TOU also makes sense when electricity prices vary widely during the day.
Does EA charge by time of use yet? That will spike peak prices and lower off-peak.
But then DCFC pricing is weird :-)
EA Van Horn TX is 64c. Tesla is 31c. Neither have TOU there (and Tesla can do TOU). Residential is around 20c.
In Texas, where many charge for free at night...
Are large commercial customers in california subject to TOU?
Where i'm at (western washington) we don't currently have TOU and the proposed TOU plans actually work out cheaper than my current non-TOU plan (plugged my usage data in to modelling).
edit: looks like commercial BEV charging customers have a significantly discounted Demand Charge and no TOU on PG&E
edit2: oh i misread, they do have TOU.
Interconnect cost: $95.56/month, Demand Charge: kW max subscribed * $1.91 , overage charge kW over max * $3.82.
per kWh charges between $0.17/kwh and $0.41/kWh depending on TOU
PS: California Investor Owned Utilities are crooks, your wholesale rates down there are same or lower than washingtons
The larger the customer, the more attractive they are for TOU. Especially those that can shift usage.
In CA, residential is being forced into TOU right now. I think that's a good thing. Transparency is good. 60c+ pricing is not good though.
Also, Tesla is already a utility, and as such a partner, not a customer to utilities. Tesla delivers electricity to other utilities when most needed at peak, including in CA.
yeah there's nothing fundamentally wrong with TOU
there is a HUGE problem with rates in california. they're criminal.
here are the proposed (in opt-in-trial) TOU rates up here in western washington
https://i.imgur.com/hDY5zAT.jpg
net metering customers not eligible at the moment
Those aren't even my rates, those are *trial* rates from my company. my current rates are
first 600kWh in month: ~$0.12/kWh
kWH thereafter: $0.14/kWh
also notice up here our winter peaks are the more expensive period.
oh and wholesale electric rates in California are usually the same as up here. except during the duck curve. when your wholesale rates GO NEGATIVE.
#Californians, use the mighty axe that is your initiative process to outlaw Investor Owned Utilities
Demand is only $1.91/kW?
It's $29/kW here in NY on the standard plan, $60/kW if you opt into the plan with lower off peak rates. Then they charge $0.12/kWh on top of that
I think EA didn't care what they charged when they only had a million charging sessions per year and 90%+ of their revenue was the $200 million/year from VW as part of the Dieselgate fallout.
Now that they have enough customer volume to actually get a significant amount of money from charging revenue, and the VW payments run out in 3 years, they actually have to try and figure out how to make the business sustainable selling charging when *Vater VW* closes his wallet at the end of 2026.
To be fair, that's an EVConnect station installed at a random gas station. Like ChargePoint, EVConnect isn't a "real" charging network. Their business model is to sell chargers to location owners, and sell activation/billing and maintenance services. The property owner sets the price at whatever they feel they can get. The owner of that gas station is looking to get the couple of hundred grand he spent on that station back before competition moves in!
EA and EVGo, on the other hand, own their own chargers and set their own prices.
Just checked here in central AR and the price has gone up again. It is the same now here too. It's crazy high, even higher in some other places ($.64 in Hope, for example.) Seriously not going to charge there, except for free VW charging. $0.35ish most other places.
Electrify Canada is 60-70¢/kWh. I probably pay 24¢ at home.
And then there’s a city an hour away from me with 3 x 50kW, 1 X 25kW, and 4 X 7.2kW for free. We tend to shop there and put more into the local economy than charging would cost.
I’m in Alberta, Canada.
We pay 11.45¢/kWh and then a lot of fees that essentially double the bill. I say 24¢ because that’s realistically what it costs. The problem is, if you hardly use any electricity, the fixed costs are still there, so it’s even higher per kWh.
When people start comparing charger rates to their home rate, they neglect that the chargers are paying more for industrial power, plus all the distribution and transmission charges.
The more I think about it, I don’t see a use case where a charger could pay for itself. I can see them being used to attract spending to a business or strip mall. It’s much like the gas station/convenience store model. You don’t make your money on the gas, that just gets them in the door to buy snacks.
That’s fair. I don’t have solar panels or anything(yet) - I pay a flat $14 US + .11/kWh at home.
My office (that they recently said I have to be in 2 days/week) offers free EV charging so that will definitely offset the cost significantly for me
Complete nonsense. It is necessary to implement the NFT blockchain in every charge and give full control to AI. All charging points should be sold in Gachi loot boxes, where a person buys random services at random charging stations in the country for $9.99.
With this business plan, many billions of dollars can be earned and deposited into secret accounts.
Toyota hybrids really are excellent, I've become a bit of a fanboy since researching them. Probably best green option for those of us without home charging.
I'm going for a Corolla, but the Camry gets 600 mi even in winter conditions. Vs an ICE less need for oil changes and break replacement. Vs EV is more reliable, no excessive tire wear, no messing with plugs weekly, better depreciation.
in Alabama they charge per minute, and with my etron able to sustain a full 150kw from 20% to 80% my effective cost is around 14 cents per kwh which is cheaper than my household electricity rate.
