Have you paused to think about how much the gas for 1311 miles would cost? For a 30 mpg car, that's 43.7 gallons. (Jeez, gas is annoyingly, unrealistically cheap right now. It really should be well over $3.) Say something like $2.10 per gallon? That would be $91.77. You paid about $78 instead in electricity cost.
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1st Electricity Bill since purchasing the tesla.
- Thread starter VV1975
- Start date
True it would have still been more I guess I just wasn't really sure and didn't do the math prior to buying the car to see how much it would cost. It's cheaper but like... barely cheaper.
This. But...
I think a lot of people get misled into thinking it costs nearly nothing to charge an EV compared to gas. That rhetoric runs wild on these forums too, which is weird since residents of the US are the primary forum members here and they have really cheap gas but I digress.
@kadify is also in Colorado. It's cold there, to my recollection. The number one thing I feel misled about is how much energy is "wasted" by Model 3 in the cold. It's appalling, and for a lot of places it's cheaper to drive a gas car in comparison if you park a Model 3 outside in the cold. After a lot of data, that would absolute be the case for me if it wasn't parked in a garage (and gas is expensive here compared to the US average).
Well, because that should be true. This $2 per gallon gasoline is insane and unsustainable! It was $2 about, what? 20-25 years ago? Just regular inflation should have raised it since then! It should be twice that, where these cost comparisons make sense. I was figuring this some years ago, and my prices per mile for our Tesla were about 1/5 of the price per mile for our Honda Civic. But that's when gas prices were normal.
True gas prices are abnormally low. A few years ago I was paying like $90 for a tank of gas.
MichaelP90DL
Active Member
Your power company may offer a discount for electric vehicles, and probably charging is cheapest during off hours.
I am still new so don't know how to tell how much energy is wasted but it definitely is shocking sometimes how much energy is used just toodling around town. Especially since with the new octovalve, it seems like the battery never truly heats up all the way in the cold. Or at least I can't figure out how to make it heat up. I've tried preconditioning 30+ mins and still get in the car to several regen dots. But either way yes I do think a fuel efficient vehicle would have compared similarly to driving around my MY this last month. Granted, how many fuel efficient ICE cars are as big as the MY and also as quick at this level of efficiency? None but that doesn't change the fact I guess I was expecting to pay like $20 a month to charge my car haha.
I looked into this when having my Wall connector installed and unfortunately would need a new meter installed for our garage to do this. It worked out to just not be feasible to install a new meter and even if we had I think the rates weren't all that low. Something like 8 cents wh vs 12 cents now? It was less but still not insanely cheap and if I charged during the day I would have spent way more than I do now so decided not to do that.
MrWattson
Member
When I was in high school my friends and I used the old fridge in our garage to keep our beer cold. My friends and i would get out of work on a summer Saturday evening, pick up wings and pizza and head to the garage to enjoy and have a few beers. Only to find the refrigerator unplugged and the beer warm. Ugh.
My Mom's explanation as to why the fridge was unplugged? "Your cold beer is costing me a hundred dollars a month!!!" It did not matter that her overall bill was like $60. LOL...your landlord story (I know it from 2020...) reminded me of Mom. God bless her.
Iain
Member
I left my car at DFW for three weeks in December. I turned off Sentry because i had no idea how much battery i would have left when i returned. I lost 1% over 3 weeks.
Knightshade
Well-Known Member
Average electricity cost in the US is about 13.9 cents per kwh... 75 kwh battery in the 3/Y would cost on average $10.43 to "fill" from 0.
Of course you won't generally do a 0->100 charge, and there's some transmission loss.
The average MPG of the US gasoline fleet is about 25 mpg, and $2.40 is the average cost of a gallon of gasoline nationally.
So $10.43 would get you ~108.65 miles of range using MPG and gas price averages.
EV consumption varies by driving style, weather, tires, etc...but even if you knock off 30% of rated range you should get 2x that much range out of an LR 3 or Y for the same amount of money.
But that's all averages. A 50 mpg hybrid probably isn't TOO far off from a 3/Y driving in the winter on sticky tires (though the EV should still comfortably beat it otherwise using average electric costs)... and folks in places like NYC and Hawaii are paying nearer 30 cents per kwh.
Other folks are paying way less (I pay 2.79c per kwh to charge overnight for example).
I hear Tesla solar is pretty affordable
Of course you won't generally do a 0->100 charge, and there's some transmission loss.
