand peak even peakier.
sowbug 3y ago
If we really care about climate change, Electric vehicles and infrastructure should be incredible not profitable for 10+ years If we really cared about climate change, might consumers also bear at least some of that lack of profitability? Maybe it costs us a few more cents per mile for the next 10 years to bootstrap the world into sustainable transportation.

consp 3y ago

> $.64 / kw At these prices it's even cheaper to buy gas in the most expensive places in Europe (it you do not have a gas guzzler).

notyourwork 3y ago

Subsidies are the way but that requires majority alignment which seems unlikely in the political climate.

burkaman 3y ago
The IRA already got this started, it's certainly achievable: https://apnews.com/article/electric-vehicle-charging-station-biden-buttigieg-infrastructure-5b5c7708f98fa30a50837d92a205fcc2 https://apnews.com/article/electric-vehicle-charging-station...
ryandrake 3y ago
It will be tough to get the public on the side of taxing gas to subsidize electric charging. At least where I am, Teslas and other fancy electric cars are still seen as a "rich person's flex." Poor and middle class people tend to drive gas cars and rich people tend to drive electric. So asking people to vote to increase gasoline tax on themselves so that a few rich EV owners can be subsidized--you can imagine how that will go down.

verisimi 3y ago

You want people's taxes to subsidise cheap charging. Of course you are fine with taxes on gas. I guess whatever the state says, goes. Reality be damned. The state's reality be blessed.

harshaw 3y ago
I would like the earth to not get Warmer. full stop.
- realreality 3y ago
  If that's the case, EVs aren't the answer, either. Industrial civilization must stop. full stop.
  - OkayPhysicist 3y ago
    That's doomer nonsense parroting Big Oil propaganda. Mass electrification, a mixed grid of nuclear and renewables, and some concerted, but far from unachievable, investment into carbon capture (burying charcoal) could easily get us to a "not making things any worse" level.
    - realreality 3y ago
      Industrial civilization is a lifestyle that can never be sustainable. I'm not "parroting Big Oil propaganda". They're one of the worst culprits, who managed to addict us to cheap energy. Now everybody expects access to cars, planes, and electric grids, no matter how destructive they are.
      - OkayPhysicist 3y ago
        The oil companies have realized they're losing the fight on "global warming doesn't exist". That just leaves "global warming is bad, but giving up on fossil fuels would be worse", which is exactly what you're (presumably unintentionally) spreading. The whole reason anyone should care about climate change is that it's going to make life worse for ourselves and our descendants. If your pitch for addressing climate change is "let's make our lives worse, proactively", then you're never going to win popular support. Good messaging is "We can make our lives better, and give future generations the opportunity for even better lives, without fossil fuels". Anything else is inadvertently advocating for nihilistic hedonism as the world burns.

emacsen 3y ago

So long as the incentives to build and maintain charge stations is private, then profit needs to be on the horizon for operators. What doesn't have to be on the horizon is high cost for consumers, because you're absolutely right that concern over charging stations is a drag on EV adoption. There are grants to build EV charging stations, but what's less clear to me are operation grants. Ideally we'd see grants for operation that cover the majority of the cost for a period of time, reduce consumer cost and reward good operation (most stations being open, etc.) We'd also ideally see incentives for solar installations or other green energy offsets for EV charging stations with grants that phase out. Grants also would ideally be more about distance from existing charging stations, to incentivize spreading out chargers and rewarding "first movers". There are still lots of issues with chargers from an operator perspective. While electricity is cheap and cheaper to run than building a gas station, the operating expenses are still there when it comes to maintenance and security, and there's the fact that charging takes significantly longer than filling a tank with gasoline, meaning that one needs more space to service the same number of vehicles. Some costs do need to be handed back to the consumer, such as cost of using the space at a charging station. If not, then they could become de-facto parking lots.

WorldMaker 3y ago
> Some costs do need to be handed back to the consumer, such as cost of using the space at a charging station. If not, then they could become de-facto parking lots. Vice versa, too. If a parking lot already charges $15/hour, it seems like an extra hidden fee if charging also costs an additional $2/hour. As charging becomes more common it makes more sense to roll the costs together into a single advertised price. > there's the fact that charging takes significantly longer than filling a tank with gasoline, meaning that one needs more space to service the same number of vehicles. Though all of that space doesn't need to be in the same sorts of places. Home and destination charging shake up the need for centralized "stations". Cars already spend most of their time parked, electrifying more existing parking lots and garages where cars already spend most of their time should be common sense. (And if it happens to economically profitable that should just make easy economic sense, circling back to the topic in the article. We probably need to make L1 and L2 destination charging "just profitable enough" without high cost for consumers, too.)

