What Road Trip Charging Should Be

[All Hat No Cattle]

Lol. I left nothing out. I did a direct full quote of your post from page 3.

The only reason you think I left something out that time is you keep repeating yourself on different posts.

You’re just talking in circles.

I'm talking in circles because I am chasing you.

Please show me where, in my whole post, I said " Your solution to the high cost of driving an EV far from home....... is to not drive far from home. Doesn’t exactly solve the problem. " Your words, Post #74.

Nicer try, though.

Yesterday at 9:58 AM

"That's probably true for someone who does 80 percent of charging at home. Probably not for someone who does 51 percent of charging at home. That second person will never recoup the vehicle price difference, especially if you include interest."

True. If you do most of your charging away from home, a BEV may not be for you.

69Mach390 said:
You started a thread trying to disprove quote of mine that suggested on the road rapid charging can cost more than gasoline.

Other posters on here have stated that road charging can cost less than home charging. Doesn't it depend on the gasser you are comparing it to?

But here is the important statement on what really counts.

If you do most of your charging at home, as most people that work do, you will save so much money on annual fuel costs that what you pay for fuel on road trips will not matter.

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[TheCats]

Since I do not currently own a car that can charge via CCS, take this with a huge grain of salt. Here in CA most L2 charging stations are priced by the hour. Until gasoline went over $4.00/gallon, a lot of L2 stations were more expensive than charging. I still prefer to charge than to burn gas in my Fusion Energi. To me, a long trip is the 10.4 miles to work, since I have to charge before I go home.

That's not my experience in California. Most L2 stations have changed to charging by the kWh, perhaps with a time-based fee added. (Ignoring the "$XX/hr beyond 4 hours" fee.)

Paying by the hour was much more common a few years ago. I noticed because I had a Volt that couldn't use more than 15 amps (3.6 kW on 240V, 3 kW on 208V). It was never worth using a time-based charge station, while I occasionally used a per-kWh one.

Occasionally it's even a less-expensive way to park, or a reasonable way to get a spot in a crowded lot.

 

[sockmeister]

The facts are all available for anybody to read. I'm just making one single published paper available that studies, summarizes, and clearly points out the subsidies.

I never claimed that fossil fuels are "so insanely bad". Our entire civilization currently depends on them.
My claim here was that they are subsidized just like EVs are, except much more so.

But it's easy to see that it's not a sustainable future to continue to rely on fossil fuels when alternatives are available, and not just because they are a limited resource. The problem is the effect of their combustion on our planet's climate.

Dude, sure, a roaring, stick-shift V8 is a load of fun. I've driven one for 10 years before this car. But, the sun is setting for fossil fuels. We have to be responsible. It's an unsustainable future to continue relying on them.

I've debated with you a few times now in other threads on this same topic. What point are you trying to make? You realize this is a forum for an electric vehicle, right?

 

[sockmeister]

DudeBro,

Thanks for typing out a constructive response. Now we can retort, but I'll leave out your Dudeisms.

I'm in this forum because I ordered, and now subsequently own a Mach-E, and I understand the ramifications of not investing in a sustainable future. I also happen to love the car.

Regarding the subsidies -- these are not theoretical future costs. These are costs spent each and every year to subsidize the fossil fuel industry directly and indirectly, and keep it afloat and affordable. It's a primer for the world economy, and it's necessary. But as a percentage of the size of the industry, the amounts spent on fossil fuels versus the EV industry are not even comparable. I found one figure that quotes subsidies for the U.S.'s EV industry at $725 million annually.

Compare that to $649 billion for fossil fuel subsidies, and EV subsidies pale at 0.1% of the amount given to fossil fuels.
Yet, EVs make up more than 2% of the cars on the road in the US, and that figure grows every year.

Theoretical future technology that may or may not come to production scale is not a reliable metric for a study on cost analysis (such as widespread carbon capture). However, real costs to the U.S. economy from health problems due to air pollution and impacts on the environment, like climbing food prices, cannot be ignored. These are well-studied consequences of continued fossil fuel consumption.

I think you mean that I was the one who pointed out that modern civilization depends on fossil fuels. But in that same paragraph, I pointed out that we have the means to transition away from it, and rapidly. Subsidies for EVs are the way to speed up the transition that will benefit all of us in the end. There are enormous financial consequences down the road that we will face beyond the meager rate of EV subsidies if we don't make the transition.

