How much does it cost to "fill up" an electric car? That depends on two things: the efficiency of the car and the cost of electricity. Assuming that 300 miles equals a "full tank," here's the cost for a sample of cars and states:
This was inspired by a friend who was complaining about the high cost of charging his new Nissan Ariya. Sure enough, it's about 40 bucks since he lives in San Diego, which has some of the most expensive residential electricity in the nation.
On the bright side, a Tesla Model 3 in Wyoming will take you 300 miles for only $8. Location, location, location.
From the previous post: "I guess the moral of the story is not to believe everything you see on the internet."
These results only apply to electric car owners charging at home. The cost of commercial chargers seems to be calculated to roughly corresspond to the cost of gassing up an IC car.
That may be true in some circumstances, but not always. There are often public places where you can charge for much less than average, and in some cases, free.
On Thursday, I added 8.085 kWh at a ChargePoint station at the Howard County Library, Central Branch, in Columbia MD, for $1.46, or about eighteen cents per kWh, well below the typical price.
"...The cost of commercial chargers seems to be calculated to roughly corresspond to the cost of gassing up an IC car."
Commercial chargers have to cover the cost of land and installing and maintaining the charging equipment. Even home users will have some installation and maintenance charges.
Seems so with Electrify America. With Tesla it seems more pegged to the cost of providing the service, maybe the electricity?
Away from home, the picture flips completely: Contrary to Kevin's example, Tesla charge 41 cents a kwh in Wyoming and my local charger in Oregon is just 19 cents. Charging at home is about 14 cents, going up to 16 cents soon. Going from window sticker MPGe numbers, that's 75 kwh to cover 300 miles and thus $30.75 traveling through Wyoming, $14.25 traveling through Oregon (at least that specific charger), and $10.88 at home.
Even then, that's just over ten cents a mile in the worst case. An efficient car getting 30mpg would do the same trip with ten gallons ...which in Wyoming would cost about the same (if anyone in Wyoming drove such a car...). CA fuel is apparently just shy of $5 gallon, or $50 so the friend is still doing better with electric.
"Sure enough, it's about 40 bucks since he lives in San Diego"
And the price of a tank of gas in San Diego? I'll bet it's around $60.
Which version? https://fueleconomy.gov/feg/PowerSearch.do?action=noform&path=1&year1=2023&year2=2023&make=Nissan&baseModel=ARIYA&srchtyp=ymm&pageno=1&rowLimit=50 shows anywhere from 33kWh/100Miles to 39 kWh/100 miles, so anywhere from 99 kWh to 117 kWh.
And is your friend on a Time-of-Use plan nor not? https://www.sdge.com/residential/pricing-plans/about-our-pricing-plans/whenmatters
Side note - looking at some of those Time-of-Use plans makes Fizbin seem like a kids game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DeIExLcURQ
Must be awful to live in San Diego where electricity is so expensive and the sun never shines so it makes no sense to add solar panels.
I thought driving an EV is some districts in Wyoming is a hanging offense.
BTW, what is the approximate cost to buy gas for similar sized vehicles for that distance? Might be relevant.
That's funny because it's true (almost). But the worst thing for EVs here in Wyoming is you can hardly get anywhere and back in just 300 miles. And EVs use more power with the heater on, which is most months. To help answer your question, it costs me $17.50 right now to go 300 miles in a Prius.
Here you go: 300 miles in a small SUV getting, let's say, 30 mpg would burn 10 gallons of gas. So with a gallon of gas costing $4.45 in San Diego, that would be $44.50. In Wyoming, gas is about $3.50, so $35.00 to fill up.
So a little more for the ICE car in SD and a LOT more in Wyoming. Yippee!
$8 to charge up in Wyoming because they use coal defeats the purpose of the switch to EVs.
Your friend could buy a residential battery system (don't forget to check for rebates and tax credits) sized for a future purchase of solar panels. Then, charge the battery up at night at discount rates and have a timer switch power from the grid to his battery.
Later, when he installs solar panels, he'll have split his total system installed costs in half and lowered the income he needed to take full advantage of the tax credits. He'll then be able to take full advantage of all that sun in San Diego and disconnect from the grid.
Reminds me of one of my favorite screaming headlines from The Onion from 15 years ago or so:
FACTUAL ERROR FOUND ON INTERNET!!!
My home is in the SDG&E service area and I don’t pay anywhere near $40 to go 300 miles in my EV. If I were just on the EV-TOU-5 rate plan with them and charging between midnight and 6 AM (current winter rates) it would be $0.145/kWh. And my EV claims to get 3.5 mi/kWh but by my measurement is has actually averaged 3.1 mi/kWh over the 30k miles I have driven it. So 400 miles with my actual 3.1 mi/kWh and SDG&E "super off peak" rates works out to about $14.
But I have home solar. Between hours the solar system produced, the time I use lights and major appliances, etc. it could be an accounting nightmare to figure out the actual car charging costs. But if I just do my total bill (including solar payments) divided by my total use I am at about $0.05/kWh so that 300 miles actually costs me less than $5 when charging at home.
We have a mountain cabin in the SCE service area. Their EV TOU rates are actually worse than SDG&E's. For the last year our off peak rates have averaged $0.25/kWh so the 300 miles would be a bit over $25.
