Electric Vehicles and Renewable Energies

[TheGlyphstone]

Perhaps, but it's still got a long way to go before it stops being the cheaper option.

I ran some quick napkin-math, comparing a 2021 Ford Mustang (2.3L, 4-cylinder automatic, regular gas) with the 2021 Ford Mustang Mach-E, its BEV direct equivalent.

The ICE Mustang is rated for 388 miles on a full tank of 15.5 gallons. At the current median gas price of $3.50, that's $54.25 to fill the tank from empty, or an effective 7.15 miles driven per dollar spent.

The BEV Mustang is rated for 230 miles on a full charge of 70kwH. At the current median electricity price of $0.1118 per kwH, that's $7.82 to fully charge the battery from empty, or an effective 29.4 miles per dollar spent.

That's 4.11x as cost-efficient for the BEV over the ICE.

But let's run the numbers for Great Britain, cause im bored and a stats nerd. The current cost of electricity over there is $0.298 US, and the current cost of a gallon of gas in London (arbitrarily chosen) is $5.79 US. If I took my hypothetical Mustangs across the pond, it would cost me $89.74 USD to fill the gas tank, and $20.86 to charge the battery. Keeping the same rated mileage, I'm getting 3.67 miles per dollar spent on gas, and 11.02 miles per dollar spent on electricity. That's 3.003x as cost-efficient.

So your inflated energy prices do make it objectively more painful in both directions and the margin of advantage is smaller, but even tripling the effective mileage sounds pretty good to me - quadrupling it is just better.  And electricity has gone up roughly 1.3 cents per KwH over the last 12 years, according to the Department of Energy. If the cost to fill my gas tank 10 years from now is less than 70 cents more than it is now, I'll still call that a win.


https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/bymodel/2021_Ford_Mustang.shtml
https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a34968692/2021-ford-mustang-mach-e-drive/
https://gasprices.aaa.com/state-gas-price-averages/
https://www.statista.com/statistics/183700/us-average-retail-electricity-price-since-1990/
https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/United-Kingdom/electricity_prices/
https://money.cnn.com/pf/features/lists/global_gasprices/



EDIT: Plus, BEVs are still a relatively new tech and still improving, the 2022 mach E is rated for over 300 miles. If the efficiency of the engine improves faster than the cost of power, the margin will grow instead of shrink.

[Dashenka]

I have both Mustangs across the pond. Not the ones you mentioned though. (Why anybody would want a 4 cylinder Mustang is beyond me but that's irrelevant for now)


The Mach-E (in the US) starts at 47,000 dollars, the Mustang at 27. Double those prices for the UK in Pounds and you're close to what they cost.


I own the Mach-E GT and recently took a trip to Amsterdam with it. We live near London. I did 240 miles (with some anxiety at the end) on a 90kwh battery. The claimed range is 307 miles. Meaning that the claimed range is a load of hokum.

So I'm sure it's still cheaper but not that much and not for that much longer I'm afraid. Fuel prices are dropping, electricity's only rising.


(I'm not comparing my ICE Mustang as it's incomparible)

[TheGlyphstone]

I know the claimed ranges are always exaggerated, but the actual value is too subjective on driver and conditions, so they work as a baseline on the assumption that they are equally hokum in both cases.

As far as the Mustangs...I know the gas-burners have some unquantifiable thing about them that makes the experience enjoyable, but we are debating what is cheaper, not what is more fun.

[Dashenka]

The other problem I have with my EV and this is probably a very luxurious problem to have...

We have this dream of being fully self sufficient in terms of power and water. All through summer, we did a good job, now that summer's over, it's crunch time. Charging that EV is such a huge drain on the power supply that in order for me to stay off the power mains, I have to charge my EV on public chargers, which is even more expensive than doing it at home.