That's what you need to acknowledge to see that both viewpoints can be true. Subsidies are an investment in the future that science has put a number on already.
$7.9 trillion by 2050 on our current path, is the estimated cost of climate change right now, if we don't act more, according to an article on phys.org.

 

[theo1000]

Mostly because we are trying to speed up and squeeze something that will happen over 50-100 years into a much shorter time scale. Does anyone really think our decedents in 2121 will be burning coal and driving FF gas guzzlers. No they will be doing something similar to the present EV or Synthetic Fuel systems.

The question can be asked if we want to speed this up. Personally I want to see it happen in the lifetime I have left. I'm not taking my money with me and it would be a cool investment to leave the next generations to push along.

 

[theo1000]

It odd that you would use the word 'superior'. What is superior for you? Changes on this scale take time no matter how urgent change is needed. The power of the installed base is strong.

It took 60-80 years just for the conversion from DC to AC current.

 

[theo1000]

I really have no interest in discussing anything other than EV's and how the charging system can be improved.

If you have some interest in discussing that please do post here. Like I said revolutions are hard and I hope this one happens in my lifetime.

 

[All Hat No Cattle]

China is building 40 GW of coal-fired generation. How's that possible if renewables are less expensive?

This is way off-topic, LOL, but I will try to answer that reasonable question.

Could they be building that coal plant in an area of low wind and marginal sunlight? Like Mongolia?

Because they did put in 52 Gigawatts of wind power last year.

Worldwide Wind Capacity Reaches 744 Gigawatts – An Unprecedented 93 Gigawatts added in 2020
Mar 24, 2021
China sets a new world record with 52 Gigawatt in just one year
Only marginal negative effects of the global pandemic
#WWEAwebinar: Wind Power Around the World – 7th April

 

[121gigawatts]

For the sake of argument, I will concede that. OK.

But that brings up 2 major points.

1) Should someone that has a 50 mile daily commute, that costs him 1/7 the fuel cost of a gasser vehicle, not be allowed to own a BEV because "On the road charging cost will never be competitive with charging at home"? Why not allow him to make the choice?

That person, driving 250 miles a week for 50 weeks, (12,500 miles/year)would spend $467.50 for electricity for his BEV, or $1627.50 for fuel for his gasser. And even less if he has a good electric company, as I do.

2) When he goes on his 2 week vacation road trip, what are the odds that he will spend $1,000.00 on Super Chargers on the road? Maybe a trip to Cape Horn? Not likely in 2 weeks, LOL.

The quote below is documented here, so it is not opinion. Just math.

https://www.macheforum.com/site/thr...is-better-than-the-tesla-model-y.1326/page-89

(Heads up, math. Skip to TL;DR if you'd like)

This right here is why I'm switching to an EV.

I drive almost 50 miles one way to work, 5 days a week. Not including any trips to get groceries, shopping, and doing anything else, assuming 48 weeks of work that's 24k miles.

My electricity cost at its highest is $0.126088 during the summer and a low of $0.086088 in 'non summer', both per kWh. Averaging them out since both are 6 month periods evens out to $0.106088 per kWh.

Using a base of 30kWh/100 miles, I'll need 720kWh (24,000miles * 30kWh / 100 miles).

7200 kWh multiplied by my average of $0.106088 per kWh totals: $763.84 per year to get to and from work.

I have attached a comparison via afdc.energy.gov 's calculator between my current 2018 Jeep Cherokee 3.2L AWD. I used $2.75 for the gas as that's the common one here in GA, I can't edit the price of electricity but it seems to be using $0.11819 per kWh.

That's a difference of $2,687 I get to save every year.

I'd like to also draw attention to the CO2. I'm not here to save the planet, and Engineering Explained has an amazing video discussing the production cost in CO2 vs the lifetime CO2 emission between electric and gas vehicles.

This does not include the maintenance needed when comparing an ICE vs an electric. Which I mean $40 for tire rotation every 6 months, a cabin air filter and some windshield wiper fluid. I think I'll be set until the tires run out of thread!

TL;DR: MME will cost me $763.84 per year in electricity to drive to and from work, vs the $3,451 using my Jeep vehicle at a $2.75 per gallon. That's $2,687 in savings! That's $224 in savings every month!

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