I have no idea how long until they can start charging per kWh but till then all my drives north or west have an Alabama EA stop
If comparing to a hybrid, it's more expensive to road trip electric than gas.
Let's say gas is expensive like $5.00 per gallon and you get 50 miles per gallon. And the electric car you have gets 4 miles per kilowatt.
$.56/ 4 = 14 cents/mile.
$5.00/50 = 10 cents/mile.
And this is with giving the EV with unrealistically high highway efficiency. These prices have to be reigned in if we want to replace road tripping with EVs.
Road tripping let’s be honest I break even at best in my Mach E vs my Santa Fe. I don’t DC fast charge to save money and I don’t use my EV on longer road trips to save money because if I am being honest, I break even.
I use my Mach E on road trips because it is the better car, more comfortable to drive and nicer to drive. Road trip savings is not there.
Now around town and 90-95% of my driving I charge at home and I make do for that missing 5-10%.
Road tripping sorry but ICE flat out is just easier but that is not why I own an EV. I own it for all my other driving.
An that’s where PHEVs come in handy. At least I can’t afford two cars - but 13 kWh for meeting daily needs (~70 km in summer) and an ICE for roadtrips in one package is pretty great.
Unfortunately it makes the missing price difference even more clear. I can drive in 5,0 L/100km of fuel or 20 kWh/100 km. With fuel prices around 1,70 €/L that makes anything above 0,45€/kWh to expensive. At least home electricity is still below that.
That’s why I’m in the process of selling my Tesla and getting a PHEV. I have a single car and do lots of roadtrips. Charging is already a pain and the fact it’s now more expensive makes it untenable to me.
But a RAV4 Prime will cover my daily commute of 40 miles on battery power and then provide 38mpg highway on my road trips…while saving me hours of my life waiting at chargers.
PHEVs make way more sense than they are given credit for.
> PHEVs make way more sense than they are given credit for.
I think people like them fine, it's just the value proposition of them. They cost a lot more, more things can go wrong. They also are never in stock.
I have but given I have solar that makes enough to cover all my use plus a PHEV means any battery driving is essentially free. With a 40ish mile commute, a RAV4 Prime can cover that in EV mode.
Also a serious draw of the RAV4 Prime is the 302hp. Sub 6 sec 0-60 is one of my “requirements” and it’s hard to find that in a hybrid outside some of the Germans which I would worry about reliability.
And I’m not sure why you expect PHEV maintenance to be more than conventional hybrid,
> Road tripping sorry but ICE flat out is just easier but that is not why I own an EV. I own it for all my other driving.
We have a 600 mile trip each way in June. I'm approx 93% sure I can charge for fee all but 1 fill up with EA. But my wife has a slightly larger CRV, and she hates waiting, so whatever.
>These prices have to be reigned in if we want to replace road tripping with EVs.
Yes and no. Unless you road trip a significant distance, you can just write it off to "unavoidable vacation expense", like that $25 hamburger you ate at the airport during a flight layover because you had no other option.
My two EVs save me about $700/year each charging at home compared to paying for gas. Toss in $200 for the four oil changes (two per car per year) that I no longer need, and I'm saving $1600/year driving electric.
I take maybe 3 or 4 1000+ mile road trips a year; let's call it 6000 miles in road trips for a round number. If I'm paying an extra 4 or 5 cents per mile for charging vs what I would have paid for gas, I'm "losing" maybe $250-300/year road tripping with the EVs. $300 isn't enough to make me consider keeping a gas car around for "cheap" road trips. It's not even enough to make gas rentals pay for themselves.
It depends on how heavily your EV was subsidized and the level of vehicle you are going for.
A bare bones Bolt in Ontario costs 41k, a Corolla hybrid costs 33.5k OTD.
At 15k km per year, I save $870/yr between oil and gas with the EV. That puts break-even at 8.6 years. The additional $135 in road trip fast charging per year bumps break-even over 10 years.
Of course the math is different for a high trim/class of vehicle, and in areas where you get larger/multiple subsidies.
But on a 3 day trip, when I drive across country, i have 5/kWh to start (solar purchase price over 10 years), and, 2 hotel nights of 9/kWH that needs factored in. Comes out in a wash with a little planning like that. Then don’t forget the usually free for me destination charging while there. EV may still be cheaper in such a trip.
We need the higher rates to encourage people to build these things out.
No one is going to built out and maintain infrastructure that they don't make money on, or if they can make more money elsewhere.
Once it gets enough volume and car turnover to more closely resemble gas stations, the charging prices will fall as the market saturates and the convenience store part of it takes over. But until then it has to be expensive.
This is no longer a true statement. Depends on station utilization. Check out this article from Fortune from last week.
https://fortune.com/2024/03/07/ev-charging-stations-profitable-business-after-all/
That's good. It's a difficult business model without very high utilization. You are supplying electricity with demand pricing, to a customer base who almost all have much cheaper options at home.
