> I lived in a rural location and now in suburbs and still never had any issues, even 4 years ago when there were far fewer chargers. Here is a map of the level 2+ chargers in the country:
As he said, different circumstances can shift the solution point. What you have someone that doesn't have a data plan on their phone, or doesn't carry a smartphone and thus doesn't have access to a mapping app? Or the charge point requires a smartphone app that I don't connectivity to use with?
For me as well an EV is questionable. My gas burning SUV is $1100 a year to insure, tax included. A Tesla Model 3 at the same level insurance would could me $6014 a year before taxes. I don't drive enough to save $5000 in gas and maintenance a year.
Then there's my garage. Long story short, the best it can do right now is 120V 6A charge speed. To properly upgrade my garage to support a full EV would cost an additional $2500. Assuming if I also have to upgrade the electrical mains from 100A to 200A, it's $15,000 to $25,000. And my electricity costs 20 cents a kilowatt hour.
Does buying an EV it still make sense after all that if you were in my circumstances?
You need fast charging at home, end of story. If you can only get 120V at home, forget it. That being said once you do get it, it's so nice never having to stop at a gas station again.
As for insurance, you should shop around. Not sure what's on your driving record, but it was $90/mo for me to insure my brand new model 3 when I had that vehicle. But I don't have any tickets/accidents or large claims.
I just got on Intact’s website and got a quote for one John Smith, 18 year old male from Branford, Ontario. John wanted a quote on a Tesla Model 3 Performance. Their quote was $3200/year.
You want to try and explain why it is that you are getting quotes that are twice that of the highest risk drivers?
You are right. I mistakenly failed to pay the parking meter on time 7 or 8 years and was issued a ticket. Of course I threw myself at the mercy of the courts; a simple mix up of days I pleaded. It was not the statutory holiday I thought it had been that would have waived the parking fees. And I paid my ticket immediately. But they would have none of it. So unforgivable was my crime, so heinous, so far murder or rape, that there could only be one punishment that could be appropriate for my sin; to be executed.
I await on death row now. The chosen method of execution is to be killed by old age 60 or 70 years from now, being withered and worn by the ravages of time. Most cruelly in the interim, I am expected to work a 37 hour work for 48 weeks out of the year in grueling conditions. A climate controlled office with an ergonomic chair in front of a computer with Visual Studio Code open.
Sometimes it seems like if it would not have been kinder to simply kill me there and then. Those days I ask myself why they keep me here. Just to suffer?
tl;dr
No accidents, no claims, no criminal activity on record except the one parking ticket. I don't pretend to comprehend why the quotes are that way for me.
In comparison my current SUV is $1100 a year same level of coverage as that quote. Just for fun I got a quote for an 2022 Acura NSX a while ago and it was $1500 a year, and the NSX is quite a bit more expensive then a Model 3.
For a 33 year old driver, single, male, unmarried, with no tickets/accidents/etc., living in Sudbury, ON:
Intact Insurance:
2022 Tesla Model S LR 4DR: $178.17/mo [1]
2022 Acura NSX Hybrid 2DR AWD: $535.08/mo [2]
TD Insurance:
2022 Tesla Model S LR 4DR: $232.42 [3]
2022 Acura NSX Hybrid 2DR AWD: "CALL" [4]
Rather than calling I went to BrokerLink, which lets you get quotes from different sources. The average quotes given by BrokerLink for each vehicle were:
2022 Tesla Model S LR 4DR: $360/mo [5]
2022 Acura NSX Hybrid 2DR AWD: $520/mo [6]
So no, I do not believe you are being honest. There is no reason to believe that.
You must have a terrible record or something. No one is getting quoted $6k/year unless they have a felony hit and run on their record or something equally as egregious. Not even in Canada.
Depends. My current SUV costs $1100 a year to insure including tax. I just got a quote for a Tesla Model 3 for the same level of coverage. As of today it's $6014 a year without tax.
I don't drive enough to make up a difference of $5000+ a year in gas and maintenance.
Counterpoint I just ensured a PHEV Tucson and Ioniq 5 (full ev) for $1800 a year. Pretty reasonable. It’s probably a Tesla specific problem because they are in the luxury segment or maybe it’s their atrocious build quality.
I don't think it's Tesla specific, seems more like at least for me EV's in general are significantly more expensive to insure. Mr. Rumor Mill is that part of it is just because of higher rates of cars being written off due to damage to the battery packs. Of course, we all know how trust worthy Mr. Mill is so take it for what it's worth.
