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Charging with no home charger is just as expensive as petrol?

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I always thought that driving an EV was not about how cheap to run it is, because that won't last forever, but more to do with the evironmental benefits in cities etc
Well that is the fundamental factor but the cost of charging a battery being far less than a tank of petrol is always an added bonus!

Tesla charge for power received by car, others for power sent to car (which will be more), so assuming same price, Tesla is cheaper.

Zap map free chargers
Charge at shops, WORK, friends, relatives (eg visit parents once a week and graze elsewhere).

It might help if OP said where they were, commute to or otherwise regularly visit, some old timers might know some local tricks.

Search the forum for Gridserve, Osprey etc

Eventually Gridserve and others will be setting up local Electric Forecourts to serve areas (Gridserve Electric Hubs are for motorways etc).

Daft Gridserve map as no key, not clickable - but shows ambitions - GRIDSERVE | EV Charging price is 30p/kWh

Osprey doing similar local/route hubs/forecourts




Not a great answer, but when I was looking around I found a couple of articles, The Brighton one discusses a few things that might be coming up and might be useful for others finding post through search.

Portable EV Charging | ZipCharge Go - a powerbank for your EV | London 20-40 miles per charge - pre-orders for 2022 - looks expensive - from article - "also a number of companies in the US selling portable EV solutions like EV Rescue, EV CubiCharge, Blink Mobile and Lightning eMotors"



These are some fantastic resources I'll have to sit down and go through, thank you! I'm based in Milton Keynes so although we have plenty of chargers available, finding cost effective ones is the challenge!

Public charger pricing is just going to get crazy expensive soon. Cost of energy, cost and complexity of installation, high demand as there are so many EV’s now. It’s a perfect storm. Quite frankly, we’ve not seen anything yet. It won’t be long before charging a car using public chargers is significantly more expensive than petrol or diesel. This is before the government go crazy on taxing electricity, like the fuel industry. They will want a significant cut too. Sorry I’m all doom and gloom but I don’t see it any other way. Yes the government have environmental targets etc, but they will still be lining their pockets.
Sadly always the case and I agree
Public charger here too. These are my current stats since I got the car at the end of June. Bear in mind that it was a little cheaper back then. I still pay 35p/kW and its still cheaper than petrol. Below is based on £1.40 per litre cost.


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What app are you using for this out of interest? Definitely looks great! I just find my range in the winter has been awful so charging is more frequent for sure

Point to note there re: "22kW" - if that is an AC charge point then the Model 3 is limited to 11kW AC (3-phase 16A each)
If it is a DC charger then yes approximately 10x rate of a granny charger and 3x rate of a typical home charge point.
Thanks for mentioning, I did see a few comments about this but checked and the car was showing 22W so looks like it was a DC charger

@kashmachine have a look at Zap Map Home as there may be a householder nearby that you could strike an agreement with.
I wasn't aware of Zap Map Home, I'll have to check it out, great advice!
 
4p per mile is the AMAP rate
Just correcting my own post (hey, it was late!) - 4p per mile is the AFR (Advisory Fuel Rate), 45p a mile is the AMAP (Approved Mileage Allowance Payment)... Also, on checking the HMRC web site, I can see the AFR for electric cars seems to have increased to 5p recently (Advisory Fuel Rates)

The AMAP rates (for privately owed cars) have been the same for ages, the AFR rates get updated once a quarter by HMRC to reflect changes to fuel prices etc., but are still based on fairly outdated fuel type/cc bands
 
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I think the problem with owning an EV without a private Charger is that the range in the winter plummets. While on a long journey the car might achieve 200 miles or so, I find that this reduces to about 130-150 miles the way I use the car. We need it for loads of short trips and in the winter the car needs to constantly heat, multiple times a day.
I charged a couple of weeks ago and then ran the battery down for a week without a top up (using up the last free super charger miles) and only drove 90 miles but used about 60%.
Need to factor that into your financial calculations. Particularly if you pay considerably more for the electricity in the first place.


I think you've absolutely hit the nail on the head here. Short trips combined with winter is a nightmare mix. I travel 3 miles each way to my gym several times a week. In theory that should be 6 miles of range used, but in winter it tends to creep up to more 10 miles.

Yeah the estimated range tends to certainly be in the 150-200 mile range. I try do as much to negate it, I don't use Sentry mode so when the car is idle, it does enter sleep mode and the battery preservation is pretty good. The only thing I like to do is always remotely turn on climate control a few mins before getting into the car so it's at least got heated seats and warm when I get into it
 
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I think you've absolutely hit the nail on the head here. Short trips combined with winter is a nightmare mix. I travel 3 miles each way to my gym several times a week. In theory that should be 6 miles of range used, but in winter it tends to creep up to more 10 miles.

