Recent anecdote: I rented a Rivian R1S in Bay Area for a short trip to Santa Rosa. On the way back I charged at "Rivian adventure network" and the cost to charge was $0.68/kWh.
Now, Rivian is a big car and this basically meant you are getting about 3 miles per dollar. A full 'charge' would have cost me nearly $100!
But, an even bigger gasoline car - Lincoln Navigator - has 16 MPG, and even with gas prices in CA (currently ~$5 per gallon) you are looking at 3.2 miles per dollar.
I was shocked by that, especially knowing that CA has excess solar capacity. Why the heck is electricity for charging so expensive? (I pay around $0.15/kWh last time I checked for my home)
Electrical charging on the road is expensive, because those are fast chargers, and not normal chargers a home would have.
A ~7kw charger you'd install in a home or a business has is relatively cheap wiring electrically, and the stalls are not that expensive.
Rivian adventure network uses chargers that have to output 220kw into the car. This requires significantly higher cost for getting electricity to each stall, the stall needs to be able to handle that much power transfer, and they must be actively cooled (since that much power causes a significant amount of heat). They also require a decent amount of maintenance.
These stalls can cost upwards of $100k per stall for installation.
This is all done so you can charge in ~20 minutes (as opposed to several hours it would take at a normal 7kwh one).
That's why fast chargers cost significantly more. They also need higher profit margins to make back the installation and maintenance cost depending on utilization rates they expect, otherwise installing these chargers doesn't make a lot of sense for businesses.
It also likely gives you cancer over time. It likely also gives the rest of us cancer, asthma, and a number of other health conditions. It also poisons our water and air.
You also must charge at a station, whereas electric vehicles can be charged at home, so this 20 minute charging situation is generally exceptional, whereas you having to drive to a station to fill up is a requirement.
I know this isn't usual for most people but it's fairly common for adventure vehicles to carry extra gas with them. I have a fuel bottle I'll take on my motorcycle if I know I'm going to be out in the sticks for a while, Jeeps/off roaders will carry jerry cans/rotopax, etc.
No one is saying _you must use an EV_ if your use-case doesn't fit. That doesn't change the fact that most people aren't you. I've for example never brought around extra gas.
The goal is to have most cars shifted over to EV as they fit the common uses-cases, and to eventually expand to the abnormal use-cases.
No, you do not have to refill at a station. What a ridiculous thing to even attempt to say.
The whole point of the comment was that you can refill anywhere. In the absolute middle of nowhere. Because "you can carry 100 miles of range in a pail"
You can carry gas any way that you would carry water. You can walk and carry 1-3 gallons of gas and it only weighs a few pounds to get 30-100 miles of range in a modestly inefficient car that only gets 30 mpg, forget a hybrid that gets 50mpg. It takes hundreds of pounds and idk how many cubic feet of battery to give 30-100 miles of range.
As for needing the infrastructure to produce the gas, well, A, you need equivalent infrastructure to create solar panels and copper wire, and B, you can brew various forms of deisel and alcohol from anything that grows with no infrastructure if you really had to. There are various low-tech ways to make electricity too, though you still need at least good wire which will be hard to make in a bathtub, but let's grant the wire just to be generous, so I think the whole "needing a station" is a wash on all points except the fact that there is no electric equivalent of how practical the fuel itself is to handle and transport. The closest might be, if you had extra solar panels, instead of walking however many miles to some other tank, you could sit and wait a day and get about 30 miles from solar in a day, assuming the vehicle is not in shade. .. even when I try to steel-man the other argument, it's still full of caveats for requirements and limitations that gas does not have.
And you don't lose ANY in the transfer while pouring the gas from one tank to another. You lose a lot while using one battery to charge another, or when doing any form of transmission or conversion at all.
And the tools and materials you need to accomplish the transfer are nothing. No exotic cabling to handle crazy amps without overheating, no computers to negotiate and monitor, nothing.
And for all that energy packed into that gas, it's almost as safe as an equal pail of water. It isn't trying desperately to explode itself at all times only held back by undamaged films. You can throw a lit cigarrette right into a pail of gas and it just puts the cigarette out. If you spill the gas and create an area of dangerous fumes that would be easy to ignite, that danger actually dissipates in a few minutes all by itself as the gas evaporates to nothing.
There is no comparison in utility.
The advantages of electric are obvious and can not be denied. But there simply are also serious disadvantages that have not yet found any even remotely reasonable answer.
My dude. No one in their sane mind is making their own gasoline. Like, I can get the idea that some folks want to bring extra fuel around with them for off-roading, but you're talking extreme off-the-grid use-cases and no one cares about that. Keep your gas if you're going to do that. You're in such an ultra minority that it doesn't matter if you use EVs or not.