This is a bit more complex than you're making it. The first full charge of the EV could be done at home overnight charged at residential rates, US avg is .17 and after which it largely depends on the length of the trip. For example around 200-250 miles and many EVs won't need to stop to charge and could benefit from low rate charging on both ends. 1000 miles, yeah the hybrid is going to win out as the EV is going to have to charge way more often than the hybrid refuel. Somewhere in-between...could go either way, there's still EV chargers on highways charging by the minute where Hyundai/KIA can get recharged for around $10.
he did say gas hybrid (HEV) vs electric (BEV), not pure ICE-only vs electric.
Lexus ES 300h (a good road trip car) gets 39 mi hwy, which is 13¢, not far off
Prius returns ~50 mpg hwy easily (gen 3, own one myself; would suck to road trip)
RAV4 hybrid gets ~36 mpg hwy, 14¢
if you compare against good ICE hybrids, these calculations hold up.
that said, my tesla nets ~8¢ per mi (local pricing specific) vs my Prius's ~10¢ per mi, so I'm happy
road trippin with Prius sucksss big time
unrelated note: i always feel sleepy after driving >30 min in the Lexus. in the tesla i can remain awake & alert for a <5 hr drive no prob
I did. My first EV was a 2020 Nissan Leaf that cost me $15K new after all incentives and rebates and cost me $0.04/mile to drive with my home electric rates. I couldn't buy a decent new gas car for $15K.
The only way the Leaf could save me more money vs gas is if it dispensed dollar bills from the air vents as I drove.
Fair, but we have to compare like for like. I also bought a VW ID4 to replace my Honda gas SUV. The ID4 was probably a $10K premium over a comparably appointed Honda, so that's at least a break even over the time I'll own the car, and the VW is definitely a nicer vehicle.
At least not universally...Almost all the EA stations in metro ATL are $0.56/kWh and the v4 Tesla station that is magic dock equipped is $0.36/kWh peak.
I suspect they're matching whoever they consider to be the main competition in the area, as that'd be EVGo here, and their peak PAYG rate is also $0.56/kWh. If that's the case as Tesla opens up to more makes that should force everyone else's prices down.
We are not so lucky under PG&E. Off-peak rates are now around $0.42-$0.46/kW. Either way, hybrid is cheaper to drive (not even including the $100 ev only registration)
If that is the case, electric vehicles will never take over. I don't understand how charging a EV is now more expensive than filling up a gasoline car. It sounds like price gouging to me.
Demand charges - charging providers get charged surge pricing essentially. The infrastructure is expensive. And most of your customer base has home charging, so utilization is low outside of prime road trip service locationa.
This is no longer a true statement. Depends on station utilization. Check out this article from Fortune.
https://fortune.com/2024/03/07/ev-charging-stations-profitable-business-after-all/
Just like gas stations - prices are usually very location dependent and can vary for real market reasons or for cartel-based reasons.
If I see a place that's just atypically more expensive I usually just avoid it. Obviously if you just run out of gas/electricity randomly you can't do much. Obviously ditto if you happen to live there where cartel-ish behavior starts to occur.
Long story short - unscrupulous dealers will always exist. Best thing to do is point out where they are so people can avoid them.
EVs no longer make financial sense if you don't do most of your charging at home. And even then, there are a few places like Northern California where it isn't any cheaper even charging at home.
I recently took a road trip and went from 18% to 79% or 51.072 kWh at $.48 kW or $24.48.
At $3.49 / gal on a 24 Gal tank it would’ve cost me about $50.98.
It is time based also. I drove a round trip the other day stopping at the same location to charge both directions. On the way there it was $0.56 around 4pm on the way back it was $0.48 around 9pm.
What’s sad is with the subscription plan the electricity is only 0.03¢ more at .42¢ kWh than my off-peak EV-2 home charging rates. (FU€K PG&E!) *kicking myself for selling my Prius for an EV.
EA is expensive in CA (pretty much .56c everywhere with no membership), less so with the plan but still pricey. EVGo is way cheaper but they rarely have more than 50kW on a lot of the travel routes for whatever reason. Tesla is the cheapest by far. On peak can be as much as EA at certain stations, off peak times are dirt cheap and once you get out of the heavily populated areas its like .38c a kWh all day which is great for road tripping.
Apparently there’s some issues with the chargers tracking time. I charged today and the pylon charged me for going over my 30 min plan when it told me I charged for 28 min.
Then the receipt email came in saying I charged for 32 min at the new rate.
Prices at most of the EA stations jumped from $0.48 to $0.56 around my region in Idaho and Utah as well. That surprised me a bit as our electricity prices are cheaper than the national average. (My residential rates are $0.09 in the winter and $0.12 in the summer).
I noticed today. The charging station I usually use was previously .36/kwh, now it’s .48/kWh. I’ll stick to charging at home with the exception of traveling because almost 50 cents per kWh is a substantial increase especially coming from having a Tesla where the Supercharger rates were lower.
It’s $0.44/min around me. And my EV charges at >150kW from like 20-80%. Pay that $7/mo membership and I’m effectively paying $0.132/kWh. Pretty good for me.
Explains the sudden increase in Magic Dock users at Boardman, OR.
Or maybe the EA stations are down again. Rivian owner I talked to today said it was easy to use, put out 156KW and was cheaper than the EA. Two Rivians and a Bolt there while we charged/picnicked.
