Electric Cars - the costs & the math

[Stevecsd]

A friend of mine sent this one to me:


Talking to a BC Hydro executive. I asked him how that renewable thing was doing. He laughed, then got serious. If you really intend to adopt electric vehicles, he pointed out, you had to face certain realities. For example, a home charging system for a Tesla requires 75 amp service.
The average house is equipped with 100 amp service. On our small street (approximately 25 homes), the electrical infrastructure would be unable to carry more than 3 houses with a single Tesla, each. For even half the homes to have electric vehicles, the system would be wildly over-loaded.


This is the elephant in the room with electric vehicles ... Our residential infrastructure cannot bear the load. So as our genius elected officials promote this nonsense, not only are we being urged to buy the damn things and replace our reliable, cheap generating systems with expensive, new windmills and solar cells, but we will also have to renovate our entire delivery system! This latter "investment" will not be revealed until we're so far down this dead-end road that it will be presented with an oops and a shrug.



If you want to argue with a green person over cars that are Eco-friendly, just read the following:
Eric test drove the Chevy Volt at the invitation of General Motors...and he writes...For four days in a row, the fully charged battery lasted only 25 miles before the Volt switched to the reserve gasoline engine. Eric calculated the car got 30 mpg including the 25 miles it ran on the battery. So, the range including the 9-gallon gas tank and the 16 kwh battery is approximately 270 miles.


It will take you 4 1/2 hours to drive 270 miles at 60 mph. Then add 10 hours to charge the battery and you have a total trip time of 14.5 hours. In a typical road trip your average speed (including charging time) would be 20 mph.



According to General Motors, the Volt battery holds 16 kwh of electricity. It takes a full 10 hours to charge a drained battery. The cost for the electricity to charge the Volt is never mentioned so I looked up what I pay for electricity. I pay approximately (it varies with amount used and the seasons) $1.16 per kwh. 16 kwh x $1.16 per kwh = $18.56 to charge the battery. $18.56 per charge divided by 25 miles = $0.74 per mile to operate the Volt using the battery. Compare this to a similar size car with a gasoline engine that gets only 32 mpg. $3.19 per gallon divided by 32 mpg = $0.10 per mile.


The gasoline powered car costs about $15,000 while the Volt costs $46,000........So the American Government and Canadian Government wants loyal Citizens not to do the math, but simply pay 3 times as much for a car, that costs more than 7 times as much to run, and takes 3 times longer to drive across the country.....Duh!

[boxcar]

Not only this...but the higher demand for electricity will mean more construction of coal-powered electric plants. Bet the libs conveniently didn't factor this little fact into their "ingenious" green plans either.

[Mike Hawk]

I'd love to see a source on these numbers because they are wildy misleading and inaccurate.

First of all, how often does the average person need to drive across the country?

Not to mention a new Volt may cost $46,000, but saying a gasoline car only costs $15,000? Maybe for a several years old used car. A brand new gasoline powered car can easily cost $30,000...
You can't compare a new electric vehicle price to an old used car price... Of course it's going to make electric cars look bad when all the information is misleading.

I personally know several people who own electric cars, and they each have a charging station installed outside their homes. It DEFINITELY does not cost 7 times as much to run versus a gas powered vehicle.

Whoever wrote this mess is an uniformed jackass.

[chadk66]

getting rid of those batteries will become a serious issue someday. Just like used up solar panels

[HalvOnHorseracing]

Originally Posted by Stevecsd

According to General Motors, the Volt battery holds 16 kwh of electricity. It takes a full 10 hours to charge a drained battery. The cost for the electricity to charge the Volt is never mentioned so I looked up what I pay for electricity. I pay approximately (it varies with amount used and the seasons) $1.16 per kwh. 16 kwh x $1.16 per kwh = $18.56 to charge the battery. $18.56 per charge divided by 25 miles = $0.74 per mile to operate the Volt using the battery. Compare this to a similar size car with a gasoline engine that gets only 32 mpg. $3.19 per gallon divided by 32 mpg = $0.10 per mile.

I'm not sure where you live, but the average per kwh cost of electricity in the U.S. for residential customers is around 12 cents. There are places with peak pricing - California comes to mind - but even California on a hot day at 4:00 probably wouldn't be more than 35 cents per kwh

[davew]

Originally Posted by chadk66

getting rid of those batteries will become a serious issue someday. Just like used up solar panels

they will recycle (I hope) since they now cost $10K - $30K / vehicle

[Lemon Drop Husker]

Originally Posted by Mike Hawk

I'd love to see a source on these numbers because they are wildy misleading and inaccurate.

