wow. Electric rates must really vary. I can charge at home for 100 miles for about $4.00
UK prices are expensive at the moment.
Of course I could get that down to (on the face of it) half that cost but that would be by using a tariff that is much cheaper overnight (perhaps only £5 for that 100 miles) but the tariff used would mean the cost for the daytime electricity would rise, no such thing as a free lunch. I’d have to be using the car a lot through overnight home charging to see a real world net saving.
And I’ve just noticed a rather obvious error in my post above. 100 miles in my current car is actually more like £12.50.
Not sure why I had £20 in my head. I’d already said in an earlier post
Anyhow, it just goes to makes any potential home charging saving more marginal, even on an optimum EV tariff.
Here’s a WaPo article (gift link) about Tesla’s FSD and how Musk messed with it:
For those who don’t want to read it, it concentrates a lot on Musk having them remove the radar to reduce costs. Since then it’s been less reliable. So don’t buy it, although at $15k, I don’t think many are tempted. Personally, if I had it, I wouldn’t use it.
I think when we got our Model X it costs about $8,500 to turn on the self driving feature. I had not interest in it at that cost. I also don’t think I’d ever use it if I had it.
I’m in California, with relatively terrible electric rates. Taking my solar panels out of the equation it’s only a little more that $6 per 100 miles to fill up from the grid.
It would be closer to $25 per 100 miles for me previous, roughly equivalent gas automobile.
My best possible cost per kwh at this moment is about 35p.
So for a car that averages 3.2 miles/kwh (which I get from long-term test data) it would cost (100/3.2) * 0.35 or roughly £11 to do that 100 miles on home electricty.
Compared to a 60 mpg diesel car (which I have) or a 50 mpg petrol car (which I’m changing to) and they both come out to around £13 for that same 100 miles.
As you can see, that’s not a massive difference.
In BC, 50kW charging costs $21.13 cents per minute. Assuming you got that charge rate for one hour, you can put 50 kWh into your battery for about $12. Charging a Ford Lightning would cost you about $30.
One problem we are facing is that the trend in EVs is for larger, longer range vehicles with larger batteries. This makes it increasingly difficult to give them a reasonable charge with a Level 1 charger, and level 2 home chargers are getting increasingly expensive to install as people max out community infrastructure and have to pay for upgrades. One Ford Lightning owner was quoted $18,000 to install his Ford Pro charger with transfer switch.
I was looking at the Lightning, until I ound out that it was going to cost us a gigantic amount of money to install the charger/transfer switch. Tens of thousands of dollars.
Wow. That is a truly terrible cost for electricity. I hope those are hand-crafted electrons, created by a commune of pure-at-heart craftspeople all pedaling vintage bicycle-powered generators.
Regarding the internal combustion vehicle that my wife’s Tesla replaced, it was an X3M that got about 20mpg. Anything non-electric that she would have considered from a performance or luxury perspective would have been roughly the same. Diesels are wildly uncommon here, as are any 50mpg cars my wife would likely cross-shop. Or me either, really. Neither our Tesla or our Bolt really are any match for the sporty cars I’ve owned from a handling perspective, but the acceleration is intoxicating. I’ve held on to my BMW M240i only because there’s nothing comparable yet in the EV world.
I’m in southern California and the marginal cost per mile of my electric cars is about $0.03, which includes electric charging at home ($0.02) and replacing tires ($0.01) as they wear out. Charging away from home is typically around $0.25 per mile, which is comparable to an efficient car. I haven’t costed out replacing batteries, but it’s just as likely I’ll get a new electric car as deal with that.
Electricity costs are certainly high here at the moment, mind you, even at the much lower electricity costs when I did my original sums and placed the order, the EV would have saved me around £50 per month over ICE. A nice sum but not world changing and given other tax changes since etc. even that original saving would be wiped out.
So that ends with me pondering it purely on the practicalities of me using it on the many long journeys I’m likely to make, and that’s where it is coming up short at the moment..
I suspect at my next car change things will have improved.
That home charger is over 10x the cost of a typical home charger. Why is it so expensive, and what does the transfer switch do?
Yes, the trend in new EVs is toward larger and heavier vehicles. Part of this is just following a similar years-long trend in ICE vehicle sales, moving away from sedans to SUVs. The SUVs have more mass to move and punch a larger hole in the air. This uses more electricity which requires longer charge times.
I’d guess that since the Lightning can be used to power the house, a transfer switch is required to keep from backfeeding the grid. It’s really a separate cost from the charger.
The other $9,000 came from a requirement to upgrade the electrical service in the home.
If you don’t need home integration and you have a 150-200A service, you might get away with just the charger ($1350) and installation ($1650), for a total of $3,000 extra. That’s probably a typical price for most charger installs.