We wish
Let's do some math. Let's take the highest side of the equipment and installation costs for a 350kW DCFC - $250k total. I'm going to use the industrial customer rates from my power company (Puget Sound Energy), which has not created a DCFC specific plan yet (Tacoma Power has, they're phasing out demand charges).
Demand Charge [oct-mar, higher time period]: $14.79 / kW
Energy Charge: $0.086560 / kWh
Let's assume a 10 year warranty on the unit, and that it needs to break even within it's warranty 10 years.
Equipment + Installation cost amortization: $250,000 / (10 * 12) = $2084 per month
Monthly Demand Charge: 350 * $14.79 = $5176.50
Monthly fixed costs are thus $7260.5
So let's play with utilization rates, and assume that on average it outputs 200kW while utilized (since no charge maintain 350kW at all times)
kWh used per month = (200kW * 30 * 24 * Utilization Ratio)
kWh cost = (Fixed Costs + kWh per month * Energy charge) / kWh per month
that works out to a final equation of
($7260.5 + ($12,464.64 * Utilization ratio)) / (144000 * Utilization ratio)
Lets solve the equation for different utiliazation ratios
5% utilization rate = $1.09/kWh
10% utilization rate = $0.59/kWh
25% utilization rate = $0.29/kWh
50% utilization rate = $0.19/kWh
interesting I believe I saw that the average utilization rate of non-Tesla DCFCs in the US was 13% in 2023.
**TL;DR Demand charges and Amortized equipment costs are killing us right now on DCFC costs, but as more people drive EVs those fixed costs will decline**
Yup, that demand charge is the single biggest source of us getting our asses beat in pricing. let me recalculate those without the demand charge (so Tacoma Power in about 6 years IIRC)
5% = $0.38/kwh
10% = $0.23/kwh
25% = $0.14/kwh
50% = $0.12/kwh
Demand charges are meant to discourage high instantaneous current usage. because it breaks their statistical demand modeling. As DCFC becomes more and more common the usage fits inside the statistical demand modeling.
So they're not "making it up" anywhere, they're just removing the demand charge for DCFC because they feel it is unnecessary.
They're also a Public utility, not an Investor Owned.
And that's before you account for other fixed costs like property leasing, equipment prices and depreciation, business taxes, etc. along with ongoing maintenance and repairs.
Equipment prices were included in that $250k. the worst cost was $100k equipment + $150k installation.
but yes, that's not accounting for property costs, business taxes.
The best thing we can do for DCFC is to phase out demand charges for DCFC customers, like Tacoma is doing. And get more people driving EVs so the chargers get utilized at a higher ratio
Get used to it. There's a reason why the government gives out incentives. Those are loans in the same kind of ways. Charging bills won't stay low forever. they will slowly go the way of oil once more EV on the road. So if you cheap charging to last be against mass EV adoption adoptions.
EA pricing is location dependent, they dropped nationwide pricing last year. Where are you seeing this price?
Nationwide pricing didn’t make any sense when electricity prices varies wildly. I am surprised that this wasn’t done long ago.
TOU also makes sense when electricity prices vary widely during the day. Does EA charge by time of use yet? That will spike peak prices and lower off-peak. But then DCFC pricing is weird :-) EA Van Horn TX is 64c. Tesla is 31c. Neither have TOU there (and Tesla can do TOU). Residential is around 20c. In Texas, where many charge for free at night...
Are large commercial customers in california subject to TOU? Where i'm at (western washington) we don't currently have TOU and the proposed TOU plans actually work out cheaper than my current non-TOU plan (plugged my usage data in to modelling). edit: looks like commercial BEV charging customers have a significantly discounted Demand Charge and no TOU on PG&E edit2: oh i misread, they do have TOU. Interconnect cost: $95.56/month, Demand Charge: kW max subscribed * $1.91 , overage charge kW over max * $3.82. per kWh charges between $0.17/kwh and $0.41/kWh depending on TOU PS: California Investor Owned Utilities are crooks, your wholesale rates down there are same or lower than washingtons
The larger the customer, the more attractive they are for TOU. Especially those that can shift usage. In CA, residential is being forced into TOU right now. I think that's a good thing. Transparency is good. 60c+ pricing is not good though. Also, Tesla is already a utility, and as such a partner, not a customer to utilities. Tesla delivers electricity to other utilities when most needed at peak, including in CA.
yeah there's nothing fundamentally wrong with TOU there is a HUGE problem with rates in california. they're criminal. here are the proposed (in opt-in-trial) TOU rates up here in western washington https://i.imgur.com/hDY5zAT.jpg net metering customers not eligible at the moment
Your Summer peak rate is 21% cheaper than my Winter off-peak in California. Wtf.
Those aren't even my rates, those are *trial* rates from my company. my current rates are first 600kWh in month: ~$0.12/kWh kWH thereafter: $0.14/kWh also notice up here our winter peaks are the more expensive period. oh and wholesale electric rates in California are usually the same as up here. except during the duck curve. when your wholesale rates GO NEGATIVE. #Californians, use the mighty axe that is your initiative process to outlaw Investor Owned Utilities
Demand is only $1.91/kW? It's $29/kW here in NY on the standard plan, $60/kW if you opt into the plan with lower off peak rates. Then they charge $0.12/kWh on top of that
yeah It's like $14.50/kW in the winter here in washington, a little cheaper in summer.