First of all, how often does the average person need to drive across the country?

Not to mention a new Volt may cost $46,000, but saying a gasoline car only costs $15,000? Maybe for a several years old used car. A brand new gasoline powered car can easily cost $30,000...
You can't compare a new electric vehicle price to an old used car price... Of course it's going to make electric cars look bad when all the information is misleading.

I personally know several people who own electric cars, and they each have a charging station installed outside their homes. It DEFINITELY does not cost 7 times as much to run versus a gas powered vehicle.

Whoever wrote this mess is an uniformed jackass.

The only uniformed jackasses I know are people that buy $80K cars that they can't drive outside of a 200 mile radius from their home..... at best.

But hey, at least you have a car you can drive to work everyday at 3 to 4 times to expense of everybody else. That'll show 'em.

[Actor]

Originally Posted by boxcar

Not only this...but the higher demand for electricity will mean more construction of coal-powered electric plants.

BINGO! The electric car merely shifts the source of the pollution from the internal combustion engine in the car to the coal fired turbine at the power plant. The question is whether the turbine produces fewer pollutants per mile then the gasoline engine.

[davew]

Originally Posted by Lemon Drop Husker

The only uniformed jackasses I know are people that buy $80K cars that they can't drive outside of a 200 mile radius from their home..... at best.

But hey, at least you have a car you can drive to work everyday at 3 to 4 times to expense of everybody else. That'll show 'em.

For some companies, vehicles like that are expected in the parking lot .... I have heard that you can tell a lot about how a company pays, by the vehicles of the employees.

[FakeNameChanged]

Originally Posted by davew

For some companies, vehicles like that are expected in the parking lot .... I have heard that you can tell a lot about how a company pays, by the vehicles of the employees.

I look at the cars in the lot outside our local OTB and say the same thing about the patrons.

[hcap]

Originally Posted by Actor

BINGO! The electric car merely shifts the source of the pollution from the internal combustion engine in the car to the coal fired turbine at the power plant. The question is whether the turbine produces fewer pollutants per mile then the gasoline engine.

The efficiencies of central power plants are substantially better than the internal combustion engine.

https://matter2energy.wordpress.com/...ar-efficiency/

The case for electric

Very basically, if we took the gasoline you put into your car and burned that in a turbine, then sent that power to your electric car, the overall efficiency of the system would double.

Not only that but COAL fired plants are on the way out and coal produces much more pollution and co2 than other fossil fuels. Of course the best combination would be renewable energy sources providing electrical power for electric vehicles.

[kevb]

Volvo just announced plans to phase out gas-only car production by 2019, at which time all new Volvos will either be fully electric or electric hybrids. “This announcement marks the end of the solely combustion engine-powered car,” said CEO Håkan Samuelsson. “Volvo Cars has stated that it plans to have sold a total of one million electrified cars by 2025.

France plans to ban all petrol and diesel vehicles by 2040, the country's new environment minister has announced. France is by no means the only country aiming to ban combustion-powered cars in some form. Germany wants to do away with 100 per cent combustion-powered vehicles by 2030, as does India. The Netherlands and Norway wish to do so by 2025.

[Inner Dirt]

Originally Posted by Stevecsd

According to General Motors, the Volt battery holds 16 kwh of electricity. It takes a full 10 hours to charge a drained battery. The cost for the electricity to charge the Volt is never mentioned so I looked up what I pay for electricity. I pay approximately (it varies with amount used and the seasons) $1.16 per kwh. 16 kwh x $1.16 per kwh = $18.56 to charge the battery. $18.56 per charge divided by 25 miles = $0.74 per mile to operate the Volt using the battery. Compare this to a similar size car with a gasoline engine that gets only 32 mpg. $3.19 per gallon divided by 32 mpg = $0.10 per mile
!