What makes the Lightning unique is that it has a huge battery (113-135 kWh), and therefore a fast charger can draw up to 80A. Most homes have 60A-100A services, and will need a service upgrade. I have a 100A service, and a service upgrade here is a minimum of $15,000 and a maximum of about $35,000. So for me, installing a Ford Pro charger would cost the $9400, plus maybe $20,000. A lot of people who liked the truck for the ability to power the home in an emergency are finding out that for most of them, it’s really impractical. Especially when I could have a Generac whole-house backup generator installed for under $10,000.
And since I can’t level 2 charge at home with a Lightning, and level 1 would only be roughly 2-3 miles of range per hour in a Lightning. If you can’t put a level 2 charger in your house, your charging costs will easily double if you have to go to public charging stations all the time, and it would be a hassle.
That’s what I was getting at when I said the trend towards heavy vehicles with large batteries is going to be a problem. They’re going to almost require level-2 charging, and I think most potential EV buyers do not understand the ramifications of that.
If you can’t put a level 2 charger in your house for a reasonable price, I’d look at a smaller EV with a smaller battery with similar range, or a plug-in hybrid.
If you are thinking of buying an EV, check your breaker panel. If you have a 60A or 100A main breaker, you will likely need a service upgrade, depending on what you are drawing now. If you have an electric stove, electric dryer, and a few other appliances, you may be boned. If the major appliances are gas, you might be okay. Call your electrical company and see how much that costs. If you have overhead wires on poles, it might not be too bad. If they have to trench, get ready for a big bill.
Another option is to have a aubpanel installed with an ‘energy miser’. Anything on the subpanel can be controlled by the home integration system to make sure you don’t exceed your house’s service limit.
You can also just decide not to use certain appliances at certain times, but if all of them on plus the car would trip the breaker, you will be required to either upgrade the service or put in an energy miser/subpanel if you want to be up to code. At least around here you do. That also costs a fair bit, because they have to re-route wiring of appliances to the subpanel, plus the installation and wire costs.
When we were looking at putting in a hot tub, we were told we needed an energy miser for code because the 30A heater put us over our 100A service if our dryer and stove were on. It added $5,000 to the price. It doesn’t take much to max out a 100A service these days. New houses often have 150A services now.
200A was pretty normal in the US. 400A is becoming the new normal with EVs and more electric appliances becoming standard. Can’t you just plug most EVs into a 50A dryer plug?
It’s the charger that matters. You can’t plug a 80A charger into a 50A plug, but you can buy a 40A charger and use that instead. It will still charge the Lightning, just not as fast as 80A. But the choices aren’t solely 80A or Level 1.
And you’re right, around here it’s only houses that haven’t been updated in 30 years that don’t have 200A panels.
I’m surprised to see that 200A is now standard for new home construction. Our house was built in 1997, and the standard then was 100A. Then I heard it had been bumped to 150A for new construction in the city. Now apparently 200A is the standard. That’s a good thing. But the majority of homes are older than ours, and almost none of those will have more than 100A. And houses built in the 50’s and before likely have 60A panels around here.
The advice remains: before thinking about a big EV with a big battery, check your electrical service size to make sure you can legally install a level 2 charger. If you are in a newish home, you’re probably ok.
Exactly right. When we looked at L2 chargers, what we found (assuming I understood correctly) was that many of them were programmable. So you could buy the 50A charger and tell it you plugged it into a 30A outlet and it would compensate accordingly. It certainly isn’t all or nothing.
Yeah, I definitely agree with this. When I got my first EV in 2015, it wasn’t really a consideration for anyone - if you put in a level 2 charger, you could easily charge from 0 to 100% overnight, even with a 100A panel and a 30A charger. With some of the huge batteries now, that’s not a given.
Most people don’t need a full charge every night, so it doesn’t mean you absolutely need a 200A panel and 80A charger. But you need to consider your usage (and any permit restrictions).
Welp, it’s been just over two years since I started leasing my Hyundai Kona EV. I’ve got a 3-year lease and with what I am hearing about EV delays, I figure I better start thinking about what to do when my lease is up. My options are:
- Keep the car and pay it off. I would then have the option to stick with it for a while or re-sell it at my leisure.
- Return the car and get a new lease at the same dealer (for a new Kona or other Hyundai EV). There are some incentives I’ll get offered for this, I believe.
- Return the car and buy or lease some or EV from a different company.
I like the Kona EV - it has done very well for us and shows no sign of battery degradation, so at the moment I am leaning toward the first option. It provides the most flexibility. One of the reasons I leased in the first place instead of buying is that I was unsure of the resale value of EVs at the time, but right now my impression is that resale values are quite high, so I doubt I would have a problem selling it to Carvana or someplace if I wanted to.
But there are new EVs cropping up all over the place these days and some have longer range and other advantages (faster charging) over the Kona, so I’m wondering if anyone has tried out any of the newer models, like the Ford Mustang, Kia EV6, Hyundai Ioniq 5 or 6, etc. I will not be getting a Tesla, so don’t bother to post about that.
Anyone got any good intel to share?