I have an S and the cost is $2k a year after tax, about on par with the insurance costs of my old Camry. Probably worth shopping around a bit more if you’re still in the process.
Yeah it's why I usually have to mention that context matters a lot when talking TCO . Where I live, not only is insurance more costly, electricity is also considerably more expensive (it's hit 20 cents a kilowatt hour though starting to come back down). Then I also have to factor in both the higher upfront costs of the car, but also the costs upgrade my home to support charging the car at home.
For a lot of people that calculation is true, but there's also going to be people like me where the TCO statement is hilariously untrue.
>My municipal electrical rate is $0.11/kWh and I've saved a small fortune compared to my old gas vehicle.
For you it makes sense. Our residential rate just hit $0.20/kWh, excluding rider and admin fees. Plus higher purchase cost plus several thousand dollars more insurance rates compared to an ICE.
When you start getting closer to $0.20/kWh https://www.fueleconomy.gov/
then there is no much different between EV and hybrid.
If you then account for the fact that EVs can easily go for
a +$10k over the hybrid equivalent...then you should come to the conclusion
that EV is not that convenient, if at all.
Also, many have mentioned the possibility of charing at work ... good luck
with that.
I am in favor of EVs, but infrastructure is not there yet and as said they are
still too expensive. Also, given the pace of innovation, I think EVs depreciates
faster than Hybrid equivalent.
Thanks to solar panels my EV charging has no ongoing cost.
Frankly even if solar were even with gasoline I'd still prefer solar because I generate it myself. No supply chain issues, refining problems, or oil disruptions can stop me from driving or increase my cost to drive.
If you keep saying "infrastructure is not there" then it will never get there. You need demand to kickstart infrastructure deployment. Maybe infrastructure isn't good where you live but for a lot of people it exists and continues to improve. Lots of parking lots in the bay area have electric charging points now - there were approximately zero just 10 years ago.
Electricity has the benefit of an existing grid everyone is already connected to, large chunks of time when that grid runs at a tiny fraction of its capacity, and really easy capacity upgrade paths that operators already do all the time (eg when an industrial plant expands or a new commercial facility is built).
You should have read my first comment where I said that it is not convenient _unless_ you can charge it at home. And here you are … “thanks to solar panels” … you are the exception not the rule. Many people don’t live in houses, let alone have the possibility of installing solar panels and pay premium for an EV car.
Let me guess … you have a Tesla…
I will just wait perhaps in the next 5 to 10 years. For now I am happy with my hybrid.
So I took quick look into what it would actually take to upgrade the main circuit breaker in the house assuming a 100A to 200A upgrade is needed to accommodate both an EV and a heat pump. I thought it was $5000 or so.
As it turns out, $5000 is for pole mounted service. It's range is actually around $15,000 to $25,000 for underground service, as it requires digging the line from the street to the house. Unknown how much cost there if too many houses here need to upgrade as well which would necessitate upgrading transformers feeding this area (most houses here are 100A AFAIK).
This is only true in high cost states.
In most states, it's 10-15 a ft plus some minimum cost that is like 1500 bucks for trenching setup. Maybe 15-20 in the worst case.
To redo my service to single phase 800 amps, which required a new transformer on a pole, new commercial panel, 100 feet of large underground drop (parallel MCM 600), etc, georgia power + electrician total cost was 10k.
If i had wanted to drag 3 phase power to my shop, which was a mile away, they would charge 10 bucks a foot, total cost 55k.
(I convert the large single phase instead with a digital 3-phase converter)
PGE/California electricians is particularly horrible about costing - i've seen combined costs (IE between PGE + electrician) of like 15k for panel upgrades that require 10 feet of trenching
EV or not EV, I really think you want 200A service? It has been the standard for quite a few years, and I cannot imagine only having 100A service in a proper house (would be fine for an apartment or whatnot). Now I am higher electric usage than most, but I hit over 100A several times a day (but have never hit 200A and flipped my breaker).
The actually switching out your circuit breaker from 100A to 200A is cheap (2-3k?). Almost all of the cost is for the utility to run you a bigger line, and they can pretty much charge you anything they want (what is your alternative if you don't like the price?)
Electrical code has completely unreasonable and unrealistic demand factors associated with appliances. Basically "1" for just about everything, as well as 3 watts per square foot of floor area. If you sum all of these things up, I'm well above the 200 amp service delivered to my home.
Reality? I had a peak draw of 23 amps from the grid in the last year. Luckily the NEC has an escape valve for folks who can prove that.
AC and Hot Tub full blast would almost never happen, Hot Tub is more a winter thing.
