High cost of charging according to TeslaFi?

[michaelnorbert]

I agree with OP. I look at TCO. I received MY early Nov and I live in a cold climate. Total charge cost is $174, total drive cost is $92 for 4000km. My Pathfinder would have been around $700 over that distance. I preheat, I keep sentry mode on. I drive with the fan on at 5. I keep it in dog mode when I go grocery shopping and it's snowing outside so I don't have to brush off the windows. I keep it in dog mode overnight when it's freezing rain.
Charge rate is .085 cents/kw and I love this car.

 

[NYCentral]

I just compare what I spent per month on my previous vehicle, a BMW that got about 21 mpg at best on premium fuel, and what I spend per month on "filling" my Y. Both have about the same range on a fill-up (the Beemer was wildly optimistic when it told me how many miles I could drive after filling the tank). I figure that takes into account heating it up before I drive, vampire drain, etc., and it costs me about 1/4 as much with the Y. Gas prices are starting to rise so the Y will look even better in comparison.

My Lincoln MKX is actually a good comparison to my Model Y. The MKX has a full tank range of 296 miles compared to MY which is about 325 right now. My gas mileage stinks at about 16 MPG. I also seem to have to replace the tires annually ($720 cost last year) as well as quarterly SYNTHETIC Oil changes which cost around $92 here locally. The list goes on.

I invested some time to learn more about my electric bill and my power company's Time of Use programs that will be very helpful in lowering my Tesla operating costs as well from June 1 to September 15th. My educated guess at this point is that if I charge at night during the summer months, my annual KWH cost will drop from 11.2 to 9.8 and with the price of gas now at $2.85 and rising, the cost delta between my two vehicles just continues to grow. But understanding gas & electric costs based on the state you live in is very important.

 

[Uncle Paul]

There are two major "costs" of owning a vehicle.
The most talked about one with Tesla is the cost per mile when running down the road. That is used to determine the running costs.
The second, and often larger is the ownership cost over time. This will include depreciation, financing costs, time value of money for purchase price, etc.
With an ICE vehicle you need to change your oil every so many miles or so much time. If you just let your vehicle just sit there you will daily incure maintenance costs even if it does not move as well.
Tires can age out, oil ages out, your finish dulls from environmental factors, insurance costs continue, many monthly costs continue, even if it is not driven.

This is just a fact of vehicle ownership, no matter ICE or EV.

An EV will have vampire losses and charging in-efficiencies. An ICE will need to have it's gasoline drained and fresh put in if it sits for long periods of time as well.

It would be nice if vehicles were pure perfection, and time sitting was free, but that is not the case. Vehicles give the best efficiency when used regularly. If the car sits, additional costs will continue to accrue, and the total cost per mile driven will be higher.

Believe OP is also charging from a 120V source. This also will cost more than using a more efficient 240V source.

 

[mycroftxxx]

I’ve been looking at this topic at the six-month mark on the car. I’m getting right about 260 Wh/mi, paying $0.10/kWh off-peak including generating and delivery costs (my utility breaks these out separately), haven’t had to supercharge since I got my Wall Connector installed shortly after getting the car, and don’t precondition here in perfect climate coastal SoCal. This yields a “fuel” cost per mile of $0.026. The car the Y replaced got 18 mi/gal and required premium gas, which has been stable at about $3.60/gal here, for a fuel cost of $0.20/mi. Now, I haven’t factored in charging losses, but I don’t have significant parasitic drain, so any way you look at it, I’m saving at least 5x on fuel with my Y. That may change some this year, as we have some trips tentatively planned post-COVID which will require supercharging, but it will still be a lot more cost-efficient than gasoline. So far, I’m running significantly better than my pre-purchase total cost of ownership estimate (that was part of deciding to buy the Y in the first place). YMMV of course

 

[mark95476]

I'm in NorCal and my old gasser was similar to yours. Some rough calculations after 4700 miles:

Old gasser:
4700 mi @ 300 mi/tank = ~15 fill-ups x $60 = ~$900

Model Y:
$276 total charging costs (ChargePoint + Supercharger)

So the MY driving costs are <1/3 of my old gasser. The reduced maintenance, no smog tests, ...etc... makes it even more cost-efficient.