We're talking about normal use-cases here. Like, my car is in my house attached to my wall socket vs needing to take 15 minutes out of your commute to go to a gas station. Most EV owners can avoid going to a "station" completely, for their day-to-day use, and for road trips may need to go to one once or twice, ideally charging while they eat.
> No one in their sane mind is making their own gasoline.
In your apparently limited experience.
First time I met someone cleaning biodiesel at their home was back in 1980 and since then I've met such people at least once a year or so, particularly in the off road and farming communities.
It's a neat saving for bulk fuel users to collect waste cooking oils from resturants, chip shops, etc and filter, centrifuge, tap, clean and blend into 44 gallon drums for later use.
It's entirely sane to make a bit of cash taking people's waste and saving on fuel purchases by blending in.
It's still the absolute minority of people, and they can continue using biodiesel for their cases. No one is going to force them to switch, and it doesn't change the fact that nearly all people who use gas need to go to a station.
It's a minority of people that launch unicorn startups, it's a minority of people that fill 10 acres with graded rock and soil for construction sales, own second hand bobcats and excavators, make money collecting oil waste, and reduce costs by blending.
> They also need higher profit margins to make back the installation and maintenance cost depending on utilization rates they expect, otherwise installing these chargers doesn't make a lot of sense for businesses.
While I respect the right of the business to make its own decisions about what the payback time ought to be, I'd also guess that other than replacing the very cheap jack/socket and the payment tablet, these devices will last decades. The only reason they need high profit margins is a desire for a short payback time, much, much shorter than the likely life of the device.
Given the fact that the other plug is basically the standard at this point and the fact that Rivan's doing the "Rivan Adventure Network" for Rivan vehicles, what's the usage? If they're only getting used 10% of the time, some back of the envelope math says charging $0.61 per kWh is the five year to payback timeline.
What's an acceptable timeline to RoI for you that a business owner is allowed to have?
From my POV, if a business owner buys a piece of equipment that can entirely reasonably be expected to last 20 years, the timeline for ROI is on the order of 20 years. Maybe 10, maybe 15.
But I'm not insisting that this a hard and fast rule; rather, I'm suggesting that "a 5 year ROI" is also not a hard and fast rule.
Is there anything resembling a guarantee Rivan will be around in twenty years? Not just a "yeah probably", but something solid that would make you feel good about placing a $100k+ bet on them being around?
That's completely missing the point they're making, they weren't calling out Rivian as different to competitors it was just an example brand for the discussion of what timeline is reasonable to plan over.
and (some) people wonder why (other) people think that charging infrastructure should be either (a) standardized to be manufacturer neutral (b) publically owned or (c) both.
Normally a long payback time is fine, but I would expect that in ~5 years, faster charging will be prevalent and the current chargers will already be obsolete, or at least less popular.
But shouldn't these fast chargers be doing much more "volume" of charges on a per-hour basis? I.e., if they can pump 3x the kWh shouldn't that somewhat alleviate the need to charge more per kWh?
No, for most people who own an electric car, its cheaper (ex. charging at off-peak, and slower) and more convenient to charge at home. I only use those super chargers on road trips which isn't my normal commute.
I hope you understand that this anedcote is something like "I rented a car, I bought $9.50/gallon fuel, and then did the math on how many fewer miles that fuel got me vs when I buy fuel at home for sane prices" yeah? :)
$0.68 is nuts. I am on my fourth EV, and currently I will expect 0.35-0.50 on my frequent road trips between CA and OR/WA. I also tend to favor the Electrify America stations since they're free for 30mn for me to use. In my car, that 30mn will take me from 20% charge to ~85% charge for $0.
Once the free-charging sugar high is over for a lot of EV owners, I think they will start doing the math too and prefer, strongly, to charge at home. The other problem is there are no posted rates for the charge, and once you glide into a charger down to 30mi range, you're probably not going to pick up and go to a different one.
To be fair, I have driven EVs exclusively for 8 years and I wouldn't really recommend them as a rental car in the current state to a non-EV driver.
I don't even know if I'd rent one myself as an experienced EV users. I've done it once myself and found it quite stressful.
There's just too many ways for it to go wrong with an unfamiliar EV in an unfamiliar area.
Rental company gives you a slightly different model than you expected with lower range, battery at lower state of charge than anticipated, the guess-o-meter range estimate is overly optimistic and the car burns through range too fast, chargers in region are worse/busier/etc than you expect, etc.
Yeah I've wanted to and the "bring it back fully charged" requirement is hopeless. I rent for convenience and have zero interest in solving this problem for the agencies.