But A full EV charge can be 6-7 hours, so could easily be all evening. A hot tub could easily be an hour of overlap in there. So someone turns on the Oven? Would def pop 100.
240V circuits are simply both legs of the 120V split phase connected together, so the amperage is measured at 120V. The circuit breakers for 120V and 240V circuits are the same, except 240V circuits use two breakers with the handles tied together[1]. Electric resistive heaters like ovens and clothes dryers are always perfectly efficient, so I'm not sure how you even thought it would be possible to have an inefficient heater.
[1]: The 120V rails in the middle of the breaker panel alternate between each split phase, so if you connect a circuit to any two adjacent breakers you will get 240V. A 120V circuit is connected to neutral and a single breaker.
As well as using a heat pump, a more efficient dryer can be better-insulated, or make better use of the heat produced in drying clothes, however that might be done.
> Do Americans quote large appliance current at 220V or 110V equivalent?
Fist, North America is a 120/240V system, not 110/220. For the life of me i will never understand the confusion over why some people, including North Americans keep referencing 110 volts?
The code is clear, 120 Volts +- 5 to 10 percent?
Perhaps because the "allowed range" is 110 to 125?
If i measure my house right now, it is 121 volts and this is pretty typical.
Your dryer example seems like it is running on gas?
In North America, electric dryers use anywhere from 1800 to 5000 watts.
AC depends on the home size, the location, etc. Mine has a 60A 240V breaker but again the "code" states you can only have an 80% "continuous load" on a circuit so technically this circuit can not pull 14,400 continuous watts.
One thing Europeans dont grasp is the difference in house sizes vs north ameria and so naturally our appliances are larger and more power hungry.
What may take a European washer 2 loads, most north american washer/dryers will do in one. So the "power usage by load" is the same?
Using a device like a range's maximum power draw is dishonest. If a north american range is twice the size of what is available in EU, but not all the elements are in use at once... does that mean something?
(110V: I'm just copying/misremembering, I don't live there. There are places in the Caribbean that do use 110V.)
> Your dryer example seems like it is running on gas?
This is part of my horror. You can't imagine that an electric drier might only use 600W? Try [1]. From the EU site of all rated driers [2] (click "Models distribution") 23% of driers on sale are this efficient. A further 44% with A++ rating are around 900W. (Note the measurement is of the energy needed to dry a load of clothes to the required standard, the maximum power draw is related but not a criteria.) The worst one is still only 2300W!
From a 2013 news article "Europe's Clothes Dryers Consume Half As Much Energy As America's" [3]:
> The study, which was funded by the Super Efficient Dryer Initiative (SEDI), concluded that Europe's heat pump dryers can dry the same amount of clothes as North American conventional dryers using only about half as much energy. The catch is that European heat pump dryers also took about twice as long to dry a load of laundry as North American conventional dryers.
I'll add that American driers appear to be cheaper to buy.
> house sizes ... naturally our appliances are larger and more power hungry
That explains the AC -- though I can still criticise the waste of energy heating/cooling two, three or four times as much space per person -- but it doesn't explain the drier. Do you wear twice as many clothes as I do?
Almost all big appliances are 220.
Fridges are 110, but the big guys
* EV Charging
* Electric or Induction Oven
* Electric Dryer
* AC
* Electric Water Heater
are all doing to be 220. The amps will vary, and most will not peg the required wire 100%, but may for example do a big pulse to startup (ACs are famous for this).
>It has been the standard for quite a few years, and I cannot imagine only having 100A service in a proper house
100A service is fairly normal here for smaller homes. As heating here is primarily done by natural gas furnaces rather then electrical heating. Which make sense; gas is way cheaper to heat with here then electricity. And it saves a dollar for the developer.
I don't know about larger homes though; I'd imagine that they'd have 200A circuits but it wouldn't surprise me if they didn't unless the builder specifically requested it.
I think my house has 2x200A. It was zoned multi family but the previous owners had a separate service for an electric car, and there’s still bits of electronics in the attic from where they tried to do crypto mining.
I’m sure their equipment overheated. The roof is not insulated and the attic fan is pushing against a louver that’s the wrong design. It gets hot up there without any equipment.
Yah in most cases 2x200 is the step up from 200. The reason being is your wire that runs your 200A service isn't big enough to carry 400A, so you would need to tear it out. Why tear it out a perfectly good wire when you can just run another?
