EV Cars/Trucks

[synthesis2]

Since I was banned from the Gas thread for simply saying I was glad I have a EV car now I thought I'd answer the question that was posed to me by another before I was banned.(still have zero idea why.

We have a Model 3 long range, it gets around 340 miles per charge and our all in was 50k for the car, $500 for the Wall Charger (you don't need but its cool looking)

Our previous car was a Porsche Cayenne, here is what we spent in the year we owned it. My wife is a rep and uses as her company car. ( she gets paid mileage) so we paid 40k for it. Was a year old when we got it. She drove it 50K in a year, we had to use premium unleaded gas and it got around 18 miles per gallon. We had to get it serviced 3 times with a average cost of $500-700 on each service. I don't know how much we paid in gas but lets assume we still had it today and Premium was going for 4.50 a gallon, it would be around 12-14k on gas a year, along with $1500-2000 in services so our all in each year was 13.5-16k per year in service and gas.

With our Tesla our electricity has seemed to go up $40-50 per month, so lets call it $600 plus tires rotated $100, windshield wiper fluid $5 so for the year its around $800 vs. 13.5-16k.

So the 10k cost difference was made up in less than a year and now we are saving 12k plus per year compared. Plus she loves the car much more than the Porsche.

I know compared with a ford focus the math may not ever make sense but for a nicer car its been awesome for us.

[Chief Pagan]

Originally Posted by rtmike

Like a broken record. Where we getting all this extra electricity?
Just about all single blocks of neighborhood homes in north America can only support three homes of full rip 90 amp Tesla superchargers homes.

O, yeah, coal & natural gas power plants pick up the slack, lol.

Hardly need super chargers at home when most homes can spend most of the night (when the grid isn't that heavily taxed) re charging.

But the US electrical supply and grid does need major, sustained investment.

[Chief Pagan]

Originally Posted by stevieray

And most of the lithium is refined in CHINA.

I remember when air was free at the gas station, too.

You think the rate for electricity will remain static?

Yea, and almost nobody can build a damn car without computer chips that are manufactured (or not manufactured as the case may be) in southeast Asia. So what difference does it make?

[synthesis2]

Originally Posted by stevieray

And most of the lithium is refined in CHINA.

I remember when air was free at the gas station, too.

You think the rate for electricity will remain static?

I have solar so in the end don't end up paying anything for electricity, maybe in the middle of summer it might go up to $30-50 a month but most months are zero so not worried about electricity.

[synthesis2]

Originally Posted by Lzen

Truck gets about 15-20 mpg. It is mostly only driven to and from work (11 miles through town one way M-F) and occasionally other places like Lowes (maybe 20 miles round trip). Not sure where you get $1000-$1500 yearly oil and maintenance but mine is not anywhere near that.

Other vehicle is a Kia Optima. It gets about 28-32 mpg. It is driven to and from work (about 9 miles one way through town, M-F but there are some days the wife works from home) and anywhere else we go that doesn't need a truck to haul stuff. Still think your oil and maintenance estimate is way high.

And, of course, I ride a motorcycle as much as I can during the warm weather months.

Yeah, no, still cheaper than buying a new electric vehicle, especially when you add in the insurance and property tax. And really, where are you going to find a EV for 20k?

You can get a Nissian Leaf for $27-28k and with tax incentives its nets you down to around 20K. so easy to find and saves lots of cash.

[synthesis2]

Originally Posted by rtmike

Like a broken record. Where we getting all this extra electricity?
Just about all single blocks of neighborhood homes in north America can only support three homes of full rip 90 amp Tesla superchargers homes.

O, yeah, coal & natural gas power plants pick up the slack, lol.

The Sun

[rtmike]

Originally Posted by synthesis2

The Sun

Not in the Pacific NW.
Rain starts daily around November and doesn't stop until July, lol.

The batteries still need work if they lose up to 25% in below freezing temps.

[stevieray]

Originally Posted by Chief Pagan

Yea, and almost nobody can build a damn car without computer chips that are manufactured (or not manufactured as the case may be) in southeast Asia. So what difference does it make?

ya, cue the pics of thousands of new vehicles sitting in parking lots useless.

Chip shortages do not equal shipping lithium to China to be refined.

if you think the cost of electricity isn't going to rise, more power to you.

[frozenchief]

Electric Police cars aren't working:

https://www.the-sun.com/motors/57100...ing-out-power/

[rtmike]

Originally Posted by synthesis2

You can get a Nissian Leaf for $27-28k and with tax incentives its nets you down to around 20K. so easy to find and saves lots of cash.

If you can find one.

I seen on the news where a dealer said they could sell 60 @ month if they weren't only getting one or two a month from factory.

[Chief Pagan]

Originally Posted by stevieray

ya, cue the pics of thousands of new vehicles sitting in parking lots useless.

Chip shortages do not equal shipping lithium to China to be refined.

if you think the cost of electricity isn't going to rise, more power to you.

I would be happy to see the US economy decouple from China, but that is obviously a discussion for DC.

Switching from ICE to electric vehicles at any sort of scale is going to require investment in infrastructure.

Retiring coal plants and replacing them with something else requires investment.

High capacity, long distance transmission lines would help, but I don't think the country has the political will to overcome the opposition and NIMBYism (and again topic for DC).

Industrial scale battery storage, whether it is traditional batteries or something like pumped hydro, is viable politically. It is a question of getting the costs down.

No, I don't think things are going to be rainbows and unicorns.

I'm not actually very optimistic about this situation.

There are some types of investment the country generally does a poor job of. Again I don't want to get myself or this thread booted but I think Texas and California represent two extremes and I think both have left consumers in bad shape.

['Hamas' Jenkins]

Originally Posted by rtmike

Not in the Pacific NW.
Rain starts daily around November and doesn't stop until July, lol.

The batteries still need work if they lose up to 25% in below freezing temps.

A system in Seattle would produce about 20% less than one in Missouri.

https://pvwatts.nrel.gov/pvwatts.php

[notorious]

Let's not kid ourselves.

This is going to come down to having large battery banks charging solar at every house that owns an Electric vehicle.

They'll develop a way to dump a lot of juice quickly from those banks into the car.

Or a quick swap battery stock at every "gas" station.

[ghak99]

[RedRaider56]

nissan leaf is great if all you do is run around town. Won't help me much when I need to drive 400 miles for a trip

[notorious]

That pickup comparison video shows how abysmal range is now.

Maybe I’ll get a usable electric truck by the time I’m 80.