3 ms·

You almost can; just put in the same cost of 20 miles' worth of petrol in electricity and the thing will go for ages.

wlesieutre 3y ago
I thought I'd run the numbers on this for a Solterra in my area. Assume 35 MPG for reference since that's my car's EPA highway mileage, so 20 miles of gas is 0.571 gallons. At $2.85/gallon that costs $1.63. EA's charging here is priced at $0.44 per minute, so with that budget you can charge for 3.70 minutes. Assume it spends that whole time at 80 kW. This is probably optimistic, it will take time to ramp up to that. But we'll forget about that, and assume the car starts from near empty because the Solterra's charging curve is trash and will begin throttling the speed down when it's about 35% charged. 3.7 minutes at 80 kW gives us 4.93 kW of charge. EPA rates the vehicle at 3.23 miles/kW, so for the equivalent price of 20 miles of gas we've added... drumroll 15.9 miles of charge. With other vehicles or in an area with different gas/charging pricing, your mileage my vary. And if you look at a straight ICE competitor of the same size as the Solterra as the MPG reference it will be worse than 35 MPG (requiring more gas and giving you a higher charging budget), so basing this on my smaller car did limit that. But regardless, fuel price isn't necessarily a huge advantage for a rental EV. If I were talking price for L2 charging at home in my garage then I'm sure the EV would be way cheaper, but that's now how anyone will be using a rental.
mulmen 3y ago
I’m a big proponent of EVs but nothing about the current state of chargers can be described as “just put in money”. I have never had an EV charger work the first time.
- IncreasePosts 3y ago
  Tesla superchargers do but that is about it.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
alibarber 3y ago
When I looked into this, renting an electric car from Hertz in the UK, the only chargers I would have had access to were public ones that wanted something like 85p/KWh. I would have spent an absolute fortune compared to petrol for the trip that I took.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  Sorry - to be clear I meant if Hertz owned their own chargers and pumped in the same amount of electricity as they would've put in petrol. Not a 3rd party charging rate. Domestic rates today on moneysupermarket.com are 24p/kWh, and I imagine Hertz could get it cheaper.

I thought I'd run the numbers on this for a Solterra in my area. Assume 35 MPG for reference since that's my car's EPA highway mileage, so 20 miles of gas is 0.571 gallons. At $2.85/gallon that costs $1.63. EA's charging here is priced at $0.44 per minute, so with that budget you can charge for 3.70 minutes. Assume it spends that whole time at 80 kW. This is probably optimistic, it will take time to ramp up to that. But we'll forget about that, and assume the car starts from near empty because the Solterra's charging curve is trash and will begin throttling the speed down when it's about 35% charged. 3.7 minutes at 80 kW gives us 4.93 kW of charge. EPA rates the vehicle at 3.23 miles/kW, so for the equivalent price of 20 miles of gas we've added... drumroll 15.9 miles of charge. With other vehicles or in an area with different gas/charging pricing, your mileage my vary. And if you look at a straight ICE competitor of the same size as the Solterra as the MPG reference it will be worse than 35 MPG (requiring more gas and giving you a higher charging budget), so basing this on my smaller car did limit that. But regardless, fuel price isn't necessarily a huge advantage for a rental EV. If I were talking price for L2 charging at home in my garage then I'm sure the EV would be way cheaper, but that's now how anyone will be using a rental.

mulmen 3y ago

I’m a big proponent of EVs but nothing about the current state of chargers can be described as “just put in money”. I have never had an EV charger work the first time.

IncreasePosts 3y ago
Tesla superchargers do but that is about it.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

alibarber 3y ago

When I looked into this, renting an electric car from Hertz in the UK, the only chargers I would have had access to were public ones that wanted something like 85p/KWh. I would have spent an absolute fortune compared to petrol for the trip that I took.

robertlagrant 3y ago
Sorry - to be clear I meant if Hertz owned their own chargers and pumped in the same amount of electricity as they would've put in petrol. Not a 3rd party charging rate. Domestic rates today on moneysupermarket.com are 24p/kWh, and I imagine Hertz could get it cheaper.