I’ve been looking at this topic at the six-month mark on the car. I’m getting right about 260 Wh/mi, paying $0.10/kWh off-peak including generating and delivery costs (my utility breaks these out separately), haven’t had to supercharge since I got my Wall Connector installed shortly after getting the car, and don’t precondition here in perfect climate coastal SoCal. This yields a “fuel” cost per mile of $0.026. The car the Y replaced got 18 mi/gal and required premium gas, which has been stable at about $3.60/gal here, for a fuel cost of $0.20/mi. Now, I haven’t factored in charging losses, but I don’t have significant parasitic drain, so any way you look at it, I’m saving at least 5x on fuel with my Y. That may change some this year, as we have some trips tentatively planned post-COVID which will require supercharging, but it will still be a lot more cost-efficient than gasoline. So far, I’m running significantly better than my pre-purchase total cost of ownership estimate (that was part of deciding to buy the Y in the first place). YMMV of course

 

[rejedejo]

So here are the totals for drives from 9/10/20 to 1/16/21. The 262 Wh/Mile seems pretty spot on with the rated 260 Wh/Mile by using 964 kWh over the 3685 miles driven. However, when I look at my total charging costs over that same period of time, it shows about 1347 kWh added. Where is the 383 kWh difference going? Is that all pre-heating / warming the battery? That seems like a lot of energy towards that. If I use the 1347 kWh added as "actual energy" added over that period of time, I only get 366 Wh / Mile.

It gets worse because the 1347 added assumes 100% charging efficiency. When I download the charging data and sum up the "kWh used" I get 1555 kWh (about a 87% charge efficiency. I charge at home using my Tesla Wall Connector at 13A). That drops the "actual energy" used to be over 3685 miles driven to be 422 Wh / Mile.

Is my math right? Are folks using TeslaFi seeing the same thing? Are the real world energy costs actually that much higher than the 260 Wh/Mile being advertised?

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Tesla cars use much more energy than they self report. The kWh in the odometer are "drive" kWh only, and no HVAC, charge inefficiency or battery conditioning is reported there. I am doing an ongoing study about this using a separate kWh meter for my car charger and am logging this. I've written a short piece on this available here: Remco DeJong – Medium
Teslafi's "kWh Used" tracks well with my kWh meter. They use input Volts X Amps = kWh.

 

[rejedejo]

Since when was it important to know what the total energy used was, including preconditioning and everything else that can consume energy? The number to be concerned about is energy consumption when driving. This value demonstrates how efficient a vehicle is, or isn’t.

With that in mind, the total amount of energy consumed when you consider everything else that will contribute to the total cost is still FAR better than almost every other car on the road. If we evaluated an ICE in the same manner, I think that would be an eye opener.

The truth of the matter is that most EV’s are so efficient to begin with that you will begin to notice the inefficiencies with little effort because they will have a larger impact on the potential result.

I have a car to go places and I put energy into the car. The relevant metric is how much energy I put into the car versus how far it takes me, right?

 

[rejedejo]

Understood. I am humbled by the universal disagreement in my opinion. Having said that, I would still like to share my reasoning.

When one tries to understand the total cost to own a vehicle, that should also include the understanding that every owner will have a different result, especially when it comes to energy usage. This will be influenced by several factors, such as: charging methods, usage of preconditioning, scheduled charging, sentry mode settings, outside air temp, average speed, dog mode, etc.. This fact is exaggerated by the fact that EV’s don’t involve much maintenance and are super efficient. For this reason, personally, I want to understand that which is universal across all MY’s, the driving efficiency. This is the logical approach from my perspective..