[TheGlyphstone]

I will allow that you're in an unusual position on that tiny-ass island - not much space to build power plants, so you're stuck importing and that always costs more. But gas prices are simply so volatile, dependent on geopolitics and current events as much or more than actual net supply - electricity is far more consistent and market-dependent. Gas prices might be dropping now from their high spike, but Massive Global Catastrophe 2023 edition could send it spiking through the stratosphere again. Electricity doesn't, pun intended, surge quite so dramatically, so its value as a long-term constant comes into play again.

[Dashenka]

I agree. But right now, because a lot of electricity is still generated with gas and because this island has days without sun or wind, quite a lot of them actually, solar and wind energy is not readily available.


In the long term, I have no doubt that electricity will be far cheaper than gas.


But a much more basic reason why a lot of people can't afford an EV is the price to buy them. We have stupid tax levels in Europe compared to the US so even the cheapest EV, is still out of the price range of most people. I'm sure a lot of them want to change to an EV because it's cheaper to run but because they simply cannot afford it, it's still a dream.

[TheGlyphstone]

Yeah I noted that at the beginning. Sam Vimes's boot theory and all that.

[GloomCookie]

Glyph you keep mentioning the Sam Vime's boot theory. Esplain please.

[TheGlyphstone]

Glyph you keep mentioning the Sam Vime's boot theory. Esplain please.

You've never read Discworld? For shame, cookie, for shame.

The reason that the rich were so rich,he thought, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned $38 a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost $50. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about $10.

Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford $50 had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in 10 years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

See here for it being analyzed and explained in modern-day context:
https://moneywise.com/managing-money/budgeting/boots-theory-of-socioeconomic-unfairness

[Oniya]

Sir Pterry was always good at explaining social issues.

[GloomCookie]

Oooh I've heard it yeah and it makes sense.

This does point to a flaw in current EVs though and thats the lack of standardization. We have multiple types of EV standards, from Tesla's 3 and Y series to the type being offered by others. I know the EU basically standardized and even Tesla is forced to use the same type over there, but that's not standard in the US yet. That's going to be another factor in who buys an EV because if you buy a $35,000 vehicle and can't guarantee you can charge it then it's a huge gamble, and for a lot of places investing in an EV charging station is not cheap. You don't want to invest a few thousand into what ends up the Betamax of EV chargers.

[CriminalMindsFan]

I may not understand what I heard but a few months ago I saw a story on TV about some dealerships selling electric cars without a charger, which according to some customers left them unable to drive their car after the battery died.

The solution to running out of gas is don't let car run out of gas by putting more in it, but some still drive car until they run out of gas on side of a highway. I assume some electric car owners will drive until their electric car dies on side of a highway as well.

[Dashenka]

The car doesn't come with a charger. It comes with a cable to charge it.

It's your responsibility to have a suitable charging point, either a wall box or just an old fashioned wall socket.

[GloomCookie]

I think this is indicative that people just assume that the car is electric and that it doesn't need gas and don't think about it beyond that point.

Hopefully soon we'll get enough saturation that people realize the upfront need for charging stations prior to purchase, but that might take a while. People are not always the brightest.

[Callie Del Noire]

True. Plus the need to take time to charge the car as well.

[GloomCookie]

Well we're hoping that the Gen 1 batteries we're using currently will eventually find a replacement with Gen 2 or Gen 3 batteries being faster to charge and holding more of a charge. I've seen so many articles it's hard to keep straight, ranging from X-Ion batteries (so far I've heard of Sodium, Iron, and even Nitrogen I think at one point) to solid-state lithium batteries that are basically thousands of tiny batteries that can charge and discharge faster than just one big battery. However, I'm not aware of any that have left the prototype stage and they'll have to get a lot of testing and certification before they're deemed road legal. Even if they released a solid state battery today, the testing could take up to 5 years, and then you'd need to spin up factories to make them which requires retooling and finding designs that work best, which is why it's not uncommon that companies don't want to be the first but instead the second company to hit the market because the second fixes the errors of the first but are still early enough to saturate the market with their brand presence.

