Electric Vehicle Thread!

[wco81]

Interesting. I guess Norway must have different policies and prices for electricity because they have such a huge adoption of EVs, especially in a cold country.

Or maybe it's not so affordable because the Norwegians are so rich.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

I think our adoption rate is pretty high as well, It is very much steered towards that with taxation over here. I also think the electricity prices are pretty low here in general. I think 8c/KWh is a great rate. That's 5.6€ for 70kWh.

Norway definitely has higher adoption though and they are richer as well

 

[MfA]

Norway has a high percentage of residents with private parking too.

 

[cheapchips]

I'm almost coming up for a year with our electric passenger van. UK is relatively cheap for charging at home and more expensive than petrol on fast chargers. We've charged about 85% at home, 10% public and 5% stolen from the parent's house. Our cost per mile averages out to 4-5p, a third of our diesel cost per mile.

 

[Albuquerque]

First, the Prologue lease terms are indeed pretty badass; my sister-in-law just leased one for (what I presume is) the exact same reason. It was like 10k miles per year, three years, for maybe $249 or $299 a month or some such? It was nuts how good the rate was. Second, even outside of California, L3 charging costs really do screw up a lot of potential "savings" of an EV. You still get to avoid oil changes (both engine and transmission) as well as brake pad swaps, for whatever those are worth. Still, charging at home isn't just about being cheaper, it's also about the convenience of not having to sit somewhere for 40 minutes waiting to charge.

Here in the suburbs of Memphis TN, we pay around $0.14/kWhr which means our Tesla Model Y performance will run us about $4 every time we "fill" it from ~40% to 75%, which is probably about once a week give or take. Alternatively, the local L3 Tesla 150KW chargers run about $0.39/kWhr which obviously hikes the price quite a bit. We also like to take ours on the quarterly road trip from Memphis to Louisville; we stop once in Nashville to charge and pee and find munchies... We used to stop at the Target at the west edge of the city on I40 where there's like 20 charging stalls, however they charge you by the minute rather than for the power directly. Instead, we now exit towards the north end of town off I65 where there's a Hilton hotel with maybe a dozen chargers in the back, and they charge for power rather than time. It's A: cheaper and B: honestly a bit nicer ameneties.

Also, I know PG&E offers (or used to offer) different rate plans for EV charging at night. DId they kill that off? I know some plans could get like REALLY cheap between maybe midnight and 4AM or some such.

 

[wco81]

They have EV charging plans but they're not really better than Time of Use plans, which sets peak rates from 4 to 9 PM.

 

[Albuquerque]

Yeah, back when we used to live in Laguna Beach we used one of the time of use plans. Not because we had an EV, but because it was just the wife and I and we were (reasonably) comfortable leaving the windows open and fans on versus running the AC. We also didn't mind doing laundry in the early morning or later at night, and the dryer was gas powered so it wasn't super expensive to run either.

I assume your Prologue provides a charging schedule mechanism in the app or similar, for when you eventually get a home charger? Tesla finally updated their charging scheduler to now consider geolocation, so when we visit our family out of state we can adhere to their time of day rate plan vs at our own home where it's the same price all day every day...

 

[wco81]

Yes but I don't trust the scheduling software. For instance, it will start but it won't shut off.

I would use the app for the charger instead.

 

[Albuquerque]

Oh wow, that's unfortunate. So it will start the charging session at your requested time, but it doesn't stop it? Strange.