For example, when it comes to preconditioning energy usage, I’m surprised more isn’t said about the benefits of charging just prior to departing. Pro tip, you can get rid of the regen dots (or many of them) by simply scheduling your charge so that it completes just prior to departure. Doing so can reduce/eliminate the need to precondition the battery, depending on ambient temps of course. I see many wanting to know how to only precondition the battery, this is how I do it with our MY and i3.. and the best part is that it doesn’t use any additional power since it’s simply a result of charging. Does everyone do/know this, or care about it for that matter, I doubt it... It would be super useful to see just how much heat is added to the pack by only charging from 40-60%, but my experience with doing so suggests that a noticeable amount of heat is produced, even when charging between 7-12kW only.

In other words, don’t assume that your overall energy consumption will be universal since there will always be a significant amount of variance that is dependent on several variables, many of which involve the operator and their approach, and/or the environmental conditions. So why bother evaluating for anything other than having for your own records? I don’t see the value of sharing this information as if it will always be the same no matter who the operator is, that will not be the case.

Tesla does a great job with energy usage, and they know where every Watt goes, and I would like to know where they went. I suspect you'd be surprised to know your actual kWh in / mile driven, during times when nothing else was activated.

 

[rejedejo]

I think this is the big "problem" that many EVs have. They enable the use of vast amounts of data that can be used to provide incredibly detailed stats and costings.
In an ICE world almost everything is guesswork, reset the trip every fill up is about it with the resolution of a tank of gas.
With the EV, now we can see how much it costs to sit in a parking lot with the AC running, we can see how much power the car uses overnight keeping the battery at the right temperature and managing itself. We can directly see the difference between longer, flatter routes compared to shorter, hilly routes.
Even worse, now we can see the energy cost of using Sentry mode or Dog mode

At first I really dug into just how much it cost to move around, now after 70k of electric miles (and a car with a decent sized battery) I worry much less about it

Not saying its bad or good, just different. All these stats allow you to be much more proactive - or not.....

How are you seeing energy usage of AC or Sentry or Dog mode?

 

[silverstoned83]

I have a car to go places and I put energy into the car. The relevant metric is how much energy I put into the car versus how far it takes me, right?

Correct. A more transparent way to say it is how much energy does it take to drive a given distance. That should not include everything that is involved when the car is parked because that will always be dependent on the user, the climate, and so many other factors... which can add up to be a substantial amount. The energy used when parked is irrelevant (to me) since I know that there is a price to pay for all of the energy consuming features that are included with Tesla’s... all of which are there as a benefit to the car/customer.

Personally, I am fine with the additional energy consumed when parked because I appreciate the convenience/security/BMS features and would much rather pay for the obvious additional energy usage and not let it distract from the true accomplishment, driving efficiency.

 

[silverstoned83]

How are you seeing energy usage of AC or Sentry or Dog mode?

I can see this energy usage when charging through a JuiceBox.

 

[P3dStealth]

This makes no sense. Why wouldn't you consider the total amount of energy consumed? It's being compared to an ICE car and as such you need to consider the downsides. Pretending the car is not using energy and money while just sitting in my driveway is not an accurate comparison.

 

[silverstoned83]

This makes no sense. Why wouldn't you consider the total amount of energy consumed? It's being compared to an ICE car and as such you need to consider the downsides. Pretending the car is not using energy and money while just sitting in my driveway is not an accurate comparison.

Last I checked, but no other car manufacturer has features like sentry mode, cabin preconditioning for up to 4 hours, dog mode, camp mode, super effective battery preconditioning, 3C max charge rate, etc. All of which use a lot of energy when you add it up, this is no surprise to me.. So if you want to compare, you should not be using these features when establishing a baseline... that’s my logic at least.

 

[rejedejo]

Correct. A more transparent way to say it is how much energy does it take to drive a given distance. That should not include everything that is involved when the car is parked because that will always be dependent on the user, the climate, and so many other factors... which can add up to be a substantial amount. The energy used when parked is irrelevant (to me) since I know that there is a price to pay for all of the energy consuming features that are included with Tesla’s... all of which are there as a benefit to the car/customer.