The average MPG of the US gasoline fleet is about 25 mpg, and $2.40 is the average cost of a gallon of gasoline nationally.
So $10.43 would get you ~108.65 miles of range using MPG and gas price averages.
EV consumption varies by driving style, weather, tires, etc...but even if you knock off 30% of rated range you should get 2x that much range out of an LR 3 or Y for the same amount of money.
But that's all averages. A 50 mpg hybrid probably isn't TOO far off from a 3/Y driving in the winter on sticky tires (though the EV should still comfortably beat it otherwise using average electric costs)... and folks in places like NYC and Hawaii are paying nearer 30 cents per kwh.
Other folks are paying way less (I pay 2.79c per kwh to charge overnight for example).
I hear Tesla solar is pretty affordable
I believe all Xcel customers in Colorado will be moving to ToU in the next year or two, so soon everyone will have smart meters. If you wanted to switch before then, you could and there shouldn't be any charge to install a smart meter.I know
Since you mentioned your bill was high due to A/C, you should consider installing solar (or buy into community solar) and Powerwalls and switch to Xcel's ToU plan. While it's not a cheap investment, it should pay for itself eventually. You could pay the off-peak electricity rates nearly all the time. A few years ago, we were paying nearly $300 a month for electricity and over $200 a month for gasoline. We became an all-Tesla household (no more ICE) and put in solar and Powerwalls. Our first solar system wasn't enough to cover all our usage so we expanded it in 2019. We haven't really had an electric bill since February 2020. We also haven't paid for gasoline in nearly 3 years. Last year, only 2% of our grid electricity usage was during the most expensive peak period. We're saving between $400 and $500 a month and will break even on our solar system in less than 8 years. After that, we'll have "free" electricity for at least 20 more years.
Did you convert your gas appliances to electric? We're definitely looking at solar, we want to invest in that and believe in generating our own power, but the cost of solar in our area still doesn't seem to be worth it. For a system big enough for our house we'd be lookin gat 40-50k after rebates or ~$350 a month in loan and that is way more than our electricity bill alone. Since electricity can't replace gas for our how water and furnaces, we'd still end up needing gas unless we converted everything at the same time which isn't feasible since everything is new already.
I also don't know that we're going to be here forever. We bought a house close to the city for work but that came with tradeoffs (our neighbors are literally about 6 feet away on either side). we justified that this was the tradeoff until we slowed down at work and could move further away to more space. So investing in solar could end up being a huge expense we don't ever see the benefit of since I don't think we'll be here long enough.
We still have a natural gas boiler. While we have room on our roof for another 4 kW of solar, it doesn't have the best exposure to the sun and it wouldn't be enough to eliminate our natural gas usage. We are looking into solar hot water/heat pump options to see if they would be able to replace the boiler. Currently, Xcel wouldn't allow us to add more solar anyways since last year we had so much excess solar due to more working from home days.
If you don't have enough room for solar, you might consider community solar, such as Welcome to CEC . They allow you to buy solar panels on a solar farm in your county and their production reduces your electric bill. They have some benefits over regular solar but some negatives as well, such as not being able to keep things running during an extended power outage.
I'll check out that option. Hadn't ever heard of that before. Do you know if you can use power walls to store energy if you're connected to the grid/purchase solar arrays on a solar farm?
Umm...if it's shocking how much energy is wasted, I might suggest not running preheating a lot. It's winter--there is going to be limited regen--always will be, unless you really do want to waste massive amounts of energy.
OK... so how much did gas cost you a month before? So ~$70 increase in electricity cost vs. no gas cost. Was your gas cost about $200 a month?
True but
1) in general, areas with high electricity cost have higher gas costs.
2) don't buy an EV because you want to save money. the payoff period is usually far down the line >5 years.
3) If you drove a hybrid before then yeah, you'll never make your savings back.
Don't buy an EV if the only thing you want is to save money. Hybrids are way better for that currently.
Buy an EV if you want to:
1) help the planet
2) no gas stations
3) less maintenance
4) faster acceleration
5) lower noise
6) possibly save some money
EV drawbacks are also real so please people, do research BEFORE you get an EV.
No my gas cost was like $120-$150 a month. It's definitely cheaper and I have a completely different class of performance with my MY but still I thought I'd be charging at home and it would only cost like $20 a month. I wasn't prepared for how much the bill increased.
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