xnx 3y ago

Most of the money in non-Tesla charging stations was in collecting government subsidies to install them. There's no incentive to see them utilized or even keep them working.

jauntywundrkind 3y ago
Last year there was a big update, creating a National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Standards and Requirements trust anyone getting federal money needs to meet. Reliability requirements are added, and chargers need public realtime & historical status reporting, so consumers can make informed choices about charging. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/02/28/2023-03500/national-electric-vehicle-infrastructure-standards-and-requirements https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/02/28/2023-03...

nrr 3y ago

The challenge is balancing competing incentives: you need the infrastructure to be built, but you also need people to consider EVs as their next vehicles. The additional challenge is building the trust in the infrastructure required to make a lot of folks, myself included, satisfied that they'll be able to charge when they need to. My experience here in the Bay Area is that it's hit-or-miss as to whether the chargers actually work, let alone whether they're duly occupied for that purpose. With some hope, now that there's a potential for profit motive, we'll start seeing the level of service improve to meet expectations as required to make people like me migrate away from burning hydrocarbons. I very desperately want to like EVs, but so far, the appetite hasn't been there because of issues, nay, subscriptions like this.

toomuchtodo 3y ago
It's why Tesla built Superchargers; no one would buy EVs if they were beholden to non Tesla fast DC charging financial fundamentals and user experience. Electrify America built their network as part of VW's Dieselgate settlement. They had no incentive to make it work, only to spend the money and build it. https://supercharge.info/map https://supercharge.info/map https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-superchargers-us-dc-ev-fast-charger-ramp/ https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-superchargers-us-dc-ev-fast-... https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/12/13/electrify-america-ev-charger-broken/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/12/1...
- nrr 3y ago
  Bingo, but Tesla also likely wouldn't have built those without sizable grants to do so, just as Electrify America did with settlement money. I'm unsure whether that's a high-enough margin part of their business to warrant that kind of outlay for charging infrastructure otherwise. It minimally isn't something I'd build out as a loss leader unless I had additional financial support to make it work.
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    Tesla spent ~$1B of their own capital to build the global network without including subsidies.

ezfe 3y ago

Yes, you're completely correct that 64¢/kWh is more expensive than a similar sized gas car. A Toyota Corolla has an annual fuel cost of $1,000 versus a Hyundai IONIQ 6 at $2,250 (using 64¢/kWh and $3.27/gal). But home charging (18.5¢/kWh for me) or L2 charging at a workplace is much cheaper and can bring that cost down from $2,250 to <$700/yr.

slashdev 3y ago
I think the reality is that most people home charge. You typically only use fast chargers when you go on road trips, or do an unusual amount of driving.
- harshaw 3y ago
  Sure. I home charge. But many American's drive for work. Trades people, people going on vacation, sales people. Many vehicles can't just charge at home. Because there is no home, or apartments, or whatever. Get out on the road and see the broad mix of vehicles out there. I see tons of people flying down the road in F-150s getting maybe 8 / mpg. Those people - and those are most of the people out there - will never move to electric vehicles unless it is so fucking easy to charge, gas has to be prohibitively expensive, and you can charge anywhere and not think about it.
  - comte7092 3y ago
    > many American's drive for work. Trades people, people going on vacation, sales people. There’s something that doesn’t seem to belong on that list.
  - nradov 3y ago
    You're way off with Ford F-150 fuel economy. The least efficient new model has a combined fuel economy of 16 mpg and would only get down in the 8 mpg range when towing a heavy trailer. Even the older models didn't burn 8 mpg in normal use.
    - 3y ago

SoftTalker 3y ago

In the end they are selling you BTUs which limits how much price difference there can be. Diesel used to be a lot cheaper than gasoline because it was something of a waste product: the refining process produced an oversupply. Refining technology improved and now we can make more gasoline and less diesel from a barrel of oil. So diesel has become more expensive, but roughly equivalent to gasoline if you consider the energy content per gallon.

thelastgallon 3y ago

Nearly everyone can charge at home. EV charging is for those rare trips when you need to top up. Like drinking water at home (home charging) vs water bottle from a vending machine, $1.50.