Yeah the estimated range tends to certainly be in the 150-200 mile range. I try do as much to negate it, I don't use Sentry mode so when the car is idle, it does enter sleep mode and the battery preservation is pretty good. The only thing I like to do is always remotely turn on climate control a few mins before getting into the car so it's at least got heated seats and warm when I get into it
if you want comfort but minimum power use for a short journey try preheating but then when you get in turn the fan down to 1 or even turn the climate off but leave the heated seats on for the actual journey ( assuming UI11 will actually still let you do that :rolleyes:). you will barely notice on a 3 mile journey but you will be surprised at the difference it makes to the wh/m.
 
if you want comfort but minimum power use for a short journey try preheating but then when you get in turn the fan down to 1 or even turn the climate off but leave the heated seats on for the actual journey ( assuming UI11 will actually still let you do that :rolleyes:). you will barely notice on a 3 mile journey but you will be surprised at the difference it makes to the wh/m.
I'll try it next time! Thanks for the top tip
 
motorway superchargers, say 40p kWh. then consumption(my own as I know what it does), tally that upto what my previous car did. that's where my answer comes from.

I know this is a Tesla forum, however I'm not blinded by the 'musk factor'. its an honest appraisal. Also, you can get paid 45ppm by a company using an ICE, compared to 4ppm for an EV.
Sounds like you're using worst case scenario to prove the ICE is cheaper to run than the Tesla. Thankfully the OP is paying 32p/kWh so is already making saving compared to your figure. Company car rates are irrelevant if the OP doesn't have a company car.
Apples and Oranges.
 
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Sounds like you're using worst case scenario to prove the ICE is cheaper to run than the Tesla. Thankfully the OP is paying 32p/kWh so is already making saving compared to your figure. Company car rates are irrelevant if the OP doesn't have a company car.
Apples and Oranges.
I’m charging at home for 5p so cost per mile is neglible compared to the actual cost of the car. My point is that if you buy or lease a £50k car then the monthly cost and/or depreciation is going to be the biggest part of the cost of ownership unless you have very high mileage. Perhaps not the same consideration for a 25k EV. Interestingly my M3 resale value isn’t too far off whatI bought it for after 15k miles (but that’s true of most cars over past 12 months or so).
 
Sounds like you're using worst case scenario to prove the ICE is cheaper to run than the Tesla. Thankfully the OP is paying 32p/kWh so is already making saving compared to your figure. Company car rates are irrelevant if the OP doesn't have a company car.
Apples and Oranges.
what you also have to take into account though is that if you compare the lifetime kw/h consumed as reported by the car to the number of KW/h reported from chargers then the difference can easily be 30%+ for the chargers. Car only reports usage while driving. The rest is made up from charging losses, phantom drain, sentry, preheat etc. It's the Elephant in the EV charging costs room that no one talks about.
I know that sounds like a lot, and it will vary for everyone but that is the sort of number you should expect. I did a study on my own car over 6 months and there is nothing remarkable about my driving pattern.
So whatever you are paying for electricity you should be adding 30% to that when you are budgeting for the true cost of owning an EV.
 
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Well that is the fundamental factor but the cost of charging a battery being far less than a tank of petrol is always an added bonus!



These are some fantastic resources I'll have to sit down and go through, thank you! I'm based in Milton Keynes so although we have plenty of chargers available, finding cost effective ones is the challenge!


Sadly always the case and I agree


What app are you using for this out of interest? Definitely looks great! I just find my range in the winter has been awful so charging is more frequent for sure


Thanks for mentioning, I did see a few comments about this but checked and the car was showing 22W so looks like it was a DC charger


I wasn't aware of Zap Map Home, I'll have to check it out, great advice!
zap map Milton Keynes - filtered on "free" - Free vend at Wolverton Tesco and some other places (check time limits. Must have pod-point app, cable & claim charge). Brief look at comments suggest it might be unreliable, check before going there. Without a home charger, it might be useful to "graze", getting charge when you can, just as you go about doing normal things. Assuming you're happy to stop for 2 hours (max parking time, you have a shop, meal etc), you'll only get 14-22kwh (at 7.4/11kw). Even that might be optimistic, it's not something I've done much of.

Even though I can home-charge, I'm interested in this for several reasons, mainly EV adoption questions from friends and also for myself, when travelling. For the later, I've plugged in granny charger at friends while visiting, shopping centres (eg Oxford, Westgate is free apart from parking ticket) and accommodation.



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Total yawn, a quick search of your *input* shows what I need to know about you, out of interest why not stay with the diesel car?
well I'm sorry you feel that way. The reason I jumped out was my car had increased by over £10k from what I paid for it 9 months previously. I didn't want the cost of running/servicing/insuring a big expensive car myself, so with the short lead times, went EV. I don't regret it. I'm just honest about aspects of both.
By the way, the AER rate for EVs has recently been raised to 5ppm.

