Tesla Raises Prices At Its Supercharger Stations 167
Tesla is increasing the cost of the paid Supercharger access, but a spokesperson for the company says that it "will never be a profit center." Electrek reports: When introducing the program, Tesla said that it aimed to still make the cost of Supercharging cheaper than gasoline and that it doesn't aim to make its Supercharger network a profit center. Instead, they want to use the money to keep growing the network which now consists of over 1,180 stations and close to 9,000 Superchargers. But this week, the rates were updated across the U.S. Some states saw massive increases of as much as 100 percent -- though most regions saw their rates increase by 20 to 40 percent. For example, Oregon saw an increase of $0.12 to $0.24 per kWh, while California, Tesla's biggest market in the U.S., got an increase from $0.20 to $0.26 kWh and New York's rate went from $0.19 to $0.24 per kWh. A spokesperson for Tesla said in a statement: "We occasionally adjust rates to reflect current local electricity and usage. The overriding principle is that Supercharging will always remain significantly cheaper than gasoline, as we only aim to recover a portion of our costs while setting up a fair system for everyone. This will never be a profit center for Tesla."
So it's still a profit center then? (Score:5, Insightful)
esla said that it aimed to still make the cost of Supercharging cheaper than gasoline and that it doesn't aim to make its Supercharger network a profit center. Instead, they want to use the money to keep growing the network which now consists of over 1,180 stations and close to 9,000 Superchargers.
So they're just reinvesting their profits back into the business then. I don't have a problem with that, and I think it's the appropriate thing to do in their case, but don't piss in my face and tell me it's raining.
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But, maybe they plan on expanding their network in Oregon proportionately more than in the other two states, so this is to pay for it.
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Their overhead costs likely do not scale with direct energy costs, and in Oregon if people are better incentivized to charge at home it reduces the burden on Tesla's infrastructure.
(And to the GP... they are re-investing cash flow rather than profits from what i can see... not to be pedantic.)
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The big costs on operating an unbuffered supercharger station aren't per kWh. They're per-peak-kW in each billing period.
You also have to amortize capital costs, which historically have come in (taking Tesla's total investment in supercharging by the number of stations) at around $250k per station. Now, that sort of estimate tends to overestimate the unit cost significantly, but they're by no measure something that you can just ignore capital costs on.
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Please re-read: not peak hours. Peak kW. Power, not energy. Industrial and large commercial consumers everywhere (yes, including Washington [clarkpublicutilities.com]) pay lower energy rates (kWh) than residential consumers, but offsetting this is the fact that they also have to pay "demand charges", which are based on their peak power (again, not energy) consumption. For a supercharger station - particularly a low utilization station - it's the demand charges that are killer, as just a single vehicle charging will give you thous
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California is a good place to get a good charge off of solar panels. Oregon and Washington not so much. If Tesla really does disconnect all their Superchargers from the grid and just use Solar and batteries, they will need larger installations in the states with less solar time. The cost difference between Calif
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Tesla has shown designs for supercharger stations that have battery packs that are charged by solar and/or the grid, so they can store power gradually (i.e. no 'spike' to the grid) and then deliver it to vehicles as needed. There's the cost of the battery packs, of course, but it should save them a ton on the cost of electricity, since constant power is much cheaper than peak power.
Profits? (Score:2, Informative)
Tesla has never had a profit - except for that ONE quarter and that was from some accounting tricks.
Tesla is a money loser and has been for over 14 years. And if it can't make money now while is pretty much has the EV market, they're gonna get their asses kicked. They are burning through about a HALF A BILLION dollars every quarter in operations: marketing, salaries, and other expenses. That money is gone- forever. So, when stupid people say, "Tesla isn't losing money, they're investing in factories.", t
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Elon Musk's net worth is right now above 20 billion USD. He can literally bankroll all of Tesla's losses out of his own pocket for a decade just with what he has NOW.
Unless something happens that shuts Tesla down hard so he decides to cut his losses, we won't see it bankrupt in the next year or two.