nradov 3y ago
I'm surprised to still see such uninformed claims. Many drivers have no practical way to charge at home due to lack of an available garage or even a dedicated parking space where a charger can be installed. The available of chargers in places like apartment complex parking lots and street spaces will gradually improve over time but this will take decades until "nearly everyone can charge at home." The availability of reliable high speed chargers in other places will be crucial for EV adoption. Last time I had an EV rental car, multiple chargers that I tried to use simply didn't work at all.
- consp 3y ago
  As a bonus the public chargers are about 2-4x as expensive as home charging (at least where I live), and that is without possibilities like solar power etc.
consp 3y ago
> Nearly everyone can charge at home. People living in cities would most likely not agree with you, which is more than half of the world population.
- vel0city 3y ago
  The majority of the US population lives in a single-family home or a duplex. These can almost always be easily upgraded to have home charging.
  - r00fus 3y ago
    About 35% of the US population lives in an apartment. Without that population you're never going to get mainstream EV adoption.

comte7092 3y ago

Fast chargers are the luxury fuel of EVs. I don’t know where you are located, but I’d have to imagine your residential utility rates are a fraction of Electrify Americas rates. Cars spend most of their time sitting around, the real infrastructure gap is that we don’t have enough cheap slow chargers located where they usually end up sitting: home, work, shopping centers, etc.

bluescrn 3y ago
> Fast chargers are the luxury fuel of EVs. More importantly, EVs are currently a luxury product. Seemingly built like other popular luxury products, too (designed to be hard/expensive to repair). We shouldn't be building EVs as if they were disposable smartphones, intended to be upgraded as soon as the screen gets cracked or the battery degrades somewhat. Something big needs to change if we want to see wider adoption of EVs, and overpriced EV 'fuel' certainly won't help. The wealthy with large suburban homes can charge at home no problem. But not everyone can afford to have their own personal parking/charging space, so may be forced to use overpriced public chargers.
- comte7092 3y ago
  For reference, I live in an apartment and charge largely at work on a 3 KW charger. (For those who are unfamiliar a “fast” charger is over 50 KW and often rated for up to 150 or 350 KW speeds)
- OkayPhysicist 3y ago
  I bought my Chevy Bolt new for $28k. With the cheapest new ICEs going for about ~$20k, that's hardly a "luxury product". And I don't really see your "hard to repair" argument: There's very few parts of my vehicle that could conceivably wear out, and most of them can be repaired trivially. The only big one is the battery, and that represents ~2/3 of the value of the vehicle. It's like an engine dying: the car's totaled. And you don't need a "large suburban home". Even the most cramped townhouse has a driveway you can run a cord from the house to. It's just apartment complexes that have this problem. If you don't have somewhere to charge your car overnight, EVs aren't practical at the moment, and no amount of subsidizing public charging could change that.

jabart 3y ago

Local, from the pole, rates are $0.12/kw. You're not pay $0.64/kw for electricity, you're paying that for the charger, the lack of full time usage, repairs, etc. A gallon of gasoline in the US is heavily optimized AND, Electrify America would not be a business without it charging a price comparable to filling up a tank of gas. Charging at home is the cost savings, charging while road-tripping has a convivence fee attached to the ability to charge.

harshaw 3y ago
of course. But people - real people - will compare DC Fast Charges with traditional gas stations. So you aren't really doing a fair comparison here. Let me put it another way - do we think that getting people to convert from ICE to EVs will only view fast charging as a convenience? or will they view it as a necessity? In the fullness of time we can view DC fast charging as a luxury, but not right now (which is my point I suppose)
- cogman10 3y ago
  This is more an education/propaganda problem. The issue is we have anti-ev articles, blogs, newscasts, magazines that take every opportunity to try and find a "gotcha" for why EVs are actually the worst thing ever. DCFC will (probably) never be as fast or as convenient as gas. However, gas will never be less time consuming or as cheap as idle charging.
- jabart 3y ago
  Like the other comment says, it's an education problem. Gas Stations used to not be the thing is is now. Our neighbor had the big glass fuel pump in their garage when you used to fill up a ICE car in your garage. Gas stations won except for commercial locations that still have that tank because it's convenient. There are mix of personas. Friend of mine was loaned an EV and didn't have a charger. They changed their habits to go grocery shopping at a place with an EV charger. Since they were there for 30-45 minutes, lower rate. That was a shift in perspective which is the issue here. The person doing a cannonball run across the US will never buy an EV and that's ok too. People are not great at doing a full comparison. I'm sure people who have a Costco card never consider the price of membership into their gallon of gas pricing which is where educating future EV owners come in. Charging at home is cheap, charging while on a road trip you are trading time/money like a toll road. Rates will go down over time and I'm waiting for a Buccees sized EV charging stop where you have the time to stop.