Originally Posted by HalvOnHorseracing

I'm not sure where you live, but the average per kwh cost of electricity in the U.S. for residential customers is around 12 cents. There are places with peak pricing - California comes to mind - but even California on a hot day at 4:00 probably wouldn't be more than 35 cents per kwh

I believe someone misplaced a decimal point. I used to live in California back 6 years ago with tiered pricing on summer rates if you add all the costs together a high user could end up paying up to 40 cents per KWH. Also I belong to a manufacturing based website where people often compare costs and at this writing California has the highest rates of the 48 states, can't speak for Alaska and Hawaii as no one on that site lives there.

[Dave Schwartz]

This is an amazing, well-thought post.

Originally Posted by Stevecsd

A friend of mine sent this one to me:


Talking to a BC Hydro executive. I asked him how that renewable thing was doing. He laughed, then got serious. If you really intend to adopt electric vehicles, he pointed out, you had to face certain realities. For example, a home charging system for a Tesla requires 75 amp service.
The average house is equipped with 100 amp service. On our small street (approximately 25 homes), the electrical infrastructure would be unable to carry more than 3 houses with a single Tesla, each. For even half the homes to have electric vehicles, the system would be wildly over-loaded.


This is the elephant in the room with electric vehicles ... Our residential infrastructure cannot bear the load. So as our genius elected officials promote this nonsense, not only are we being urged to buy the damn things and replace our reliable, cheap generating systems with expensive, new windmills and solar cells, but we will also have to renovate our entire delivery system! This latter "investment" will not be revealed until we're so far down this dead-end road that it will be presented with an oops and a shrug.



If you want to argue with a green person over cars that are Eco-friendly, just read the following:
Eric test drove the Chevy Volt at the invitation of General Motors...and he writes...For four days in a row, the fully charged battery lasted only 25 miles before the Volt switched to the reserve gasoline engine. Eric calculated the car got 30 mpg including the 25 miles it ran on the battery. So, the range including the 9-gallon gas tank and the 16 kwh battery is approximately 270 miles.


It will take you 4 1/2 hours to drive 270 miles at 60 mph. Then add 10 hours to charge the battery and you have a total trip time of 14.5 hours. In a typical road trip your average speed (including charging time) would be 20 mph.



According to General Motors, the Volt battery holds 16 kwh of electricity. It takes a full 10 hours to charge a drained battery. The cost for the electricity to charge the Volt is never mentioned so I looked up what I pay for electricity. I pay approximately (it varies with amount used and the seasons) $1.16 per kwh. 16 kwh x $1.16 per kwh = $18.56 to charge the battery. $18.56 per charge divided by 25 miles = $0.74 per mile to operate the Volt using the battery. Compare this to a similar size car with a gasoline engine that gets only 32 mpg. $3.19 per gallon divided by 32 mpg = $0.10 per mile.


The gasoline powered car costs about $15,000 while the Volt costs $46,000........So the American Government and Canadian Government wants loyal Citizens not to do the math, but simply pay 3 times as much for a car, that costs more than 7 times as much to run, and takes 3 times longer to drive across the country.....Duh!

[Dave Schwartz]

Regarding the Chevy Bolt... My son bought the one that is electric only.

He loves the car.

I have driven it and it has amazing acceleration.

However... All the other stuff - (other than charging cost) is absolutely true.

For example driving it from Santa Monica (where he lives) to Reno (where we live) is just not practical. He rents a car or flies.

BTW, apparently many car dealers who sell electric cars in SoCal offer free loaners for people who want to go on a trip.

As for charging cost, surprisingly that has not been much of an issue for him because his employer offers FREE charging. Of course, he works in the movie biz. They are made of money and love to be "green."

I think what grabbed me about the orig post was not all the stuff that is debatable such as real cost, etc. but the statement about the infrastructure issues.

It is very logical that the amps necessary on a typical street would not stand the load.

As an example, just imagine that you decide to put a small server farm into your house because you want to crunch numbers in a big way. Let's say that you've decided to add about 10 or 20 computers to your back bedroom that nobody is using.

YOU CAN'T!

Ask me how I know. My office downstairs shares 15 amps with the den on the other side of the wall. From what I understand, each computer draws between 3 and 5 amps. (More on start up, and this assumes not every computer has its own monitor.)

We installed 2 20-amp circuits to make it work with 14 computers.

The point from all this is that THERE ARE LIMITS to what a circuit can handle, a house can handle, and, collectively what a physical area such as a block could handle.

The idea that everybody on a single block could not charge from home overnight with the current infrastructure is completely believable to me.

Just my opinion.

Dave