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This is somewhat incorrect - Tesla is making a profit on each car sold. However, they are investing those profits, and more, into building out their infrastructure. So while it's true that right now they're spending a lot more than they are making, the fact that each car sale is profitable means that if they stop building new infrastructure they instantly turn profitable. Or, a more rational strategy, they grow sales (which is why they're spending so much on their factories and charging stations) to cover t
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Tesla created these stations so that people would be able to make long multi-state trips without having to stop for an entire day when the battery ran low. The problem is that people are using these stations for convenience when they don't necessarily need to. This is causing traffic issues so when they start to release a larger number of cars they don't want people to be queued up five or six deep waiting for a recharge.
I would expect them to raise the price further so that the people who are buying the ch
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If you're going to nitpick, at least do it properly.
The statement doesn't say there's a profit. When they raise the Supercharger price, they could very well just be losing less money, hence increasing the investment budget, given that they still receive the same subsidies from other branches of Tesla.
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This is for the supercharge network (Score:3)
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Plus if you can afford to drive a Tesla then the few hundred bucks you could save by using the Supercharger regularly is neither here nor there, especially if it wastes your presumably valuable time in the same way as going to a dedicated petrol station does.
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You can get a used LEAF for $7,000, and it costs about $50/month in electricity. So if you drive it 46 months, that's $200/month. EV maintenance is pretty minimal, though tires aren't any cheaper than an ICE. :-)
'Supercharging' (Score:5, Funny)
3rd Party Stations (Score:4, Insightful)
Are non-Tesla entities allowed to make supercharger stations? It's a non-issue at this point, but eventually the electric vehicle market will grow large enough to make independently owned charging stations viable.
Not only do you want competition to make sure Tesla never decides to start gouging at the stations, but when more electric vehicles come on the market it would be much better if they all shared a common charging interface. No one wants to wander around town looking for a compatible charge-station.
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Are non-Tesla entities allowed to make supercharger stations?
Tesla has offered to license all its patents so it might be possible.
What is 100% possible right now: businesses that want to offer Tesla charging for their guests can get a "destination charger" from Tesla. As I understand the deal, Tesla gives the charger for free, as long as the business offers the charging for free. So the only cost to the business is the cost of the electricity.
Also, anyone could buy a Tesla home charger and set it up. I g
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As I understand the deal, Tesla gives the charger for free, as long as the business offers the charging for free. So the only cost to the business is the cost of the electricity.
Correct, the charger and installation including any needed facilities upgrades (up to some cap, I've seen $3k quoted) are covered, the business only has to pay for the electricity.
Exactly which stations ? (Score:4, Informative)
Are non-Tesla entities allowed to make supercharger stations? {...} but when more electric vehicles come on the market it would be much better if they all shared a common charging interface. No one wants to wander around town looking for a compatible charge-station.
In Europe, there's a standard to which most manufacturer are gravitating toward : Mennekes (official name Type 2 (VDE-AR-E 2623-2-2) [wikipedia.org]).
It's mostly designed to carry tri-phase AC current.
Most of the cars sold in Europe tend to use Mennekes or have adapters for it. European Tesla, as far I've seen, come with Mennekes sockets instead of the weird proprietary shit that they use in the US.
Different Type 2 connectors will simply advertise different max current to the car. Your home charger will advertise current up to 15A (perhaps 25A) on 1 or 3 phases. High speed charger will advertise much higher currents.
The main difference setting appart Teslas is how they handle DC.
The current standard is based around "Combined Charging System" (CCS) : two extra pins below the connector to carry the high voltage high current DC power.
Tesla instead re-use the AC pins with some proprietary signaling to advertise DC instead of AC.
At least where I live, you can find AC Mennekes charger in lots of public places, and nearly every parking at least features normal house-plugs giving low current AC.
On some big highways you can even find charging stations that features Mennekes, CCS and ChaDeMo.
Usually the house-plug style chargers are free (they are actual house plugs with only fancy box around them advertising them as vehicle chargers).