My house is a really big house built in the 50s. It was initially 2x100A service as I don't think 200A service at home was really a thing. It had 2 meters and everything. Sometime in the 80s they tore out the feed from the pole and put in a proper single 200A line, and just left the second meter as defunct.
My ICE car right now costs $1100 in insurance. For me to insure an 2022 Acura NSX is $1500 a year to the same level.
A Bolt to be insured to the exact same level is $$4200 a year. A Tesla Model 3 would ring me $5700 a year. A Porsche Taycan is $7300 a year. None of these are as expensive as the NSX.
And the cost for me to install the additional circuits to the garage went up significantly since my last quote; it's now $2500 to run an additional circuit into the garage. I don't know what it would cost to upgrade the mains panel as well if it's needed (I have only a 100A) but I've heard it's averaging about $5000 or so.
So yeah... not exactly FUD at least from where I'm standing.
I pay $1200 a year to insure my Tesla Model S at the max liability coverage, with comprehensive and collision. Admittedly, I've filed that I drive a max of 6k miles a year and I have the highest deductible set on both comprehensive and collision, but I have strong doubts it'd quintuple in price to insure if I went and set those to more typical settings.
How old are you? I bought a model 3 performance when I was 27 and sold it a year ago. I was paying 285/month with Allstate (before Tesla started offering insurance). I drive my old ICE now and pay 108/month. Clean record.
From what I understand the older you are the less you pay.
Canadian dollars. I don't pretend to understand the reasoning, the insurers have their own logic. But anything with a battery (even PHEV's) seem to command a much higher premium; I was quoted $3400 a year last year for a RAV4 Prime.
The garage is detached one fed by a single 120V circuit buried in PVC conduit, and it is enough for everything in there at the moment. But if a car's charging at the same time say someone open's the garage door, it's going to trip the breaker.
So at least I'd have to pull a second circuit dedicated for charging. To do that, the old conduit needs to come out and be replaced with one that is up to code for handling either more then one circuit, or can handle a 240V circuit. The cost of digging the old one out and installing a new one is a very substantial portion of that quote.
Now granted this was a quote for a full 240V circuit with a subpanel; the quote last year was around $2000 ish. Inflation rate, increasing labor costs, and continuing supply chain issues caused the jump. I didn't get a chance to ask what the quote was for just a second 120V circuit though.
The mains upgrade cost is just what I've heard second hand from others upgrading their 100A service to 200A. I haven't gotten a quote for myself but it doesn't sound wrong to me. Just filing the paper work for the permit from the is a $160 fee. The permit itself IIRC is an additional $200 or $300. I suspect the electrician would have to get the utility involved as well to disconnect and upgrade the main lines coming from the street to the house to accommodate the increased possible amperage.
That's not entirely true. There are load calculations that get done to figure out if a new circuit can be added. If you're going to trip the main breaker while charging and cooking dinner at the same time, you'll probably need a service upgrade per electrical code
That's weird. I pay $350/yr in insurance. I hop insurance providers every couple years. That's a separate trick though. I had to go check since I round it down to 0 in my head.
My costs went down so substantially when I switched to electric they are for all intents and purposes, effectively 0
For me it's a substantial cost increase. My gas is only about $2000 a year and maintenance is roughly $200 a year. So roughly speaking I'd be paying $900 a year more to drive an EV then to drive an ICE. That's even before you start factoring in the higher upfront purchase price and the one time costs for upgrading the home.
>Sorry if you can't figure it out.
I'm honestly not sure if you're genuinely sorry if it's not working out for me, or if you're snarking.
Could go either way. Where I live we also had issues with the grid getting close to capacity due to air conditioning.
That said, someone mentioned to me once that it's about 7 years from the time a power company to notify the government of intention to build a power plant to completion. At least for natural gas plants. So it's plausible for the necessary capacity to be built over the next 15 years.
>And everyone should stop driving fossil vehicles starting now. [...] There’s no excuse not to.
Isn't there?
Right now for me to own a Ford Mach E, a Tesla Model 3 or a RAV4 Prime is $3400 to $3700 per year for comprehensive insurance, $1400 a year for liability only. My SUV right now costs $1100 a year to insure comprehensive, but even a 2021 Acura NSX or Jaguar F-Pace is only $1400 for the same level of insurance that I have right now.
I only spend about $1200 a year on gasoline for the SUV and another $200 for regular maintenance. So right out the gate, assuming electricity is free and tire rotations are free, I'm already looking at least $900/yr increase in operating expense.
