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Should You Buy an EV? A calculator to figure it out

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Re: Should You Buy an EV? A calculator to figure it out

#61

Post by Yizahi »

trstregfsdgfd wrote: post #53
ianai wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair, it’s maybe more like adding another appliance per household (fridge/freezer).

More like a tumble dryer, running almost continuously. Fridges/freezers, even huge US-sized ones, don't use that much power. I measured the average consumption of my under-counter fridge at less than 10W.

A pass through water heater would be a good example (running 7 hours daily). Not many apartments would have a capacity to add a new water heater of such type, even for human use (10-30 minutes per day, spaced out across the building in time, not all simultaneously at the same hours).

Re: Should You Buy an EV? A calculator to figure it out

#62

Post by ZeroGravitas »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #60
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/bar8.htm 10K miles or less is a bit of an outlier.

I would not be able to discern 10k miles or less for a car is an outlier from those data points, it does not say anything about the underlying distribution. Not to mention the whole female column is pretty much 10k and below, as well as men over 65. This is a little bit better breakdown, but I could find miles driven by decile. I would assume it greatly differs by location and is greatly skewer by people who drive a…

The up front higher cost is disappearing as they ramp up production and is predicted to cross over within a few years. The fuel costs and carbon intensity of the running costs are also predicted to diverge in EVs favor.

Presumably part of this is greater efficiency, which would impact the C02 emissions too.

So any small savings are that possibly exist today in theory are likely wiped out by depreciation on the vehicle when you go to sell it to someone else, who likely drives an average amount of miles and so wants to buy a cheap to run vehicle

TCO calculations can deal with most of this, the one I linked to does highway and city mileage seperately and lets you choose a state for electricity and gas prices. There's no need for vague blanket rules.

Why don't you demonstrate a realistic scenario to substantiate your claim that:

> At US gas prices, I have yet to see an EV be shown to be a better value than a car/minivan/SUV/pickup truck, especially if driving 10k miles or less per year.

But, none of that really matters because the average car is much better off as an EV, and this is just fiddling around the edges to distract from that basic truth.

Re: Should You Buy an EV? A calculator to figure it out

#63

Post by lotsofpulp »

adhesive_wombat wrote: post #38

The "best" figures for a petrol car is 39mpg, which seems a bit low. My (diesel) car will do over 50, and it's over 10 years old and isn't famously economical.

Petrol is not diesel, so not sure how your datapoint relates. Which petrol cars get more than 39mpg?

Also, were diesel cars only getting those high mpg due to cheating the emissions limits? I never saw them in the US.

Re: Should You Buy an EV? A calculator to figure it out

#64

Post by ianai »

trstregfsdgfd wrote: post #59
ianai wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s an unfair comparison.

Why? Comparing the power consumption of an EV on charge to a fridge is a very unfair comparison. If you drive 200 EV miles per week, you need 60kWh per week, or about 360W continuous. At approx. 4.5kWh per cycle, that's 13 tumble dryer loads per week. Even that seems an unfair comparison - I'm not sure how many people run 2 loads per day every day. I was hyperbolic in my original comment, but that's still several hou…

Using hyperbolic arguments is not how to have a rational, well rounded discussion.

Re: Should You Buy an EV? A calculator to figure it out

#65

Post by trstregfsdgfd »

ianai wrote: post #64
trstregfsdgfd wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Comparing the power consumption of an EV on charge to a fridge is a very unfair comparison. If you drive 200 EV miles per week, you need 60kWh per week, or about 360W continuous. At approx. 4.5kWh per cycle, that's 13 tumble dryer loads per week. Even that seems an unfair comparison - I'm not sure how many people run 2 loads per day every day. I was hyperbolic in my original comment, but that's still several hou…

Using hyperbolic arguments is not how to have a rational, well rounded discussion.

Colloquially, if I had a household that ran their tumble dryer twice a day every day, I might say it's "running almost continuously".

Which domestic appliance do you think is a fair comparison to the power needs of an EV? As I've already pointed out, in a very rational way, you would have to be a very heavy user of your tumble dryer to make even that a fair comparison.

Re: Should You Buy an EV? A calculator to figure it out

#66

Post by lotsofpulp »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #62
lotsofpulp wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not be able to discern 10k miles or less for a car is an outlier from those data points, it does not say anything about the underlying distribution. Not to mention the whole female column is pretty much 10k and below, as well as men over 65. This is a little bit better breakdown, but I could find miles driven by decile. I would assume it greatly differs by location and is greatly skewer by people who drive a…

The up front higher cost is disappearing as they ramp up production and is predicted to cross over within a few years. The fuel costs and carbon intensity of the running costs are also predicted to diverge in EVs favor. Presumably part of this is greater efficiency, which would impact the C02 emissions too. So any small savings are that possibly exist today in theory are likely wiped out by depreciation on the vehicl…

> The up front higher cost is disappearing as they ramp up production and is predicted to cross over within a few years.