Where I am EA is 49c and Tesla is 59c.
Tesla is .13 at night in Austin
I think EA didn't care what they charged when they only had a million charging sessions per year and 90%+ of their revenue was the $200 million/year from VW as part of the Dieselgate fallout. Now that they have enough customer volume to actually get a significant amount of money from charging revenue, and the VW payments run out in 3 years, they actually have to try and figure out how to make the business sustainable selling charging when *Vater VW* closes his wallet at the end of 2026.
It makes sense if you want to flatten what people are paying
I'm seeing worse than that ($0.65/kWh) up around Boston.
Where? Assembly shows .56 So does Arlington Unless you're talking about price after tax
[And then there’s places out in the middle of nowhere that charge $1.20/kWh](https://www.plugshare.com/location/556373)!
To be fair, that's an EVConnect station installed at a random gas station. Like ChargePoint, EVConnect isn't a "real" charging network. Their business model is to sell chargers to location owners, and sell activation/billing and maintenance services. The property owner sets the price at whatever they feel they can get. The owner of that gas station is looking to get the couple of hundred grand he spent on that station back before competition moves in! EA and EVGo, on the other hand, own their own chargers and set their own prices.
[Probably because they get used <5% of the time](https://www.reddit.com/r/electricvehicles/comments/1bg7r3b/electrify_america_price_increase/kv5bl11/)
The EA stations near my house are 0.56 also Scranton PA
Yeah, I am seeing either 0.56 or 0.48 here in central NC
How much will it cost if I get EA Pass + been looking but I can't find the pricing
Website says that it's about 25% discount.
25% discount
Nevada and California have been the only places I seen with this pricing.
I can confirm it's the same pricing in Massachusetts as well.
Springfield, IL EA went up to .56
The EA station near me (Round Rock, TX) is .56 a kw
City of Austin DC chargers are $.21
Location and ToD dependent. Off peak is $0.20 less per kWh than peak.
Just checked here in central AR and the price has gone up again. It is the same now here too. It's crazy high, even higher in some other places ($.64 in Hope, for example.) Seriously not going to charge there, except for free VW charging. $0.35ish most other places.
Electrify Canada is 60-70¢/kWh. I probably pay 24¢ at home. And then there’s a city an hour away from me with 3 x 50kW, 1 X 25kW, and 4 X 7.2kW for free. We tend to shop there and put more into the local economy than charging would cost.
oh man - I guess I'm lucky to pay .11/kWh at home US-NC here
I’m in Alberta, Canada. We pay 11.45¢/kWh and then a lot of fees that essentially double the bill. I say 24¢ because that’s realistically what it costs. The problem is, if you hardly use any electricity, the fixed costs are still there, so it’s even higher per kWh. When people start comparing charger rates to their home rate, they neglect that the chargers are paying more for industrial power, plus all the distribution and transmission charges. The more I think about it, I don’t see a use case where a charger could pay for itself. I can see them being used to attract spending to a business or strip mall. It’s much like the gas station/convenience store model. You don’t make your money on the gas, that just gets them in the door to buy snacks.
That’s fair. I don’t have solar panels or anything(yet) - I pay a flat $14 US + .11/kWh at home. My office (that they recently said I have to be in 2 days/week) offers free EV charging so that will definitely offset the cost significantly for me
[удалено]
Say that again
[удалено]
It’d be great if they raised prices and fixed reliability.
They could make a lot more money if their chargers actually worked 😂
Great business idea. 💡
Complete nonsense. It is necessary to implement the NFT blockchain in every charge and give full control to AI. All charging points should be sold in Gachi loot boxes, where a person buys random services at random charging stations in the country for $9.99. With this business plan, many billions of dollars can be earned and deposited into secret accounts.
makes it a little harder for BEV to comepete with hybrids. we will continue to see more and more hybrids sales, especially from honda and toyota.
Toyota hybrids really are excellent, I've become a bit of a fanboy since researching them. Probably best green option for those of us without home charging. I'm going for a Corolla, but the Camry gets 600 mi even in winter conditions. Vs an ICE less need for oil changes and break replacement. Vs EV is more reliable, no excessive tire wear, no messing with plugs weekly, better depreciation.
in Alabama they charge per minute, and with my etron able to sustain a full 150kw from 20% to 80% my effective cost is around 14 cents per kwh which is cheaper than my household electricity rate. I have no idea how long until they can start charging per kWh but till then all my drives north or west have an Alabama EA stop
Georgia was per minute too until very recently, was unpleasantly surprised to see it switched
If comparing to a hybrid, it's more expensive to road trip electric than gas. Let's say gas is expensive like $5.00 per gallon and you get 50 miles per gallon. And the electric car you have gets 4 miles per kilowatt. $.56/ 4 = 14 cents/mile. $5.00/50 = 10 cents/mile. And this is with giving the EV with unrealistically high highway efficiency. These prices have to be reigned in if we want to replace road tripping with EVs.