And then there's the upfront; the above is on top of the $10,000 to $20,000 more I'd have to spend to buy an EV vs a comparably sized and equipped ICE. And an additional $1500 to $2000 to have my garage accommodate charging a car, assuming main panel doesn't need upgrading and only installing a 240V circuit.
Right now it's a detached garage with a single 120v to it, so it's retrenching and installation of new conduit and wire, installing a new sub panel in the garage, and rewiring everything. Not going to count the cost of a level 2 DC charger (Chevrolet and Kia are offering one as an incentive for purchase). Main uncertainty is whether or not the main panel would need to be upgraded.
If I didn't have a garage, I'd also have to be super concerned about charging stations though. You leave an extension cord more then once out overnight, it will get stolen; the copper in it is worth a dollar or two. I can't imagine how fast a $200 charging cable with $10 of scrap copper in it wouldn't get swiped. It's unfortunately common here, there's quite a few sections of street where the street lights have been knock out for months now due to copper thieves ripping it out of the conduit. A nearby truck depot gets the copper wire cut from the trucks battery systems sitting there overnight every few months.
120v over night will add about 45 miles of range to your typical tesla. Most people drive less than 20 miles a day, so you always start out with a full tank. When I go skiing, I drive 120 miles, so I come back with a lot of range depleted, but it charges up the next few days. On the rare occasions over the past 8 years when I needed to go a long distance, I just use the super charger in my town, although once I went to a pay place that has 220v and 40 amps (so instead of ~3.5 miles of range per house, I added 20 miles of range per hour). What doesn't work with 120v regular power outlet charging? If you drive 250 miles and spend 5 minutes and then need to drive 200 more miles. That is pretty rare.
In 18 months of use, I’ve done all except three charges on my regular old 120v outlet in the garage. I just plug in at night when I go under 60% charge, usually every few days.
I ordered the adapter, outlet, and new wire to move an unused electric dryer service to the garage as soon as I got the car, but haven’t bothered to install them. It just isn’t necessary. (And I dislike taking the face cover off the main breaker box, nothing rational, I just don’t like being that close to the live circuits. If I need to charge a lot overnight, it’s a 30 minute job to install the service.)
For the upfront cost… I had been waiting for the little Jeep pickup truck, but when it came out and I got done adding the basic functional packages it was well up in the Tesla price range. (I’m keeping an elderly F250 out of the crushers for my occasional pickup truck needs, but I could just as easily rent one from the big box hardware store when I need it for less than I pay in insurance on the F250.)
> I ordered the adapter, outlet, and new wire to move an unused electric dryer service to the garage as soon as I got the car, but haven’t bothered to install them. It just isn’t necessary. (And I dislike taking the face cover off the main breaker box, nothing rational, I just don’t like being that close to the live circuits. If I need to charge a lot overnight, it’s a 30 minute job to install the service.
You could do all of the work except for landing the circuit and pay an electrician for an hour to terminate the circuit for you.
The main issue is that it's a single 120V circuit for everything in the garage, including the garage door opener. Assuming you open the garage door (say with a remote garage door opener) while the car is charging, it will trip the breaker in the basement. IIRC your average garage door opening motor uses 500W to 700W while in operation.
So at the least I need to install a second circuit. But the cost of installation is mostly tied into labor rather then material since it involves bringing out a trenching machine out. And the cost difference between just 1 extra 120V circuit and a full blown 240V service with subpanel is significant, but not bad enough for me to think it's makes sense to penny pinch there.
Edit: Well in theory you could also have a receiver and relay that cuts off the charging to the car before initiating powering the garage door motor. That said I don't think it's worth the hassle... at minimum that's two electrical mechanical relays for the 120V lines, some sort of RF receiver for the car, a controller for the relays and to probably some way to signal the garage door itself (replacement for the button inside maybe), and way for the controller to state of the door itself so that it doesn't cut power at the wrong time. Certainly hackable but I doubt I could build it reliable without way more money and time spent on it.
Will it? It’d depend on the breaker and load rating of the wire run to the garage.
I can draw 6kw from one 240v, breaker, so about 25 amps, for a few minutes before it trips from thermal overload.
I load tested a new outlet that was wired on the same circuit, with five devices plugged in, kettle, pressure cooker, slow cooker, fan heater, and hair drier for good measure.
The breaker should trip before the wire is damaged, it did.
Bit of an aside - how is American insurance so stupidly expensive. Here in UK I have a brand new Volvo XC60 PHEV, £60k, 400bhp car, in one of the highest insurance groups(like group 45 out of 50), I'm 30 years old and my fully comprehensive insurance is £400 a year. That's including 20 million liability limit, legal cover, courtesy vehicle, key cover.....etc etc.