AC Mennekes charge tend to be paying, but not much more expensive than base electricity costs.
All the tri-standard high speed chargers I've seen are paying, but again, close to electricity costs.
Most of the above are usually made available in partnership with the local utility city company.
You can charge Teslas at them but :
- due to differing standards, you can only charge them with the AC Mennekes. You can't charge them DC (they lack the CCS pins).
- they'll charge slower than on Tesla Super charger (or than if they had the DC pins).
I think I've read that Elon Musk isn't asking royalties for companies to implement the DC Tesla protocols.
So maybe eventually the tri-standard high-speed chargers can be modified to allow DC Tesla charging on their Mennekes plug.
(I've read about un-approved Tesla mode enabled on some multi-standard charger)
I'm sure there as some ChaDeMo or CSS to Tesla adapters on the market, too.
In short :
- Yes, in Europe, there are other brand of fast chargers than Tesla.
- Due to differing implementation for DC, Tesla can't user their higher super charging speed there, but they still can "normal charge" with AC.
- The charging interface is already common, except for the above exception (and except for some older cars that use older standards like Type 1).
Me Bad ;) (Score:2)
I love my expedition, even with 12"+ of new snow I can open my garage door and just go where I want to.
I do blow out the driveway if the wife needs to go to work
I know I am an old Neanderthal heck I don't want modern electronics (usb, nav, etc, etc) in my vehicle
You owe me 30s of my life back. (Score:2)
OK, I have rambled a bit. But here is my point, what is the lowest cost Tesla and will it still be in use 18 years from it's purchase date
The lowest cost brand new Tesla is $35K (Model 3). If you want a used one then wait a few years. Also learn how to use Google.
Why would I buy a 50k - 60k vehicle with a short life span ( 3-5 years).
What makes you think that an EV only lasts 3-5 years? Why do anti-EV nutjobs always have to lie so blatantly? You think your little monologue makes you sound like an anti-fad classic old soul, but instead it just makes you sound like an uniformed moron.
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Tesla guarantees 70% range retention to 8 years 100/120k miles for the Model 3 standard/long range. That's probably a VERY conservative estimate given how well they manage the batteries and that it represents around 500 charge/discharge cycles at most abusive charging patterns (expected cell life at that point is still >80%, so the 70% guarantee should only kick in if there's some material defect in the pack)
Battery durability (Score:2)
Someone with hard facts please fill in. Won't supercharging ANY battery result in a reduction in durability and/or premature failure of the pack vs. sedate trickle charging? Or have they magically managed to longevity a constant irrespective of how the charging is carried out?
Re:What does this translate to price per gallon? (Score:5, Informative)
This site https://www.fueleconomy.gov/fe... [fueleconomy.gov]
says that the Tesla Model S AWD gets about 98MPGe, or if you want less "equivalents"and more hard numbers - 35kWh/100miles.
So cost per mile:
ICE: $3/gallon * (1 gallon / 25 miles) = $0.120/mile
Tesla: $0.24/kWh * (35kWh/100miles) = $0.084/mile
Ignoring purchase and maintenance costs of course.
And of course the superchargers are intended for occasional, rushed charging with the assumption that most of the people most of the time will use home/work trickle chargers paying market rates of closer to $0.12/kWh. or about $0.042/mile.
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Well, don't know about you, but I haven't driven a car that got as low as 25mpg in thirty years or so.
Which makes me think you're fudging the numbers a bit....
Re:What does this translate to price per gallon? (Score:5, Informative)
Why is it about you?
The latest hard data from the EPA states: "The MY 2016 adjusted fuel economy is 24.7 mpg..." (for "new personal vehicle[s]", so obviously lower than that if all operational vehicles are considered).
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Cars are 50% of vehicles sold, but yeah it's probably above 25 MPG given that even the light truck numbers from your link show 26 MPG average. Blended average is probably at ~30MPG. That still leaves the average ICE at $.10/mile for fuel only cost. That cost comparison is also using the Model S, the Model 3 is significantly more efficient at 23.7 kWh/100 miles or 40% lower cost per mile.