"bring back >80%" would be easier and tempt me on certain missions where I have the free time to navigate Plugshare and figure it out.
In thinking about it this morning, this is probably where one could use the "prepaid fuel" upsell option. I might consider that next time I rent something away from home. There have been some really dirt-cheap "manager specials" that are apparently code language for "EV rental we can't rent out otherwise" -- like $6, $8/day cheap. :)
Oh its not even the "bring it back 100% or 80%" or whatever for me.
I rented a car in Europe , I had to drive 165mi exactly. I reserved what I expected to be a ~260mi range model - tons of buffer!
They actually gave me a ~240mi range model that was maybe 70% charged. So now I'm thinking OK very very close but I'll charge along the route if needed.. there's a few rest stops on the highway!
Unfortunately guess-o-meter was very optimistic, the in car nav did no charge routing plus gave zero "you aren't going to make it" warning, and finally a non-trivial factor - the local traffic was going about 75mph+ so after some spirited driving I realized I was in trouble.
The local chargers were on charge networks that either didn't work via apps (required NFC cards I did not possess), or took credit cards directly but not US cards, or required pre-loading Euros into the app but gave obtuse app errors with US credit cards.
The chargers themselves were in a sorry state and needed to be remotely rebooted. Finally on the phone with Ionity they remotely activated a charging session and gave me a courtesy charge so I could make it to hotel. The courtesy charge probably cost me 1 hour and $75 in overseas cell phone use.
On return discussing with the rental agency they told me they do have NFC charging cards but customers had trouble so they don't give them out anymore, lol.
Another fun fact for Americans - while Teslas in Europes use the same plug as non-Teslas (unlike here), in some countries they still maintain Tesla-only charging stations!
You’re paying for charging, not electricity. They charge what the market will bear.
Right now they can charge what they want because you don’t have many alternatives.
That said, CA electricity prices are high for a number of reasons. They have a lot of regulations for building anything. The red tape you have to work through to get anything built in CA is completely out of control, so anything requiring new construction (charging stations included) will have to pay off a lot of up front investment.
You’re focused on entirely the wrong problem with California. The cost of electricity purchased from a private utility here is entirely out of control. That 68 cents is mostly going to a company like PG&E.
I did a bit of homework. PG&E publishes their rate schedules, of which they have many, and even a fairly cursory read strongly suggests that both the cost breakdowns and the times associated with time-of-use rates are, to put it mildly, divorced from any realistic estimation of actual costs. (Check out how inconsistent the schedules are from each other!)
Here's the "Business Electric Vehicle" schedule, which appears to be the relevant one from EV charging stations:
Roughly 38c/kWh peak and 16c/kWh "super off peak" plus $1.24/kWh monthly for maximum load. (So a supercharger would pay some $248/month for the privilege of being connected, and peak shaving can reduce this.)
100%. The CPUC is a government entity and can technically dictate power prices. Unfortunately, state engergy conglomerates are very good at regulatory capture.
Regulation is what apologists will cite but only the three large IOU (Investor Owned Utilities) have such ridiculous electricity rates.
Part of the Bay Area is served by Silicon Valley Power which is half or less of PG&E's rates. Other parts of CA (like the eastern edge) are served by private electric companies but they too don't have such high rates.
San Francisco owns Hetch Hetchy and the hydro generation plant more than covers all of SF's power usage. But for historical and regulatory capture reasons SF is not allowed to supply its own electricity despite owning both a large generator and a retail electric provider (CleanPowerSF). It is all forced to go through the "free market" and thus pay markups. If it were a municipal electric district prices would be among the cheapest in the nation. SF tried to get the bankruptcy court to let it bid on PG&E's assets in SF but got rejected out of hand.
The Investor Owned Utilities in California have unique regulatory capture, corruption (both direct and via their unions), and are just grossly inefficient.
Thankfully my solar and battery system makes me almost independent from PG&E - including 100% of our driving via an EV. We make our own fuel at home and it is a feeling of freedom you can't match with a gas vehicle.
Fast charging market is a mess. Tesla is one of the cheaper ones but only slowly allowing other brands access.
The rest of the competition is poorly maintained, new, under-deployed, under-utilized, or some combination of the 4, much of which results in awful pricing.
Most EV owners home charge for most if not all charging. I have been driving EVs for 8 years and haven't used a fast charger in 18 months I think.
If you home charge your operating costs are about 1/3 to 1/5 of ICE. So as a commuter option you can cut your operating costs vs gas by a lot with home charging.