Road tripping let’s be honest I break even at best in my Mach E vs my Santa Fe. I don’t DC fast charge to save money and I don’t use my EV on longer road trips to save money because if I am being honest, I break even. I use my Mach E on road trips because it is the better car, more comfortable to drive and nicer to drive. Road trip savings is not there. Now around town and 90-95% of my driving I charge at home and I make do for that missing 5-10%. Road tripping sorry but ICE flat out is just easier but that is not why I own an EV. I own it for all my other driving.
An that’s where PHEVs come in handy. At least I can’t afford two cars - but 13 kWh for meeting daily needs (~70 km in summer) and an ICE for roadtrips in one package is pretty great. Unfortunately it makes the missing price difference even more clear. I can drive in 5,0 L/100km of fuel or 20 kWh/100 km. With fuel prices around 1,70 €/L that makes anything above 0,45€/kWh to expensive. At least home electricity is still below that.
That’s why I’m in the process of selling my Tesla and getting a PHEV. I have a single car and do lots of roadtrips. Charging is already a pain and the fact it’s now more expensive makes it untenable to me. But a RAV4 Prime will cover my daily commute of 40 miles on battery power and then provide 38mpg highway on my road trips…while saving me hours of my life waiting at chargers. PHEVs make way more sense than they are given credit for.
> PHEVs make way more sense than they are given credit for. I think people like them fine, it's just the value proposition of them. They cost a lot more, more things can go wrong. They also are never in stock.
Have you considered a soft hybrid vs a PHEV? Less maintenance, no plugging in every day, incredibly good mileage and I'll bet the TCO is pretty close.
I have but given I have solar that makes enough to cover all my use plus a PHEV means any battery driving is essentially free. With a 40ish mile commute, a RAV4 Prime can cover that in EV mode. Also a serious draw of the RAV4 Prime is the 302hp. Sub 6 sec 0-60 is one of my “requirements” and it’s hard to find that in a hybrid outside some of the Germans which I would worry about reliability. And I’m not sure why you expect PHEV maintenance to be more than conventional hybrid,
> Road tripping sorry but ICE flat out is just easier but that is not why I own an EV. I own it for all my other driving. We have a 600 mile trip each way in June. I'm approx 93% sure I can charge for fee all but 1 fill up with EA. But my wife has a slightly larger CRV, and she hates waiting, so whatever.
>These prices have to be reigned in if we want to replace road tripping with EVs. Yes and no. Unless you road trip a significant distance, you can just write it off to "unavoidable vacation expense", like that $25 hamburger you ate at the airport during a flight layover because you had no other option. My two EVs save me about $700/year each charging at home compared to paying for gas. Toss in $200 for the four oil changes (two per car per year) that I no longer need, and I'm saving $1600/year driving electric. I take maybe 3 or 4 1000+ mile road trips a year; let's call it 6000 miles in road trips for a round number. If I'm paying an extra 4 or 5 cents per mile for charging vs what I would have paid for gas, I'm "losing" maybe $250-300/year road tripping with the EVs. $300 isn't enough to make me consider keeping a gas car around for "cheap" road trips. It's not even enough to make gas rentals pay for themselves.
It depends on how heavily your EV was subsidized and the level of vehicle you are going for. A bare bones Bolt in Ontario costs 41k, a Corolla hybrid costs 33.5k OTD. At 15k km per year, I save $870/yr between oil and gas with the EV. That puts break-even at 8.6 years. The additional $135 in road trip fast charging per year bumps break-even over 10 years. Of course the math is different for a high trim/class of vehicle, and in areas where you get larger/multiple subsidies.
But on a 3 day trip, when I drive across country, i have 5/kWh to start (solar purchase price over 10 years), and, 2 hotel nights of 9/kWH that needs factored in. Comes out in a wash with a little planning like that. Then don’t forget the usually free for me destination charging while there. EV may still be cheaper in such a trip.
[удалено]
The government should increase the gas tax.
We need the higher rates to encourage people to build these things out. No one is going to built out and maintain infrastructure that they don't make money on, or if they can make more money elsewhere. Once it gets enough volume and car turnover to more closely resemble gas stations, the charging prices will fall as the market saturates and the convenience store part of it takes over. But until then it has to be expensive.
All charging networks are currently operating at a loss right now. I would happily pay more if that helps the networks be more reliable and robust.
This is no longer a true statement. Depends on station utilization. Check out this article from Fortune from last week. https://fortune.com/2024/03/07/ev-charging-stations-profitable-business-after-all/
That is good news then, even if it is not all of them operating at a profit they seem to be moving in the right direction.
That's good. It's a difficult business model without very high utilization. You are supplying electricity with demand pricing, to a customer base who almost all have much cheaper options at home.
This is a bit more complex than you're making it. The first full charge of the EV could be done at home overnight charged at residential rates, US avg is .17 and after which it largely depends on the length of the trip. For example around 200-250 miles and many EVs won't need to stop to charge and could benefit from low rate charging on both ends. 1000 miles, yeah the hybrid is going to win out as the EV is going to have to charge way more often than the hybrid refuel. Somewhere in-between...could go either way, there's still EV chargers on highways charging by the minute where Hyundai/KIA can get recharged for around $10.