Personally, I am fine with the additional energy consumed when parked because I appreciate the convenience/security/BMS features and would much rather pay for the obvious additional energy usage and not let it distract from the true accomplishment, driving efficiency.

The comparison is not between electrics, it's between electrics and ICE cars, with an ICE car you put energy in the tank and everything you use that car for comes out of the tank. With my Tesla, I put energy in through the charge port, but only the kWh that goes through your motor is counted? what about the charge inefficiency? what about pre-conditioning the battery? Those are required to drive the car and are necessarily part of your consumption. And back to the apples to apples usage, my old gasoline car heated for free, and when I ran the AC the incremental energy use was the most efficient increment. So if I only use my car like I used my Mazda, driving + HVAC, my fine electric car starts to use quite a bit more than the EPA ratings of 288 Watt/mile. If this difference was 10% then well, okay, but here in Cincinnati I'm getting about 500 Watt-hour / mile. Input / mile driven. Includes heat and AC.

 

[rejedejo]

There are two major "costs" of owning a vehicle.
The most talked about one with Tesla is the cost per mile when running down the road. That is used to determine the running costs.
The second, and often larger is the ownership cost over time. This will include depreciation, financing costs, time value of money for purchase price, etc.
With an ICE vehicle you need to change your oil every so many miles or so much time. If you just let your vehicle just sit there you will daily incure maintenance costs even if it does not move as well.
Tires can age out, oil ages out, your finish dulls from environmental factors, insurance costs continue, many monthly costs continue, even if it is not driven.

This is just a fact of vehicle ownership, no matter ICE or EV.

An EV will have vampire losses and charging in-efficiencies. An ICE will need to have it's gasoline drained and fresh put in if it sits for long periods of time as well.

It would be nice if vehicles were pure perfection, and time sitting was free, but that is not the case. Vehicles give the best efficiency when used regularly. If the car sits, additional costs will continue to accrue, and the total cost per mile driven will be higher.

Believe OP is also charging from a 120V source. This also will cost more than using a more efficient 240V source.

if a 120V source is less efficient it's likely because the car is awake the entire time it charges. Since it takes much longer, the staying awake part is consuming more energy.

 

[silverstoned83]

The comparison is not between electrics, it's between electrics and ICE cars, with an ICE car you put energy in the tank and everything you use that car for comes out of the tank. With my Tesla, I put energy in through the charge port, but only the kWh that goes through your motor is counted? what about the charge inefficiency? what about pre-conditioning the battery? Those are required to drive the car and are necessarily part of your consumption. And back to the apples to apples usage, my old gasoline car heated for free, and when I ran the AC the incremental energy use was the most efficient increment. So if I only use my car like I used my Mazda, driving + HVAC, my fine electric car starts to use quite a bit more than the EPA ratings of 288 Watt/mile. If this difference was 10% then well, okay, but here in Cincinnati I'm getting about 500 Watt-hour / mile. Input / mile driven. Includes heat and AC.

From my perspective, your example is just reinforcing my point.. the fact of the matter is that the MY has been proven to be super efficient at sub freezing temps. I recently watched a video of a ‘21 M3 demonstrating how much energy it consumed in temps close to 0 F, and it still proved to be much more efficient than you’re describing. That difference I attribute to how you are operating your car.

The energy consumption rate unit alone, Wh/mile, assumes that the energy being counted is while moving.. right?? Yet you’re wanting to count Wh that are consumed when stationary. This is extremely misleading in any comparison, period.

 

[rejedejo]

To believe you know how much energy your car uses is generous.

 

[silverstoned83]

To believe you know how much energy your car uses is generous.

You were saying?

 

[rejedejo]

Where are you getting your data from?

 

[silverstoned83]

Where are you getting your data from?

My Juicebox charger.