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"new personal vehicle[s]", not passenger cars.
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I'm not a big fan of electric vehicles, And considering the price, I don't think anyone who much cares about cost per mile is likely to buy a Tesla. But we really shouldn't compare highway mileage for an ICE vehicle to EVs which I would assume will be used mostly for city driving and commuting applications where non-hybrid-ICE mileage tends to suck.
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To be fair:
1) For cars in Model S's performance bracket, 25 mpg isn't bad at all.
2) Model S uses a lot more power than Model 3. Model 3 LR is 126 MPGe, or 26,7kWh/100mi, or $0,064 at your stated rates. Equivalent to 47 mpg. Model 3 SR should be a bit better.
Now, as for home charging (most charging), the last I looked it up, US average residential rates were something like $0,13/kWh. Which is equivalent to 86 mpg as far as operating costs go.
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The Model 3 is looking like the best of the current crop of EVs, I just wish I could actually buy one in the next couple of years.
The Leaf 40 seems to have some serious issues, and the instrument cluster is terrible. Kinda hoping that the 64kWh model due for the end of this year is better, but unless they change a lot of stuff (active battery cooling, new instrument cluster, new centre console screen, new more efficient body shape) it's not clear if it will be much better. Really disappointed.
The Ioniq is c
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>But Teslas, especially out of warranty, are rather expensive to own.
Could you expand on that? My understanding was that EVs in general have very low maintenance requirements - at least until the batteries need to be replaced. Do Teslas suffer from high failure rates in other components as well?
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Tesla parts are very expensive, and many places can't do service on them. Tesla won't sell parts to anyone but authorized repair centres as well.
There is some eye-opening stuff on the TMC forums too. When stuff breaks Tesla's solution is often to replace large parts of the vehicle. Seat doesn't move properly, replace the seat. Motor issue, replace the entire motor. Door doesn't close properly, replace the whole door.
And when stuff gets damaged, say in an accident, the cost can be astronomical. There are pe
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Sadly that makes perfect sense.
I'm really hoping one day we get our collective heads out of our asses and start demanding standardized components for consumer vehicles. I mean sure, you could have a million different seat designs, but they should all attach to the same mounting holes and power connector (if applicable). For ICE's, is there really a need for more than maybe 4 or 5 different models of alternators, air filters, etc.,etc.,etc.? EVs potentially make that a much simpler proposition as well, ele
Re:What does this translate to price per gallon? (Score:4, Informative)
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However, to be fair you can probably use your home electricity in a lot of cases and outside of Hawaii, no one pays $0.24/kWh in the U.S. It's typically closer to half that much in most states.
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You can get just about any car down to under 25mpg, if you drive it right.
Keep up your RPM, never hesitate to downshift, basically flog the piss out of it.
Tesla has ludicrous speed. You just need to use your foot.
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The Mazda CX5 2.2 litre sequential turbo diesel I drive gets less than 9 litres/100km, on short trips in town, better than 30mpg imperial, more like 34 MP US gallons.
Gets 40mpg imperial at 70 mph on long trips.
200HP 420nm torque.
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Yeah, week power, plus diesel. So just generally sucks. But you can still flog the piss out of it, just your redline is about 400 RPM.
Re:What does this translate to price per gallon? (Score:4, Informative)
re: 25MPG (Score:2)
There are millions of Jeep Wranglers on the road today and none of them get more than 25MPG. Typically, it's probably less.
Also, I have a 370Z that averages right at 25-26MPG.
My Chrysler Crossfire SRT-6 I used to drive got around 27, but required premium gas too.
So yeah -- 25MPG average seems legit to me. Lots of cars get more, but plenty get less.
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My 2005 car (4 door sedan) gets about that on average. It's measured at 22 city and 33 highway, if I remember correctly. I tend to average around 25 MPG since the bulk of my driving is on city streets.