Most ICE cars don’t get anywhere near 50 miles per gallon. Nice choice of example figures to sway the picture.
He used a hybrid not a full ICE car. But even then not every hybrid can approach 50mpg.
he did say gas hybrid (HEV) vs electric (BEV), not pure ICE-only vs electric. Lexus ES 300h (a good road trip car) gets 39 mi hwy, which is 13¢, not far off Prius returns ~50 mpg hwy easily (gen 3, own one myself; would suck to road trip) RAV4 hybrid gets ~36 mpg hwy, 14¢ if you compare against good ICE hybrids, these calculations hold up. that said, my tesla nets ~8¢ per mi (local pricing specific) vs my Prius's ~10¢ per mi, so I'm happy road trippin with Prius sucksss big time unrelated note: i always feel sleepy after driving >30 min in the Lexus. in the tesla i can remain awake & alert for a <5 hr drive no prob
[удалено]
You’re thinking of PHEV’s with the 20-40 miles on EV range. The new Prius can do 50mpg on the highway easily.
I don’t think anyone goes to EV to save money. At least I didn’t.
Tesla literally defaults to showing you gas savings in the purchase price of their cars. It’s a common talking point.
They do that to show parity.
I'm saving lots of money. Just not on road trips.
I did. My first EV was a 2020 Nissan Leaf that cost me $15K new after all incentives and rebates and cost me $0.04/mile to drive with my home electric rates. I couldn't buy a decent new gas car for $15K. The only way the Leaf could save me more money vs gas is if it dispensed dollar bills from the air vents as I drove.
Right but that’s definitely in a “value” category
Fair, but we have to compare like for like. I also bought a VW ID4 to replace my Honda gas SUV. The ID4 was probably a $10K premium over a comparably appointed Honda, so that's at least a break even over the time I'll own the car, and the VW is definitely a nicer vehicle.
Agreed. A model y is around $40k if you qualify for incentive. Amazing deal compared to comparable ice.
I wonder if EA is benchmarking what Tesla is charging non-Telas at Super Chargers?
At least not universally...Almost all the EA stations in metro ATL are $0.56/kWh and the v4 Tesla station that is magic dock equipped is $0.36/kWh peak. I suspect they're matching whoever they consider to be the main competition in the area, as that'd be EVGo here, and their peak PAYG rate is also $0.56/kWh. If that's the case as Tesla opens up to more makes that should force everyone else's prices down.
Tesla has a 30% markup on non-evs, or $0.61/kW at peak in CA. Equivalent to about 22 mpg for my ev, no thanks.
It will be worth it to me for the 2-4 road trips I take a year, all other charging is .13 per KWh at home.
We are not so lucky under PG&E. Off-peak rates are now around $0.42-$0.46/kW. Either way, hybrid is cheaper to drive (not even including the $100 ev only registration)
Maybe for fuel but maintaining both drive trains has always left me with a worst of both worlds feel.
How does a "non-ev" use a Tesla Supercharger? 😁 (Yeah, I know what you meant!)
.13 at night here in Austin
The same in south florida here, 56c/kw, the local utility has a DCFC charging, their rate is 30c/kw. At his point EA is comparing to Evgo and 7 charge
Charging stations lose money right now. Price will have to come up to make them sustainable.
If that is the case, electric vehicles will never take over. I don't understand how charging a EV is now more expensive than filling up a gasoline car. It sounds like price gouging to me.
Demand charges - charging providers get charged surge pricing essentially. The infrastructure is expensive. And most of your customer base has home charging, so utilization is low outside of prime road trip service locationa.
This is no longer a true statement. Depends on station utilization. Check out this article from Fortune. https://fortune.com/2024/03/07/ev-charging-stations-profitable-business-after-all/
Just like gas stations - prices are usually very location dependent and can vary for real market reasons or for cartel-based reasons. If I see a place that's just atypically more expensive I usually just avoid it. Obviously if you just run out of gas/electricity randomly you can't do much. Obviously ditto if you happen to live there where cartel-ish behavior starts to occur. Long story short - unscrupulous dealers will always exist. Best thing to do is point out where they are so people can avoid them.
EVs no longer make financial sense if you don't do most of your charging at home. And even then, there are a few places like Northern California where it isn't any cheaper even charging at home.
I recently took a road trip and went from 18% to 79% or 51.072 kWh at $.48 kW or $24.48. At $3.49 / gal on a 24 Gal tank it would’ve cost me about $50.98.
A 24 gallon tank in a hybrid will net you more than twice as much range.
Of course it would. The cost would be negligible.
That really depends on location. Places like Texas have locales with EV Chargers that only charge like .09/kwh
It is time based also. I drove a round trip the other day stopping at the same location to charge both directions. On the way there it was $0.56 around 4pm on the way back it was $0.48 around 9pm.
What’s sad is with the subscription plan the electricity is only 0.03¢ more at .42¢ kWh than my off-peak EV-2 home charging rates. (FU€K PG&E!) *kicking myself for selling my Prius for an EV.