Yeah when I was 21 my insurance was £2000 a year on some crappy old econobox, but in general once you turn 25 the insurance falls down rapidly. On my previous Mercedes AMG I paid about £500 a year for fully comprehensive, aged 26.
It cost me a simple written exam (free) and a driving test (free) and then about $25USD for the actual license when I was 16. How much does it cost in the UK? If the barrier to drive is low, you end up with people driving around that got a 70% on the written test (lowest passing score) and a 70% on the driving test driving around doing stupid things. It drives up insurance considerably.
Uhm, in the UK you can only pay for the test if you want, no actual training is strictly required. So....like £99 or there about?
But of course majority of people pay for training because they want to learn somewhere, and not everyone has parents willing to risk the family car. Surely even in US people pay for training and there's more to the cost than just the $25 test fee?
Most families in the states have more than one car, so there’s less risk to teaching your kids how to drive. There are schools though, but I never had that (neither did my wife, apparently). My dad was an insane teacher though. He’d have me slam the brakes in the middle of an empty highway to learn how to stop at-speed. I’ve never been in an accident (knock on wood) but I’ve seen more than my fair share of deadly accidents happen right in front of me.
Americans drive a lot more than Europeans, that's probably why. For comparison, I'm in Canada in my mid-20s and only pay CAD$700 per year, same as you (clean record).
You have to specify how many miles per year you're going to drive - that £400 a year insurance is declared for 10k miles. How many more do Americans drive? 20k? 30k? Aren't those very silly numbers quickly? I thought even in America people drive no more than 20-30 miles a day on average, no?
This is the most noticeable difference between US and UK.
Cars here generally have perhaps $300,000 liability, perhaps $500,000. I have $1,000,000 but larger number is covered by an additional "umbrella" policy that includes liability for multiple cars and also my house.
I imagine there are much greater limits for the likes of Bill Gates. But not commonly for the ordinary 99%. Also, despite auto insurance being legally required, probably 10% or 20% don't have it. They don't care, they have no assets, so they're "judgement proof". There are never any serious criminal consequences for this.
Ordinary people can protect themselves against uninsured drivers by adding additional coverage for that to their own insurance policy. In effect, if you have an accident with an uninsured driver, your own policy pays out whatever liability that driver would owe you. This added coverage is not all that expensive.
Here in Germany, liability limits are usually much higher. 100 million isn't unheard of. The reason certainly is partly advertising, but also because some freak accidents have caused these amounts of costs. A few millions are not uncommon for bad accidents where for example semis with delicate load are involved.
The minimum required from any insurance in the EU is €5M in 3rd party liability, no vehicle insurance can offer less. The ones offering 20/50/100M are doing it mostly for advertising, there's no appreciable difference in cost.
I would guess it's because your insurance pays someone's medical bills if you hit them in the US, which can be >>> the cost of replacing a car even if it's a relatively minor injury.
> assuming main panel doesn't need upgrading and only installing a 240V circuit.
A Load Miser can split the dryer circuit; charging happens overnight, so no usage conflicts. It was about $1,500 USD for my house to run a line from the attic. YMMV, but probably less expensive.
> You leave an extension cord more then once out overnight, it will get stolen
Vancouver is experimenting with curbside chargers.
>A Load Miser can split the dryer circuit; charging happens overnight, so no usage conflicts. It was about $1,500 USD for my house to run a line from the attic. YMMV, but probably less expensive.
I'm not sure why that would make any difference.
>Vancouver is experimenting with curbside chargers.
Maybe; I'd be concerned about someone cutting the cables for scrap copper here. I don't know if richer Vancouver suburbs would have to worry about such a thing.
You're forgetting the initial layout -- that's a car starting at $70000. Who the hell pays that for a car, when half that gets you a car just as nice but running on gasoline?
I haven't bought a new car in ages, but my limit was, and remains, €30k. As long as electric cars cost double what comparable fossil fuel cars cost, with half the range, I don't see any electric revolution happening.
>>Who the hell pays that for a car, when half that gets you a car just as nice but running on gasoline?
Does it? What example do you have in mind? Because the only one I can think of is perhaps the E-Tron compared to the Audi Q5, and I'd argue that to reach the "half" mark you'd get a Q5 that has barely any options fitted in, while the E-Tron will come packed with tech. And then yes, there is the Tesla Model S which is absolutely not worth the money they are asking, but it's an exception not the rule. There's more and more EV vehicles where there isn't a non-EV equivalent for half the price.