It's silly to call someone a liar just because you happen to have a different experience than them.
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"I haven't driven a car that got as low as 25mpg in thirty years or so"
In those 3 decades, there has been a dramatic proliferation of trucks & SUVs in North America.
The venerable F-150 has struggled to exceed 17 mpg for nearly all of those years and even with the lighter aluminum body introduced a few years ago can barely break 20 mpg without some serious granny-style driving in the city.
The Honda CR-V does pretty well at 28 mpg combined (2015) but there are many more that don't fare so well.
I know a do
Re: What does this translate to price per gallon? (Score:2)
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That's nice, but the US National Average MPG for new cars sold is 26.
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
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I know about me. My car is a 2001 model. It's a 2-door coupe, not an SUV, luxury, sports or other type of gas guzzler. It's also not an "economy car".
I get 25 on the highway. That's what the display on my dashboard claims anyway, but if I actually calculate it when I fill up the tank I see it's more like 23 - and that's only if I spend most of my time on the highway away from stop signs and stop lights.
I suppose it depends on how you drive it but in the city with traffic and lights I can't even even g
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Yeah, that roughly matches up with my numbers. 12 gallons of fuel in my Rav4 = about 90 kWh in my Model X. So $36 in California gasoline = about $21 in supercharger fees even at these new rates (if I didn't have unlimited supercharging).
That part seems a bit unrealistic
Re:What does this translate to price per gallon? (Score:4, Interesting)
That price for power is insane. Far more than California average.
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Heh, don't talk to me about cost of living, I live in Iceland. Petrol here is usually over $2,50 AUD per litre. ;) But there's one thing we've got cheap, and that's electricity!
I imagine that a home solar install probably has a pretty reasonable payback period in Australia, given how high your power rates are.
Re: What does this translate to price per gallon? (Score:2)
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Do those electric prices do anything to help maintain the roadways they use?
No
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Re: What does this translate to price per gallon? (Score:3)
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Many states, mine included, make me pay an extra fee with my tabs to cover the money I'm not paying in gas tax. When you run the math, I'm actually paying MORE than most folks who drive non-SUV/Pickup trucks. Essentially I'm paying a fee with my tabs as if I were driving a 20 mpg car.
So no, my electricity prices don't subsidize the road. But my tabs are adjusted to reflect this. Next question?
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At almost a thousand bucks per year for the tags, versus a little over a hundred for my ICE backup car, I figure that's the equivalent of the gas tax on 1500 gallons of fuel, or about 30,000 miles per year. They're getting plenty of money from us.
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PG&E has a plan for EV owners that charges 12c/KWh during the night (11pm to 7am weekdays).
Combine that with solar panels to provide electricity during the day when it is expensive and you can have a low effective electricity rate. I pay only a charge to be connected to the grid ($120/year) while all the usage cost is covered by the solar panels on my roof.
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Sadly, where I live, we're block-metered. The mobile home park gets bulk metered and passes on the charges to us at residential rates. As far as I'm aware, time-of-day metering isn't possible for block-metered houses. (This is also a problem for solar.) But it's good to know that for people who don't live in shared-meter apartment complexes, shared-meter mobile home parks, shared-meter condos, etc., power isn'
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If it's a "dumb" meter with a wheel spinning around they can't tell what time of day electricity was consumed. But all modern power meters (that I have seen) are intelligent, and communicate back to the power company to report power consumption continuously, allowing the power company to charge based on time of day. And, of course, to manage supply vs demand quite precisely. This should be true on shared meter systems, too - it'd just be reporting the total consumption for the apartment complex, etc.
Of cour
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Way to go deliberately misinterpreting my comment. Of course the solar panels are not free. However, in my estimates, they pay for themselves in about 6 years.
What I was trying to convey is that there is a rate plan available to EV owners which charges low rates at night, but high rates during the day. Without solar panels, the total cost of that would be quite high --- especially during the summer afternoons, when running the A/C at 44c/kWh would be very expensive. However, a favourable alignment of my ro
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I can't afford a $80,000 car. I could buy one, but I can't really afford it.