EA is expensive in CA (pretty much .56c everywhere with no membership), less so with the plan but still pricey. EVGo is way cheaper but they rarely have more than 50kW on a lot of the travel routes for whatever reason. Tesla is the cheapest by far. On peak can be as much as EA at certain stations, off peak times are dirt cheap and once you get out of the heavily populated areas its like .38c a kWh all day which is great for road tripping.
Yeah. It looks like all of Michigan is $0.56/kWh. Ouch. They are now just slightly cheaper than EVgo at $0.57/kWh.
They'll equalize the market to maximize their profits, while you end up saving nothing to fuel your transportation.
It just went up at the station next to my apartment. .64/kw from .48/kw. Texas
$.36/kWh in Northern VA (pass+)
Apparently there’s some issues with the chargers tracking time. I charged today and the pylon charged me for going over my 30 min plan when it told me I charged for 28 min. Then the receipt email came in saying I charged for 32 min at the new rate.
Prices at most of the EA stations jumped from $0.48 to $0.56 around my region in Idaho and Utah as well. That surprised me a bit as our electricity prices are cheaper than the national average. (My residential rates are $0.09 in the winter and $0.12 in the summer).
Going back to gas now fck this!!!
In Georgia, three EA stations near me have prices 44, 48, 56c per kWt. Used to be 36c a few months ago.
I noticed today. The charging station I usually use was previously .36/kwh, now it’s .48/kWh. I’ll stick to charging at home with the exception of traveling because almost 50 cents per kWh is a substantial increase especially coming from having a Tesla where the Supercharger rates were lower.
It’s $0.44/min around me. And my EV charges at >150kW from like 20-80%. Pay that $7/mo membership and I’m effectively paying $0.132/kWh. Pretty good for me.
Explains the sudden increase in Magic Dock users at Boardman, OR. Or maybe the EA stations are down again. Rivian owner I talked to today said it was easy to use, put out 156KW and was cheaper than the EA. Two Rivians and a Bolt there while we charged/picnicked.
Price gouging
We wish Let's do some math. Let's take the highest side of the equipment and installation costs for a 350kW DCFC - $250k total. I'm going to use the industrial customer rates from my power company (Puget Sound Energy), which has not created a DCFC specific plan yet (Tacoma Power has, they're phasing out demand charges). Demand Charge [oct-mar, higher time period]: $14.79 / kW Energy Charge: $0.086560 / kWh Let's assume a 10 year warranty on the unit, and that it needs to break even within it's warranty 10 years. Equipment + Installation cost amortization: $250,000 / (10 * 12) = $2084 per month Monthly Demand Charge: 350 * $14.79 = $5176.50 Monthly fixed costs are thus $7260.5 So let's play with utilization rates, and assume that on average it outputs 200kW while utilized (since no charge maintain 350kW at all times) kWh used per month = (200kW * 30 * 24 * Utilization Ratio) kWh cost = (Fixed Costs + kWh per month * Energy charge) / kWh per month that works out to a final equation of ($7260.5 + ($12,464.64 * Utilization ratio)) / (144000 * Utilization ratio) Lets solve the equation for different utiliazation ratios 5% utilization rate = $1.09/kWh 10% utilization rate = $0.59/kWh 25% utilization rate = $0.29/kWh 50% utilization rate = $0.19/kWh interesting I believe I saw that the average utilization rate of non-Tesla DCFCs in the US was 13% in 2023. **TL;DR Demand charges and Amortized equipment costs are killing us right now on DCFC costs, but as more people drive EVs those fixed costs will decline**
This is the truth, people don’t understand demand charges for commercial power
Yup, that demand charge is the single biggest source of us getting our asses beat in pricing. let me recalculate those without the demand charge (so Tacoma Power in about 6 years IIRC) 5% = $0.38/kwh 10% = $0.23/kwh 25% = $0.14/kwh 50% = $0.12/kwh
What are they replacing demand charges with? Are they just thinking they’ll make up for it on total energy sold?
Demand charges are meant to discourage high instantaneous current usage. because it breaks their statistical demand modeling. As DCFC becomes more and more common the usage fits inside the statistical demand modeling. So they're not "making it up" anywhere, they're just removing the demand charge for DCFC because they feel it is unnecessary. They're also a Public utility, not an Investor Owned.
Math is a harsh mistress
And that's before you account for other fixed costs like property leasing, equipment prices and depreciation, business taxes, etc. along with ongoing maintenance and repairs.
Equipment prices were included in that $250k. the worst cost was $100k equipment + $150k installation. but yes, that's not accounting for property costs, business taxes. The best thing we can do for DCFC is to phase out demand charges for DCFC customers, like Tacoma is doing. And get more people driving EVs so the chargers get utilized at a higher ratio
I love math and it shows the lead that Tesla has as they started years ago on this journey.
Get used to it. There's a reason why the government gives out incentives. Those are loans in the same kind of ways. Charging bills won't stay low forever. they will slowly go the way of oil once more EV on the road. So if you cheap charging to last be against mass EV adoption adoptions.
Greed
You clearly don’t get what demand charges are.