The example I had in mind was the Volvo XC40. Gasoline model starts at €30k, electric model at €59K. More often than not you pay a huge premium for electric cars. I think the cheapest right now is the Nissan Leaf, but that's still a tiny car for a lot of money.
I just don't think electric cars make financial sense at all right now. All those car manufacturers saying they won't be making ICE cars within < 5 years anymore must know something I don't, but I don't see who's going to be paying that premium in the low/middle end.
Yeah that's fair enough - the electric XC40 is a stupidly expensive car. I still think it's not exactly a fair comparison, as the cheapest XC40 is a 100bhp 3 cylinder petrol, while the electric XC40 is a 400bhp all wheel drive car. That alone would command a large premium even in an ICE car, no?
But yeah, I'm thinking more about the cars like the MG ZS EV, which I actually put a deposit down on last year(and cancelled due to coronavirus and working from home, but I test drove it and was 100% willing to buy it) - at £25k it was very affordable for a full EV, with loads of space inside.
And then remember that all manufacturers always start with the most expensive models first because that's where the money is, but more and more cars are arriving form various manufacturers. ID.3 from Volkswagen is already approaching affordable prices in lower specs, but there is the ID.2 coming. And if I were to buy a second car as a runaround now, I'd happily buy a £12k second hand e-Up, it's more than enough for driving around and will cost nearly nothing to use.
But that isn't the case. The Jaguar in the article is undoubtedly expensive, but a Tesla Model 3 currently starts in Germany at €35k. Basically the same price as comparable ICE vehicles. And that is not even counting in the savings on operating the car.
My excuse is that I just don't drive much. So yeah, money. The incentives don't favor me selling my good-condition low-mileage ICE for a used high-mileage hybrid, even though I do want one.
If the government passes a carbon tax (or just cuts gasoline subsidies) then the math may change and push me over.
But to avoid harming poor people, they'd have to atomically pass an increase in welfare while making gasoline more expensive for the middle class. So it's politically difficult.
I don't claim to understand the reasoning behind it, these were just the quotes I got shopping around. I never imagined that a $180,000 hybrid supercar would be cheaper to insure the PHEV version of a family oriented CUV but but here we are.
-Not the OP, but the situation in Norway is that new EVs are incredibly competitively priced compared to ICE vehicles, as we tax the latter to high heaven while the former are exempt from just about any tax. This is how it ought to be to speedily increase EV market share.
However, if your personal finances suggest a used vehicle is the way to go, your options are rather limited, and will be for a few more years until the current EVs start trickling down. Current 2nd hand EV offerings mostly are Leafs and eGolfs, with a generous helping of Teslas (still rather pricey) on top.
If you need a large-ish family car and cannot afford a new EV, you'll be driving an ICE for a few more years - more if the authorities start taxing EVs to bring them more in line with ICE levels, boosting 2nd hand prices.
Can easily be, if you compare comparable. I buy BMWs for cca 25% of the price of new (that means 6-7 years old and up to 100k km). Last one lasted 11 years and still counting. Maintenance costs are almost 0, apart from mandatory stuff (oil, brakes & pads, wheels every +-5 years).
Hell will freeze sooner than we will be buying a new car - its just such a stupid waste of money, when the price drops so rapidly and you still get 95% of the new car. ICE cars, especially diesels, just age so well compared to electric ones. I know we will be buying our next car as used ICE, for next maybe 10 years. And so do people around us, in richest country in Europe - Switzerland.
Electric car on level to say well equipped BMW 5 wagon series is what... Tesla model S? Not really, BMW has much higher quality of literally everything that matters in car while sporting much bigger trunk (necessity with kids and active lifestyle).
One should not ignore the price point - most of the world simply can't afford buying electric cars. Its great that western democracies will lead this transition, but when considering whole human population this is a tiny sliver at the moment.
Well, if you compare used cars of course ICEs are much cheaper, because the market is so much larger. That+s why I asked for new. It seemed surprising to me that you'd even consider a new car when an EV is that expensive compared to income.
Well, its simple - I am considering a car. Don't care about underlying technology as much as: initial purchase price, required yearly car insurance & taxes, and ongoing costs of replacements/repairs due to its usage/aging.
After that comes comfort, space, practicality, engagement in driving (aka fun). And somewhere after that, noble discussions about ICE vs electric vs hydrogen etc. So far its a nobrainer. Maybe in 10 years things will be different, I'll vote with my wallet then.