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Also, if you can afford an $80,000 car, you should not be concerned with the cost of energy (whether that is delivered in the form of gasoline or electricity).
If you buy a $8k car and you are concerned about energy cost for it, either you have poor financial skills or you can't really afford the car.
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They finance solar panels and the savings each month are more than the savings in reduced electricity purchased from the power company, though of course it does take years to pay them off. Pretty sweet deal.
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You are on the wrong rate plan; best pricing is with a separate meter for the EV charger, for SCE it is TOU-EV-1, and puts you at $0.12-13/kWh.
If you don't want to install a second meter then you can switch from a tiered rate plan to a pure time-of-use (and have your car only charge after 10PM). $0.17/$0.23 winter/summer
SCE's tariff pages [sce.com]
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Any way, at $2.25/Gal * (1 Gal/ 54 miles)=$0.042/mile.
This is about the same fuel cost as driving the Tesla, so right now my Prius is about as fuel efficient as a Tesla fueled at hom
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A Prius is not a 5+2 seater supercar. You want to compare to the Model 3. And most of one's charging is at home, not at superchargers. Model 3 LR = 267Wh/mi (SR is less). With the average US residential power rate around 13 cents per kWH, that's $0,035/mi. For the LR. At your rates, it's $0,028/mi. 2/3rds of the cost of operating your Prius.
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Not quite.
Average gas price for the U.S. is $2.53 per gallon [aaa.com]. And on top of that, 49.4 cents is fuel taxes [wikipedia.org] (again, average for the country). Basically, EVs are driving on our roads for free, without having to pay to help maintain the roads (currently paid for by fuel taxes). If you imagine a future where all cars are EVs, then they're going to have to pay for road maintenance someho
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$5 would be nice and cheap compared to the ~$7,50 where I am ;) (Iceland)
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1) I don't know what the size of Iceland has to do with anything.
2) Iceland is about 325 miles by 220 miles.
3) The Ring Road around the country is around 790 miles long and is a 16 hour drive.
4) We're roughly tied (with Australia) for 2nd/3rd lowest population density in the world; population density is a major determining factor in how far you have to drive.
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You don't buy a $80,000 sports car for cheap driving. Perhaps the $35,000 sedan they're targeting at the mass market might be a more reasonable comparison. That's a bit less than the $36,000 average new car and truck price in the US (December 2017). So would you be willing to spend $1,000 less than the average car in order to spend half as much on fuel, and 30% less on maintenance? Seems like a good deal, though due to popularity there's a bit of a waiting line.
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Of course, the vast majority of the time you would be charging at home at an average of ½ that rate. The idea of superchargers is that they're needed for long-distance driving, not normal driving to work, errands, etc.
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Mileage taxes are being considered in many places, even implemented in a few.
But the fact of the matter is that road damage is done almost exclusively by commercial freight vehicles and weather. Damage goes up with the cube, or 5th power, or some such of the weight of the vehicle. Something ridiculous that means it takes many thousands or millions of cars to do as much road damage as one semi.
So basically most of your gas taxes are already going to subsidize commercial vehicles that are causing the road d
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That part I don't know. but I do know that I'm in Oregon and we pay about $0.12/kWh for residential electricity.
So this is going from, "same price as at home, but convenient" to "double price for convenience."
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This is comparable to international Fast Charge networks:
Norway has of course been one of the largest Tesla markets since day one, China passed us recently to move into the second spot.
About 99% of all electricity here is hydro-electric since we're blessed with a lot of mountains, lakes and waterfalls (less than 3% is even potentially arable according to the CIA). My electricity bill at home is normally just over USD 0.10 per kWh, half of this is for the power and half is the transmission cost, so that seco
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You have claimed to live in San Jose. Where in or near San Jose can you buy gas for $2.5/gal?
