I think driving a car to SF is still better than dealing with the weirdos on public transportation.
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Supercharging now more expensive than ICE
- Thread starter Chomlee
- Start date
I don't know... I go to the bay area a lot for work... One time, I tried to be good when my boss complained, and I took the train into SF... It was a pain in the ass. And because of the meetings my boss kept having me go to last minute, the money I paid in taxis/ubers/etc made it so it was cheaper to just rent a car. Boss never gave me a hard time ever since I pointed that out. Granted parking was expensive in downtown SF, but that is true of every city I go to.
Las Vegas isn't bad if you stay away from Las Vegas blvd. There are multiple ways to cross the strip without using Las Vegas Blvd.
mspohr
Well-Known Member
We have parked at one of the East Bay BART stations and taken it into the city. Uber, etc. From there.
CyberGus
Not Just a Member
Gas stations by the freeway exits tend to charge much more than finding your way into town to get a cheaper Costco or Walmart fill up.
While sometimes the charging costs of an EV get close to the costs of using gasoline, that fails to take into consideration the considerable air pollution that your gasser produces going down the highway. There is a reason that most all gassers put their tailpipes out the back instead of out of the front where the engine is. People do not want to breath their own fumes
Most EV owners fill up at home, and during the off peak hours. This protects the grid and allows utilities to even out their consumption.
The true economic and ecological winners are those that can connect to their solar powered homes and essentially "Run on Sunshine".
While sometimes the charging costs of an EV get close to the costs of using gasoline, that fails to take into consideration the considerable air pollution that your gasser produces going down the highway. There is a reason that most all gassers put their tailpipes out the back instead of out of the front where the engine is. People do not want to breath their own fumes
Most EV owners fill up at home, and during the off peak hours. This protects the grid and allows utilities to even out their consumption.
The true economic and ecological winners are those that can connect to their solar powered homes and essentially "Run on Sunshine".
It seems Tesla lowered the SC prices this week. At least in the PacNW. I drove up the 5 last week and it was 44 cents kwh all day, but this week the same superchargers are almost 10 cents cheaper, now 35 cents. The off peak rate at some used to be 24 cents now it's back to 17 cents. They even opened a new 16 stalls v3 that looks to be 30 cents all day, which undercuts EA Pass+ by a penny.
mmyers300
Member
I actually cancelled a big road trip I was going to take this winter because of the crazy price hikes!
I just did a video rant/discussion on how much the supercharging rates have gone up - I'm not happy.
Using A better route planner, I discovered that my trip from Chicago to Phoenix was going to be ~$250 ONE WAY, $500 ROUND TRIP! This is nuts!
Round trip flights were $120 and only take 4 hours (instead of 30 hours driving)!
Doing a comparison with fueleconomy.gov, driving at 65 mph would cost about $460 round trip and compares to cars getting ~25 mpg. 25 MPG!!!
This is like driving an SUV - maybe worse!
A couple years ago my trip to SD would cost me over 3x as much today - it was $112 and would now be $374.
At $112 the trip compares to driving a car getting about 60 mpg, which is fine.
I really enjoy road trips using Autopilot, but man, this is too much. It literally ruined my winter plans...
I just did a video rant/discussion on how much the supercharging rates have gone up - I'm not happy.
Using A better route planner, I discovered that my trip from Chicago to Phoenix was going to be ~$250 ONE WAY, $500 ROUND TRIP! This is nuts!
Round trip flights were $120 and only take 4 hours (instead of 30 hours driving)!
Doing a comparison with fueleconomy.gov, driving at 65 mph would cost about $460 round trip and compares to cars getting ~25 mpg. 25 MPG!!!
This is like driving an SUV - maybe worse!
A couple years ago my trip to SD would cost me over 3x as much today - it was $112 and would now be $374.
At $112 the trip compares to driving a car getting about 60 mpg, which is fine.
I really enjoy road trips using Autopilot, but man, this is too much. It literally ruined my winter plans...
The comparison tool on fueleconomy.gov is garbage. I just entered in the trip I just did to san diego. It just takes the raw miles, and divides by the EPA combined fuel economy for the car. That may work for flat terrain, but that doesn't even come close when you are crossing multiple mountain ranges.. It also looks to be using the national average for fuel prices, which is laughable... For the trip, it looks like it's using $4.35 gallon for regular. That is funny, because gas along I-5 in northern california is still just under $6.00 gallon for regular.
And for the record, Tesla actually significantly dropped prices for superchargers, at least in the PacNW... Places that used to be 45 cents are now 34 cents. Some new stations came online, and are only 30 cents. Off peak at places that used to be 27 cents are now 17 cents, etc.
RTPEV
Active Member
I'm not sure the price estimation on ABRP is much better. They don't have access to live pricing data, so rely on general estimates and perhaps a bit of crowd-sourced data, so their data is probably going to be stale and inaccurate.