> You leave an extension cord more then once out overnight, it will get stolen; the copper in it is worth a dollar or two. I can't imagine how fast a $200 charging cable with $10 of scrap copper in it wouldn't get swiped. It's unfortunately common here, there's quite a few sections of street where the street lights have been knock out for months now due to copper thieves ripping it out of the conduit
Same here. Most of my cross country trips are in an ‘08 corvette. It gets about 26 mpg if you leave it on cruise, and takes about 8 minutes to fill up. And I can also stop wherever I want for a nice meal or whatever. Combined with zero maintenance because it’s built for about 10x as hard as you’d ever think of driving it, it works out just fine. I think electric vehicles are awesome, but it’s pretty hard to beat gasoline in terms of power for your money.
Already factored into the $200/yr maintenance. Oil changes at dealerships nowadays are essentially loss leaders for them; $75 to $80 for full synthetic change, oil filter replacement and windshield wiper fluid top off, and most include shuttle service nowadays to and from the dealership itself.
Only other items that are ICE specific I can think of off the top of my head is engine air filter and fluid changes for the transmission and transfer case. Most of the other maintenance is the same AFAIK.
Like I said though, the insurance difference for me kills whatever savings there are from lack of oil changes by a wide margin, even before factoring in higher upfront.
You probably don’t need to change your oil as often as you are, if it’s registering as an expense at all.
Check what the manufacturer actually says - for example my manufacturer says don’t bother changing for two years. Lots of Americans driving the exact same cars change their oil every three months for no reason.
Actually this is exactly about expenses you are not consciously "registering", but they are real, and they add up. A daily coffee is not "registering" as well, but it's massive amount of money if you consider how much you spent in a year.
Would you mind quantifying how the coffee argument applies to this discussion, which is about oil change?
For example, here in the UK the average cost of oil and filter change (if you pay someone to do it rather than doing it yourself) is £102 [1]. Done every other year, this amounts to £51 p.a., which is less than a typical tank of fuel [2].
Oil changes are pretty much the least costly part of my car's maintenance. Brakes, suspension and tyres cost far more and I can't imagine that heavy EVs are any better on any of those.
No less than with a manual transmission car. I went 5 years before replacing the pads on my last car, with 150k km driven—not because they were worn, but because they were falling apart.
I haven't driven an EV yet, but from what I hear regenerative breaking is much stronger than engine breaking with a manual car and can essentially bring the car to a stop in city traffic.
I drive a diesel. Back when I had a regular freeway commute, I would regularly come to a complete stop at the end of freeway exits without touching the brake pedal, just for fun (last few km/h I used the handbrake). And one time when I was randomly pushing a little too hard on the brake pedal when I was parked, I burst a brake line somehow, and I ended up driving 20+ miles to my mechanic on busy city streets with no brakes, safely.
I doubt regenerative braking is any stronger than that.
I don't have an opinion on this, but how much of that is due to subsidies for the traditional energy industry? Make no mistake, electric vehicles get a lot of subsidies but I imagine governments around the world want energy independence, so they're probably throwing lots of money to help the industry.
"Excuse" roughly means "good reason to do something bad". All of that is pretty subjective. So now you mostly know a little more about how the authors feels.
US vs Canada I assume. Last time I looked at the Bolt Premier some years ago the dealer would not budge off of the $50,000+ price.
And for that price I was sitting in the most uncomfortable seats I've ever sat in for a personal vehicle; thin, hard and not well sculpted for my back. The only positive I recall was the excellent throttle response.
Never pay list. Leasehackr forums broker price: $4700 up front / out the door for 36 mo, CA $2K rebate, Costco member discount, competitive lease discount, local buyer discount, clearing ’21s before new model.
Broker sources online leads for lower price, because buyer’s knowledgeable and ready to sign.
As he said, different circumstances can shift the solution point. What you have someone that doesn't have a data plan on their phone, or doesn't carry a smartphone and thus doesn't have access to a mapping app? Or the charge point requires a smartphone app that I don't connectivity to use with?
For me as well an EV is questionable. My gas burning SUV is $1100 a year to insure, tax included. A Tesla Model 3 at the same level insurance would could me $6014 a year before taxes. I don't drive enough to save $5000 in gas and maintenance a year.
Then there's my garage. Long story short, the best it can do right now is 120V 6A charge speed. To properly upgrade my garage to support a full EV would cost an additional $2500. Assuming if I also have to upgrade the electrical mains from 100A to 200A, it's $15,000 to $25,000. And my electricity costs 20 cents a kilowatt hour.
Does buying an EV it still make sense after all that if you were in my circumstances?