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While $35k isn't cheap, the average new car or truck purchase price in the US is a bit over $36,000, so $35,000 isn't an unreasonably high price, given that it costs ½ as much to drive, and has 1/3rd lower maintenance costs, than an ICE.
Yes, new cars cost more than used cars. You can get a used LEAF for $7,000. So?
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$13k buys a lot of gas but at $2.50/gallon and 30MPG combined the lifetime cost of fuel for the Accord is $20k based on 250k mile lifetime. If the fuel cost for the EV is half then it makes up almost all of the difference in purchase price with oil changes and belts easily making up the rest so the TCO is a wash and you arguably get a better vehicle than a base Accord.
Re:What does this translate to price per gallon? (Score:5, Informative)
"Plus gas is really $2.50 per gal. So assuming a 30mpg car it is $2.50/30 = 0.08. For Tesla you get 3 miles per kWh so it is .26/3 = $0.08/mile."
Of course price of fuel is only part of the equation. Servicing costs for an EV should be much lower than for an ICEV too although I believe Teslas are a little pricey for servicing, but when you take a more normal EV like my Nissan LEAF versus my BMW MINI the cost differences are stark.
Last year I charged my car at home or on free chargers at carparks mostly and I also had the 30,000Km full dealer service done. Total running cost for the LEAF over the year works out at $300 including servicing. My MINI covered about the same distance last year and here the price of fuel is $2 per litre so around $8 a US gallon (NZ$) and it costs me $100 to fill that car which will do 750km per tank. That's $4000 in fuel alone this last year, plus there was some fairly serious servicing that needed doing such as new brakes and discs, clutch, drive shaft and tyres, plus all the usual fluid changes and that lot adds up to another $3500.
The LEAF likely won't need new discs or pads for a long long time due to regenerative braking but the tyres are close to needing done so we could add say $800 for a new set of boots on the LEAF and still be over $6000 cheaper to run in the last year than the MINI which is a fuel efficient little car. Having both certainly brings home the marked difference in costs and while the cost of entry to the LEAF was higher, the annual running costs bring it to parity within three years of purchase and after that the LEAF is much cheaper.
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So...50% more miles per dollar isn't "dramatic?" Where's your threshold for "dramatic?" 60%? 70% 100%? Seems like you have some kind of arbitrary cutoff.
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The level of inconvenience largely depends on the specific habits user - if you can easily charge at home and mostly just drive around town within range of a single charge, then the "inconvenience" is only plugging your car in when you get home at night, and in exchange you never have to stop at a gas station, get an oil change, replace brake pads, etc. In which case an EV is actually considerably less inconvenient.
If you have a really long commute (and can't reliably charge at work) , or go on road trips
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I suspect it is more the cost of needing to build a lot more supercharger stations, and using higher prices to raise revenue to cover those costs. My supercharger has a *median* wait of probably three or four cars beyond full, peaking into the mid-teens. They literally need twice as many superchargers right now, and it is getting worse over time. The only way the whole system won't completely come crashing down is if the cost of charging is high enough to make all the new Model 3 owners think twice unti
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Whoa, what supercharger is that? That's certainly not normal.
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Mountain View. I've had to wait for a spot after midnight.
All the Bay Area superchargers are apparently pretty bad, from what I'm told, unless you count the far-flung stations like Gilroy. The rule is, if it shows either full or one spot empty, that means there's a line. If it shows two spots empty, there's probably a line. Basically, the Sunnyvale and Cupertino superchargers can't come online too soon....
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Okay, San Francisco, I can actually believe that! Tesla's going big on their SF buildout right now for a reason; 4 just isn't enough for a place with so many Teslas. ;) But you've got 5 in construction, and another 5 in permitting, so the situation should be better soon.
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Yeah. Soon they'll only be full most of the time. :-D
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That's also why Tesla started charging - the more they charge, the more people charge at home, leaving the superchargers available for long-distance travelers. Though since almost all Tesla owners right now get free supercharging, they've got no (financial) reason not to use the superchargers instead of plugging in at night.