Maybe. I am not disputing it will not. I do not know about “a few years”. I would still place my TCO bets on gas until I have some proof of longevity from electric vehicles, assuming I do not drive 20k miles per year.

> So any small savings are that possibly exist today in theory are likely wiped out by depreciation on the vehicle when you go to sell it to someone else

This is only a factor if you plan on selling it before the end of your life, or the end of the vehicle’s life.

> Why don't you demonstrate a realistic scenario to substantiate your claim that:

The fact that if I were to buy a car today in the US, there is no option for an electric Sienna or Odyssey minivan or equivalent. No electric car gives that kind of passenger space or cargo room and versatility for a family.

Re: Should You Buy an EV? A calculator to figure it out

#67

Post by yywwbbn »

News-Dog wrote: post #58
yywwbbn wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They already tried that where I live (northeastern Europe) since the government subsidized most of the installation cost. Most of the businesses closed them last month after the market price of electricity for commercial users shot up by 10x. There is zero chance of having enough solar on site to charge any meaningful number of cars simultaneously.

Edit to fix typos (sorry), and add google search; search >'Shopping Centers/Malls installed solar PV's' @DDG https://html.duckduckgo.com/html/?q='Shopping Centers/Malls ... > search >'Shopping Centers/Malls installed EV charger' @DDG https://html.duckduckgo.com/html/?q='Shopping Centers/Malls ... > search >'Shopping Centers/Malls installed solar PV and EV charger' @google https://www.google.com/search?q='Shopping Cen…

Yoy can do that and you might have enough panels to charge a few cars at once if you cover the entire roof with them. But even in ideal condition you’d need more than 300m2 of solar panels to charge a single car at 50kW and this would increase significantly if they don’t operate at 100% capacity.

So unless your goal is primarily virtue signaling you might as well just use the energy generated for lights and cooling since you’ll still need power from the grid for that anyway (unless it’s some hyper energy efficient shopping center with no fridges or cooling).

Re: Should You Buy an EV? A calculator to figure it out

#68

Post by chrisandchris »

kbos87 wrote: post #32
Yizahi wrote: post #3

Should you buy an EV? 1. You live in a private house where you can charge the car? - Yes 2. You don't have a charger at home? - No Simple, really :) . I always wanted to buy an EV but that's a deal breaker criteria. Also the secondary problem - author makes assumption about electricity price, but it almost doesn't matter at all if you are changing at the commercial stations only. They will charge you for as much as t…

Not to pile on but I’ll second some of the other commenters who have said that not being able to charge at home isn’t that big of a deal. I live in a condo in a major US city and don’t have the option to charge at home. From a convenience perspective, it’s truly turned out to be a non-issue. We’re at the point where I live that there are enough chargers around that I simply plug in once or twice a week while I’m runn…

> From a cost perspective, it probably would be cheaper for me to charge at home, but it would be small and would take years to pay off the cost difference of having a charger installed. I spend so little on charging that I don’t really pay attention to it as an expense.

May I ask what you spend? I think here charging at home vs. at public chargers is a difference of up to 100% more expensive (~0.30 cents at home vs >0.50 at public chargers).

Re: Should You Buy an EV? A calculator to figure it out

#69

Post by thatfrenchguy »

sokoloff wrote: post #37
ianai wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn’t take that long to wire up new electrical stuff. Just the will to do it. We’re talking 3.3kw to 6.6kw a drop unless it’s a fast charger. (Edit-the wider spread the slower chargers probably the lesser need for fast chargers, too.) 3.3kw is about 120v/27.5A. Not negligible but no one worries about hooking up hair driers to the grid and they draw tons of power. Reference the places putting chargers on light po…

When's the last time someone and 10 of their neighbors dried their hair for 12 straight hours, though? It's not the instantaneous power draw from a single plug that people are worried about but rather the aggregate draw.

People run AC, that’s worse :-)

Re: Should You Buy an EV? A calculator to figure it out

#70

Post by ghusto »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #63
adhesive_wombat wrote: post #38

The "best" figures for a petrol car is 39mpg, which seems a bit low. My (diesel) car will do over 50, and it's over 10 years old and isn't famously economical.

Petrol is not diesel, so not sure how your datapoint relates. Which petrol cars get more than 39mpg? Also, were diesel cars only getting those high mpg due to cheating the emissions limits? I never saw them in the US.

> Also, were diesel cars only getting those high mpg due to cheating the emissions limits? I never saw them in the US.

I don't believe so. Diesel is more efficient partially because diesel engines have been around longer (so have more improvements).

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