Electric Vehicles

The worst ones are the ones that bill by time, so if you have a slow car, it costs more.

Chargers based on time are usually due to laws about only power companies being able to charge for electricity usage.

Theres a l2 on city property that bills by time here. It comes out to be cheaper than charging at home. I think the city or something asked them to keep the rates low. The city ones were free for a long time too.

I pay 0.1€ at home but fast charger that delivers about 100kW will cost about 0.4€. Chargers that deliver about 300kW cost even more 0.6-0.8€. It's normal, delivering 150kW costs more than 7kW.

Brb, moving to Canada.

Yes, high speed chargers cost similar to gas (normal gas, not the current prices). Slow chargers cost about half of that. Charging at home is about half of that again (0.1€/kWh)

Right now a gallon of regular gas in the same area is about $4.75. My ICE car gets about 35mpg on average (although I do have to run premium, not regular). So yeah, less than $1 cheaper to operate for the same distance. At least off of the highway. On the highway, the ICE car still wins because electric cars dont see efficiency gains the same way during different methods of use unless they have regenerative braking. So while my ICE gets 35 mpg average, Im easily breaking 60mpg on the highway. But the electric probably does far better in the city stopping constantly since its regenerating every time it brakes. Maybe it evens out, but I think the ICE is still probably overall a bit less expensive when solely looking at cost of energy consumption vs milage. At least assuming that someone is primarily driving on the highway out of traffic rather than in traffic or in the city

Charging prices probably dont fluctuate quite as intensely as gas prices, but ultimately the energy market is the energy market so theyre both going to rise with the tide in the general sense.

The real savings advantage that an electric car has is in the simplicity of the parts and less regular maintenance needs. But that is pretty easily blown out of the water by the initial purchase price. An EV would be 3x what I paid for my ICE, and the lifetime maintenance isnt going to be on the order of $40k+. No matter what you buy youre getting screwed somewhere, you just get to pick the hole.

Unless we start seeing $20k MSRP EVs in the US they really arent more affordable than ICE cars by any means

If it's 0.02 cents a kWh, a full charge should be a cent or 2 not a dollar

That's super cheap. Does that include distribution charges?

Our utility has had a few plans geared at auto, including a second meter that they could remotely disable if necessary, but their current plans are nowhere near as good.

Here's their best time of use plan if you can push most of your use into the evenings:

It is indeed.

Yes, it is. Obscenely so. Why are you comparing it to a tank of gasoline MPG? It's not gasoline. Compare it to how much you can buy a KWh from the local utility company. This would be the profit equivalent of a gas station charging you around $15 for a gallon of regular.

EDIT: You know, now that I think about it, they are selling power to the public. Why do they not have to abide by the rates set forth by the PUC (OUC)?

Couple things here but in general the fast chargers are pretty expensive.

1. The range on EV is usually smaller than a gas car. So comparing a full tank for you vs a full tank for them might not be a good comparison
2. Around where I live the worst fast charger rate ( which is basically all reasonable hours of the day) is 60% to 100% more expensive than either home electricity or level 2 charging rates.
3. It seemed to me that fast charging was priced so that it was close to gas prices while home charging was totally disconnected from gas prices. Not sure if this observation has held up now with gas price spikes, I haven't been fast charging recently so out of the loop

Would also note that this charger was 47¢/kwh. That’s $0.134/mile - very close to the gas calc you did

So OP is talking about spending only $4 to top up, but that’s basically the equivalent of buying a gallon of gas at this energy price. Basically you need to charge at home to get the pricing benefits over gas.

Obviously a bunch of other benefits to EVs

Thanks for the breakdown!

The only thing I would add to Dogyote's EV math is a lot of states (like Ohio) charge extra for EV registration ($200 more in Ohio). So if you drive an average of 12,000 miles per year, that extra registration fee account for an additional 1.667 cents per mile. But its still 10 cents cheaper per mile vs gas. Gas would have to cost less than $2 to compete price wise.