That’s what I am claiming at the moment from my employer, for business miles.


Thats good to know, that's a good % increase. I think it needs to be circa 11ppm to cover the cost of charging when out?
 
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What app are you using for this out of interest? Definitely looks great! I just find my range in the winter has been awful so charging is more frequent for sure
It's Tessie. £4.50 p/m. Same as TeslaFi.


You set the price of the chargers via location tagging in the app and it auto calculates the costs for you. You can view each charge separately with all the myriad of stats attached too.
 
Sounds like you're using worst case scenario to prove the ICE is cheaper to run than the Tesla. Thankfully the OP is paying 32p/kWh so is already making saving compared to your figure. Company car rates are irrelevant if the OP doesn't have a company car.
Apples and Oranges.

I'm not using worse case, it was clear its when using for 'long' trips away from home etc. I did over 500 miles in a day, it was a breeze using the supercharger network, however it wasn't any cheaper and took a little longer. on anything other than that sort of use, the EV should be cheaper.

I'm not trying to 'prove' anything, just report on what I found. with electricity prices going through the roof, its only going to get worse.
 
It's Tessie. £4.50 p/m. Same as TeslaFi.


You set the price of the chargers via location tagging in the app and it auto calculates the costs for you. You can view each charge separately with all the myriad of stats attached too.
Been a Tessie user for a few weeks now and am absolutely loving it.
 
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what you also have to take into account though is that if you compare the lifetime kw/h consumed as reported by the car to the number of KW/h reported from chargers then the difference can easily be 30%+ for the chargers. Car only reports usage while driving. The rest is made up from charging losses, phantom drain, sentry, preheat etc. It's the Elephant in the EV charging costs room that no one talks about.
I know that sounds like a lot, and it will vary for everyone but that is the sort of number you should expect. I did a study on my own car over 6 months and there is nothing remarkable about my driving pattern.
So whatever you are paying for electricity you should be adding 30% to that when you are budgeting for the true cost of owning an EV.
That was already added into my calculations.
 
Just wanted people's thoughts on this. I live in a flat so am currently unable to have a charger installed due to various reasons.

I've been surviving on public chargers but with consistently increasing prices, charging the battery costs as much as fuel

For example, BP Pulse Rapid Chargers as a member charge 0.32p/kW so charging say 40kW is £12.80 and assuming you need one charge a week with the reduced range in winter then that's already £51.20 a month

Does anyone else have any tips or suggestions to reduce the price of charging? Is an EV only feasible if you have a home charger?
Yes. The idea that charging EVs is cheaper than gas is quickly disappearing into profit motive. Public charging involves a captive market of those who, for whatever reason, can't charge at a residence. This will continue until EV charging is as expensive as gasoline. There are currently not enough providers to allow competitive pricing to emerge, and when there are, there will be an informal sort of collusion among suppliers to keep profits intact.

It is sort of like cooking at home vs eating at a restaurant.
 
I've only had my car a few weeks and not really enough to comment with any great commitment but regardless...

I was worried as I am public charging for a whole bunch of other reasons and have found that I'm getting 100 miles or there about for 50% charge, going from 80% to 30%. To achieve this, I am not preheating (well maybe for a couple of minutes, no more), running with climate on manual, set at 19.5degC and fan speed 1, but it gets cold inside pretty quickly I've found, but then again, even with it on auto, I've found it starts to blow cool air after a short time.

Anyway back on point, I'm able to charge publicly for free at the moment but know this won't last forever and planning ahead, when it isn't free, I see prices ranging from 25p to 45p per kWh locally, so for calculations, I've been using 35p and basing my 50% charge on 37kwh of battery, a dirty bit of maths comes close to £13 and the same trips would have cost me £30 before hand but that was in my Jeep which returned between 20 and 24mpg so I would guess a decent modern diesel would be cheaper to run that a Tesla in my situation.
Actually, while my Jeep was in the garage recently forever waiting on an alarm module, I had a [forget what it was now] but I was putting £12 in a fortnight for the same journeys, it was showing between 80 and 90mpg apparently.
These figures are all from memory and generally weighted depending on which side of the argument I'm on, but close enough.

Naturally, you can throw no road tax into the mix, but also there is the flip side of more expensive insurance, in my case my current (soon to be previous) company wanted £1900 for my renewal, over 4 times what I had been paying.

But it drives itself, right... [joke] Each to their own but I am of the opinion, that the grass is most definitely not always greener, much of the time, its just the same field, just a little less trodden. I wanted to try one and I got one, whether or not I'll hang onto it will depend on a few things, mostly does it save me enough £££ to justify not having a gas guzzling, planet destroying 4x4

Happy New Year all