As pointed out in a previous reply, using DC fast charging is pretty expensive. It basically brings us up to the cost of a 50 MPG internal combustion engined car. So the people who can’t charge at home or work get a rotten deal compared to those of us who can charge at our home. On the other hand, driving a very comfortable EV CUV with only DC fast charging would be about the same cost per mile as my old Prius Prime which was much less comfortable, less spacious and less cargo capacity which is something.
Our electricity is $0.02 per kW, so 300 miles for my Bolt is about $1.50.
This article raises an interesting sub point.
WHY does the same product (the same number of electrons) cost $40 in California and only $8 in Wyoming? I imagine there are regulatory, tax and different source materials, etc.
My point, a 5 X cost difference is a really extreme example of the blue state versus red state cost of living difference. I am not claiming that life is better in red states. Rather, if you want national support of a green agenda, it sure helps to have broad based support...
"WHY does the same product (the same number of electrons) cost $40 in California and only $8 in Wyoming?"
It doesn't. In 2022, electricity in Wyoming cost an average of 8.24 cents/kwh rewtail; in California, it was 22.33 cents/kwh. So that's only about a 2.7 cost difference. Still, you might ask, why is it different at all? A lot of utility service is labor, and the median income in California is about 1.3 times that of Wyoming--workers just cost less in WY. Further, the California grid is way, way more complicated than that of Wyoming, and that costs money (more money per customer) to maintain. Additionally, Wyoming not only has a lot of coal, but uncontrolled coal, meaning the cost of that pollution is borne not by the utilities, but by people downwind in and out of Wyomining, so that cost doesn't show up in rates. Finally, most of the non-coal electricity in Wyoming is from wind turbines, which is incredibly cheap when you have (a) cheap-ass land, and (b) lots of wind. Wyoming is great on (a) and (b); California not so much.
"if you want national support of a green agenda, it sure helps to have broad based support"
Not to be blunt, but if a CA-style electricity system is implicitly accepted by the 40 million people of California, and a WY-style electricity system is implicitly accepted by the 0.58 million people of Wyoming, the "green agenda" as you put it not only has broad-based support, but is in fact wildly popular, by about 68-to-1.
Finally: not to be pedantic, but electricity is not a flow of electrons coming out of a wall socket like water from a tap. You are paying for *energy,* which is caried by the electrons. The actual electrons don't really move around.
To be even more pedantic, it's not the electrons that carry energy; it's the Poynting vector, i.e., the directional flux of energy of the electromagnetic field.
Often overlooked in the search for answers is proximity to large supplies of coal and natural gas.
There isnt really any policy difference that created massive underground supplies of easily accessible coal and natural gas. Policy choices do make a difference, but the cost of using pipelines, trucks and rail to move inputs across the country is significant.
Can't speak for San Diego power, but in northern CA, the killer is the PG&E electricity delivery charge which typically exceeds the actual electricity charge during peak hours. Home solar under NEM2 (which we have) gives you an offset on both which is why all the distributors where clamoring for a "Solar power connection" charge in NEM3. Fortunately, they didn't get it though I believe they did get paying the wholesale rather than retail price for exported home solar power. You wouldn't mind so much if it weren't for the frequent power outages for no apparent reason like this morning.
That is correct. We get our power from PG&E. We chose to get the power from a green producer. The power itself is about 12 cents / kWh but the deliver charges are double that. Plus there are fixed charges on top of that. We put in solar power and batteries so as soon as that comes online we’ll avoid most of those charges, just not the fixed monthly charge for the privilege of using PG&E.
In the Chicago area, I pay $0.12 per kWh at home, and I get about 4 miles per kWh on my PHEV. If I had a 300-mile battery, that would use 75 kWh, which would cost $9 -- similar to Delaware in Kevin's chart.
But it also depends on how you drive. I bet there are plenty of EV drivers who think that because their car doesn't make a loud VROOM, the energy is coming from magic crystals.
The endless complaints of motorists about the cost of fueling and charing have nothing to do with anything more than the human proclivity to complain. The same guy who complains bitterly about gas taxes is driving a Ram truck at 85 mph on the highway, even though he could save a bundle by choosing an efficient vehicle and under driving the speed limit. You can be sure he'll complain when he switches to a Ford F-150 Lightning about ...something.
Why does San Diego cost nearly double the rest of California?
California's Investor-Owned Utilities charge high rates per kWh partly because those rates raise revenue to cover costs not related to generating electricity. The California Public Utilities Commission is planning to reduce the rates per kWh, while maintaining the same revenue for IOUs, by implementing a monthly fixed charge that will depend on household income. The CPUC calls it an Income-Graduated Fixed Charge. From the U.C. Energy Institute blog: "... the problem is that the electricity price you face – if you are a customer of one of California’s large investor-owned utilities – is many times higher than the actual cost of generating and delivering those kWhs. That’s because we are paying for gargantuan – and rising – fixed costs by increasing the volumetric (per kWh) price of electricity."
Source: https://energyathaas.wordpress.com/2023/11/13/whats-a-fair-electricity-bill/
Show your work. Your TM3 value for San Diego appears to be wrong. For most people with an EV, it's either a bit low for charging on peak, or much too high for charging off-peak.
Well at perhaps $3.40/gallon it looks like electric cars are cheaper to "fill up" than comparable gasoline cars.