I pay $0.19/kWh in NY, which depending on your vehicle is 3-4 miles in a decent sedan/hatch EV like Tesla 3/Y or Ioniq. So call it 18miles-per-dollar. Gas near me is running $3.49/gal, use some blending 25mpg for a sedan/hatch ICE and get 7miles-per-dollar.
Obviously a different issue for renting vehicles, road trips, etc.
Aurornis gets to the point; there is a substantial cost (demand charges), from the utility, to ask for 200-400kw of current on demand when you plug in. Tesla uses Megapack batteries at some of their stations (Electrify America as well, using Tesla battereis) to "peak shave," whereby the batteries slowly charge, and then they blend output with utility power so the current demand peak is not so brutal when vehicles request fast DC charging.
Renewable generated power is cheap, power delivery, control, and orchestration is not so much.
That is the part that I worry about the long term switch to everything electric.
Already in SoCal where there is ample sun and plenty of room for cheap power, the electric rates have gone up 50% over 5 years.
Now natural gas is being phased out, gas cars are being phased out so electric companies have a monopoly to charge as much as they want unless there is competition for alternate energy sources.
We are fast approaching in SoCal the average electric bill for non solar homes will be $500-$2000/mo
And even if everyone gets solar the power company will just add fees so they retain the same profit so they can maintain infrastructure
People say you are paying for the convenience of fast charging.
But that isn't all the picture. (in california)
PG&E has honed its regulatory capture skills and has some of the highest electricity costs anywhere.
The average cost of electricity is 33c/kwh for california customers, and as you use more it can easily reach 50c/kwh. There are some areas where PG&E is not the electric company, and they top out at 14c/kwh for electricity.
The ONLY good part I can contrive from this situation is that residential solar is "practical" and the demand is driving development of democratized power generation.
Is the balance that is being paid down publicly available? Will the companies decide they like the current cash flow and find a reason for it to continue after the balance is paid off?
What in the world. In December, southern Norway had similar electricity prices for two hours, and caused enough of an uproar that the government is still trying to live it down.
Charging prices are not the same as electricity prices.
They’re pricing it at what the market will bear for charging. They’re recouping costs of building and running the charging station. Property and operational costs in CA are very high.
About 90% of our energy production is hydro, and in addition our weather is such that few places are above 25C/80F during summer so it's not common to have or use AC.
Hence not a lot of energy usage during summer compared with winter, as most heat their homes using electricity.
DC fast chargers tend to cost much more than level 2 chargers. They have expensive equipment, more expensive electricity (intermittent high load is more expensive than more continuous lower levels, even for the same total power), and there tends to be a limited number of them so you want to encourage people to do level 2 charging when possible, and only DC fast charging on road trips when they really need it.
So prices are much higher than for normal AC charging. Most of the charging you do should be AC charging at your home or work.
My home electric bill just went up, with the utility company blaming it on their providers having increased prices due to increased demand.
Apparently in some localities AI/datacenter electricity usage is already 10% of total usage, and expected to rapidly climb in coming years. It'd be nice if the cost of extra demand was met by those building the datacenters, but I'm not sure that's going to be the case.
My electric provider recently silently raised our rates. My same usage was ~ $20 less a month last year. Honestly, I'm trying to get out of the 'scarcity mentality' of worrying about these sort of little day to day costs. I set my thermostat at a comfy level, and I game on my power hungry pc without restricting myself. It is what it is.
Rates vary depending on time, ___location, demand etc. I regularly charge my car all over the Bay Area on the Tesla network and it’s between $0.45 to $0.55 per kWH. I have an electric home residential electricity plan and the cheapest I get electricity at home varies between $0.34 and $0.39 during off peak hours. During peak hours it’s actually the same for meto charge at a supercharger as it is at home.
That’s just obscene in general. I think the peak I’ve seen from Tesla in my area is less than .40/kWh. At home it’s less than .05 if you charge off hours.
rivian is overcharging a huge amount here versus base electric prices? I use L2 chargepoints for essentially all my charging and I average about 30 cents per kwh.
> If I am on a road-trip and need to charge up, am I meant to just park up for several hours until it is off-peak?
No, you pay the extra $15 or whatever. If you're counting pennies, maybe charge as little as needed, so you can do more of the charge later during an off-peak time.
Now, Rivian is a big car and this basically meant you are getting about 3 miles per dollar. A full 'charge' would have cost me nearly $100!
But, an even bigger gasoline car - Lincoln Navigator - has 16 MPG, and even with gas prices in CA (currently ~$5 per gallon) you are looking at 3.2 miles per dollar.
I was shocked by that, especially knowing that CA has excess solar capacity. Why the heck is electricity for charging so expensive? (I pay around $0.15/kWh last time I checked for my home)