[CriminalMindsFan]

If gas prices were still $2 a gallon, I'd be 101% against electric car. Gas at $6 a gallon has me thinking electric might actually be cheaper over one year of owning and using both type of car and driving the exact same miles.

I haven't looked it up yet. I assume charging electric car will use as much electricity as a central AC unit or could even be the most electric consuming thing a person can ever own going forward.

[TheGlyphstone]

If you scroll up in the thread a bit, I already gave a napkin-math allowance on the cost of charging a car. Take that and multiply into your average mileage per year.

[Dashenka]

But who (apart from me) owns a car for a year only? I think most people, in the UK at least own a car for at least four to five years.

There's also the depreciation you have to consider. ICE's have a MUCH higher depreciation than EV's. If you buy a new diesel, in Europe, they're basically scrap value the moment you turn the key.

True. Plus the need to take time to charge the car as well.

It's definitely worth considering it although if you have a charging box at home, you can plug it in overnight and I think most cars are able to charge to full it 10 hours or something. Given that most people who own a wall box like that don't drive the car to empty, you should be fine. I don't know how it works on public chargers overnight. The superchargers at petrol stations can be a good alternative if you want speed. They're not cheap here in the UK but they gave me an 80% charge (about 200 miles) in about a half hour. It could be even quicker if I didn't charge at peak hours with most of the chargers occupied.

[Oniya]

But who (apart from me) owns a car for a year only? I think most people, in the UK at least own a car for at least four to five years.

For making value comparisons, it's usually convenient to work with an annual average.

[TheGlyphstone]

There was a guy at my last job who was always trading in his almost new truck to get the newest model instead. I have no idea how he could afford that.

[Nowherewoman]

There will ALWAYS be a need for certain fluids for lubrication and function, it's just that electric vehicles don't require the same types in all cases. For example, Jiffy Lube's official FAQ states some EVs use transmission fluid, which must be changed periodically.
https://www.jiffylube.com/resource-center/do-electric-cars-use-oil

And yeah, they'll still need brake fluid and stuff, that's obvious.

Also HV system coolant.

Gloom is right. This thread is the first I've ever heard of EVs not needing brake fluid. Hybrids, at least, have a 2-stage braking system, magnetic and then regular physical for shorter stopping. Can't imagine that changing on full EVs, since it would be a safety issue. What I know does change is that all the various pups are electrically driven, rather than being belted to the engine.

The other problem I have with my EV and this is probably a very luxurious problem to have...

We have this dream of being fully self sufficient in terms of power and water. All through summer, we did a good job, now that summer's over, it's crunch time. Charging that EV is such a huge drain on the power supply that in order for me to stay off the power mains, I have to charge my EV on public chargers, which is even more expensive than doing it at home.

Around here, more and more free or subsidized public chargers are starting to pop up. Granted the majority of them are Tesla, but there are municipal 1772s as well as the third format (Ford?) if you know where to look. Tesla is also talking about making their network available for other makes, though exactly how that would work, don't know the details.

[Dashenka]

Wait free chargers? As in, no costs to charge?

Didn't Tesla charge 2k for that 'free charging' a couple years back?

I'll take your word for it if it is, I'm just always a bit skeptical when I hear the word 'free'

[TheGlyphstone]

Loss leaders are a thing - just look at Costco's $1.50 hot dogs. If free charging stations get people buying your $50,000 electric cars, it could still work out in the positive.

[GloomCookie]

The chargers might be furnished by Tesla but the actual install must be bought and paid for by the others. That charger may cost Tesla around $2k, but the owners still have to shell out the money for connecting it and maintaining it. There might also be service contracts or stipulations requiring that they maintain a certain appearance (cleaned and maintained for example).

Here's what I found in regards to Tesla's 'Super Charging Support': https://www.tesla.com/support/supercharger

Looks like it's a subscription service for the vehicles that you set up with an app. You have to pay to use their superchargers.