[PH95VuimJjqBqy]

the question I can never find anyone answering is pretty straightforward.

is it cheaper paying the electricity for charging? I can't imagine it is, but while everyone talks about things like only having to gas up once every 4 months now, it's not as if the electricity comes for free.

[jjav]

> is it cheaper paying the electricity for charging?

EV promoters will say it is always cheaper but you need to do the math. Depends on your fuel cost vs. electricity costs vs. your gas car mileage.

For example my first EV (Fiat 500) was more expensive to run than my gas car that got over 40MPG. This is in CA with extremely high PG&E electricity rates (but also high fuel costs).

So, it depends.

Also if you use public chraging stations they usually charge a premium for profit. You can see your local charging station rates on e.g. chargepoint website. Use the actual numbers and do the math to be sure.

[michael1999]

There are several people in this thread explaining it is about 10x cheaper.

A base Tesla 3 is 70kWh * 5¢/kWh (my Toronto overnight rate) is ~$3.50 CAD for ~400km range. Gas in my Volvo C30 would be 400km * 8l/100km * $1/l = $32 CAD.

If you drive every day, a plugin-electric can save you a LOT of money. And that's before the savings in oil, brakes, and other maintenance.

I'm stuck with street parking, so it is much less appealing to me.

[jjav]

> There are several people in this thread explaining it is about 10x cheaper.

Well, no. It depends on all the variables. It may or may not be cheaper.

Your case is quite extreme with nearly free electricity! Sure, EV will be cheaper to run for sure.

Here in California with overnight rates around 30c/kWh and day rates over 70c/kWh, the numbers come out different.

[michael1999]

Ouch. I forget how mad California is. No wonder rooftop solar is so attractive.

Peak rates are ~20¢/kWh here, but there is a largish fixed per-customer monthly hit for various debts and obligations. And people regularly complain we're the highest cost province in Canada. 70¢/kWh (in BIG dollars!!!) is just insane.

[tekknik]

EVs still have brakes.

[michael1999]

Yes, but they wear slower since more energy is captured instead of wearing the rotors and pads.

[_ea1k]

Average US price for electricity is ~$.15/kwh. A Model 3 will use ~330 wh/mile at highway speeds, and if you charged _very_ inefficiently (level 1), you'd see gross of around 360 wh/mile.

Compared to a gas car that can get 40 mpg on the highway this works out to: 40 mpg == 1 gallon == ~$2.85 (current price here) == 0.07125/mile EV == .360 * .15 == .054/mile

Of course, if you have time of use rates, you might pay half that for the EV. If you drive in town, your efficiency might be more like 270wh/mile too.

Similarly, that MPG is... very arbitrary. But the bottom line is that most people are getting a significantly lower $/mile purely on energy usage.

Gasoline is very expensive. If it wasn't so expensive, we'd burn it to make electricity.

[avar]

We do, it's called an alternator.

[_ea1k]

Well, yeah, and people use gas generators in remote places occasionally. But I meant at utility scale. :)

[jstarfish]

It's "free" if you have excess solar energy you're not burning on something else.

[tekknik]

It’s not free, you have to include the price of the solar panels you bought excess of in the cost because you can just remove those and sell them if they’re not needed. You essentially installed greater solar capacity to fuel an EV, so not free!

[krallja]

Selling solar panels is going to recover very little of the cost. Most of the cost is the labor and permitting. A lot of the rest is the wiring and inverters. Might as well use the excess power you generate to run a space heater/crypto miner, or net-meter it to the grid.

[tekknik]

You could’ve avoided buying them. Point is, you can’t ignore the cost of something and proclaim that charging your EV is free.