vlovich123 3y ago

Here in SF, electricity prices are $0.41/kWh while gas is ~$4.0-6.0 (depending on time of year and whether you are filling up regular or premium). So even $0.64/kWh seems quite competitive in California and gas prices are unlikely to lower until relations with Russia normalize and sanctions lift (seems unlikely but a Trump victory might change things). People make these kinds of decisions based on the feeling of conditions today + people also care about the environment and view electric cars as better for that (i.e. multiple decision axis and the price of the EV is going to matter more than the cost of fuel).

nradov 3y ago
Sanctions on Russia and US presidential politics have no significant impact on gasoline prices in California. Russian petroleum exports haven't been cut off, just redirected towards neutral countries like India and China. Crude oil is a (mostly) fungible commodity so from a world market standpoint it doesn't matter where the oil is going as long as it gets out somewhere. The USA didn't import much Russian oil even before the war. Gas prices are high in California almost entirely due to state government policies: taxes are the highest in the country, no new refineries have been approved for many years, and the CARB mandates a unique blend which isn't produced in significant quantities anywhere else (and which does little or nothing to reduce overall pollution relative to other blends). https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/fuels-enforcment-program/california-reformulated-gasoline https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/fuels-enforcment-pr... https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/state-gas-tax-rates-2023/ https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/state-gas-tax-rates... Longer term we might see some reduction in Russian crude oil exports because they have been under investing in exploration and infrastructure maintenance. Their system is slowly breaking down without the support they used to receive from more competent foreign oil companies. But that isn't impacting the current market yet.
- vlovich123 3y ago
  And yet Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent gasoline and crude up: https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-gas-prices-expensive-11646767172 https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-gas-prices-expensive-116467... https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2023/10/the-ukraine-wars-effects-on-us-commodity-prices/ https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2023/10/the-ukraine-wars-eff... There’s also been global inflation since then for various reasons, not least of which is that destabilization in Europe has ripple effects. It’s not the sole reason, but it’s a big one and energy markets are tied even if the commodity is different (e.g cut off natural gas to Europe & their demand for other sources of energy goes up & higher prices there means higher prices for their goods and refineries). Prices have come down because Biden released strategic oil reserves to combat higher prices. Your explanations explain why gas is higher in California than the rest of the country, but fails to explain why it’s also higher US-wide and globally. And yes, it does matter how the fungible commodity gets out - if India / China were a better price, Russia would have been sending their crude there in the first place. That means India / China is more expensive whether it’s because it has to be shipped a longer and more expensive route or because the partner’s form of payment is not as valuable (e.g. Russia tried accepting the Rupee for oil payments for a while but has since stopped). So yes, while there are headwinds that mitigate the impact, there is still a negative impact to price. Anyway, my main point was that there are geographic locales where EVs are cheaper regardless of whatever local and geopolitical factors are involved.

dghlsakjg 3y ago

It surprises me that coffee shops, restaurants and rest stops haven't picked up on the gas station model of fuel/energy as loss leader/sold at cost, and making the money on a captive audience. Hell, even local business groups should be trying to get them on main streets of small towns. I'm not an EV owner, but I would definitely plan my charging around meal stops if I knew that some restaurant always had chargers for customers. I always see EV chargers put in spots that I would never want to spend 30 minutes.

drewnick 3y ago
Problem is, slow chargers are not fast enough to attract customers, and fast chargers are about $100k (an expensive loss leader) + maintenance.
- dghlsakjg 3y ago
  Gotcha. Otoh, a gas pump install is in that range. I know that the non-profit that manages my local airport had to pay around $50k CAD to get a new cardlock system, and that didn't even include the pumps.

turtlebits 3y ago

Controversial take, but if you have an EV, should do most of your charging at home. If you're taking a trip sure, you'll have to pay more for charging stations, but in general, travel always costs more (food, housing, etc).

lambdasquirrel 3y ago
It depends. In California and all the sunshine belt states, it probably makes more sense to charge at work, in the long run.
- r00fus 3y ago
  "it probably makes more sense" - only if your workplace cares about retention.
- vel0city 3y ago
  With the large amount of wind energy in Texas the best time to start charging is like 1-2AM. You still have tons of wind energy, but the demand has fallen considerably. This is usually the time where Texas experiences negative wholesale electric rates. Sure, there's lots of solar potential during the day, but that's also the peak energy use by a good amount. You're already wanting solar to smooth out that curve instead of making that demand peak even peakier.

sowbug 3y ago

If we really care about climate change, Electric vehicles and infrastructure should be incredible not profitable for 10+ years If we really cared about climate change, might consumers also bear at least some of that lack of profitability? Maybe it costs us a few more cents per mile for the next 10 years to bootstrap the world into sustainable transportation.