I do get that higher prices stink. I'm not so sure the hyperbole of trips being "ruined" holds up though (although I guess an annoyance doesn't get as many clicks).
I just did a 2100 mile trip at Thanksgiving, and the Supercharging cost was $158.16. A similar (but shorter by about 300 miles) trip last summer cost $90.60, so for sure costs have increased (cold weather probably played a role as well). Significantly even. But of all the costs incurred while travelling, did that extra $70 "ruin" my trip? Hardly! I spent far more than that on food & drinks just on the road, not to mention eating out and hotel rooms at various destinations. If I wanted to complain about something it would be the crappy Microtel which is the only hotel in my small hometown and charges an exorbitant $130 + tax per night for a $#!++y single bed room.
Considering the potential ability to get free or cheap charging at the destination (which is an advantage over gas cars), and if you have multiple passengers, suddenly those airfares don't look so hot (plus you'd probably have to rent a car at the far end anyway).
I'm not saying we shouldn't be upset about increasing Supercharging costs, but let's be a bit real here as well.
Let's break it down even further... a "comparable" vehicle with 450hp gets about 24 mpg highway (BMW M2, for example). 2100 miles divided by 24 = 87.5 gallons of fuel. 87.5 gallons at $3 a gallon is $262.50. You still saved over $100. I spend a stupid amount of money on snacks / drinks during road trips also, but it's certainly still cheaper than flying and renting a car!
Let's break it down even more:
Look at how much time and $ you save every day with your Tesla. Sure, those road trips cost more than we'd like but what doesn't?
You must not have really wanted to take that trip (visiting the inlaws?) if that was enough to deter you. Unless you don't drive locally at all, you're way ahead for the year financially compared to driving an ICE. I would think you could splurge and take a road trip if you wanted.
Midnightsun
Active Member
No doubt about it, electricity prices vary tremendously from country to country and region to region. Seems like every Costco gas station has a lineup just to save a few pennies/gallon.
Personally we charge at home with dual wall connectors, in fact rarely have I used a SC, maybe 4 times with the Y which were free as part of the purchase and not yet with the S after 1 year except to try out a CCS adapter for a few minutes. Cost to fill up the Y at home assuming I can fill from 0 to 100% which will never happen, is around $2.75 US. SC pricing is way, way over that. Huge difference!
We average around 20,000km/year with about 37 on the Y and 20 on the S. We do travel to our marina every weekend during the summer which requires a charge due to the distance (200km) and local errand milage however luckily, at least for now, the city where the marina is located offers free FLO charging so we usually top her off (90%) upon arrival.
Free charging at the office is nice also.
We were planning on going to our condo this winter for a few months and had already decided to take the Honda Ridgeline for practicality purposes plus we wanted to bring the cats and tow the PWC down with us and not having to worry about charging since we have nothing at the condo to charge from however Ian decided to take out out Fort Myers Beach condo so those plans are gone until about a year from now.
Personally we charge at home with dual wall connectors, in fact rarely have I used a SC, maybe 4 times with the Y which were free as part of the purchase and not yet with the S after 1 year except to try out a CCS adapter for a few minutes. Cost to fill up the Y at home assuming I can fill from 0 to 100% which will never happen, is around $2.75 US. SC pricing is way, way over that. Huge difference!
We average around 20,000km/year with about 37 on the Y and 20 on the S. We do travel to our marina every weekend during the summer which requires a charge due to the distance (200km) and local errand milage however luckily, at least for now, the city where the marina is located offers free FLO charging so we usually top her off (90%) upon arrival.
Free charging at the office is nice also.
We were planning on going to our condo this winter for a few months and had already decided to take the Honda Ridgeline for practicality purposes plus we wanted to bring the cats and tow the PWC down with us and not having to worry about charging since we have nothing at the condo to charge from however Ian decided to take out out Fort Myers Beach condo so those plans are gone until about a year from now.
My main gripe wasn't so much the energy/fuel price, but the rudimentary way where fueleconomy.gov just took miles and divided by EPA range. At least ABRP takes into account terrain/elevation/etc, as it's been pretty spot on with energy consumption at least.
There are still used Teslas with "free supercharging for life" on onlyusedtesla.com starting at $30k... which I find absolutely shocking. Yeah, you'll have repair costs on a high mileage vehicle but you'll never find another vehicle that has free fuel for life! (Unless you want to buy the "Lightyear 0" car for $284k that solar-charges itself.)
And there is always Priuses, 50 mpg gets your fuel cost down to $130.
Midnightsun
Active Member
mmyers300
Member
I actually just used this basic calculator to determine what mpg the overall trip cost would correspond to - Fuel Cost Calculator
Just entered the trip distance and national average fuel price at the time I was looking at this - $3.50/gal to get the corresponding MPG.
Comparing supercharging costs per kWh in ABRP vs Tesla navigation, it looks like the ABRP costs are 10-20% higher. I mistakenly assumed that this was readily available real-time data to ABRP and would be accurate...
mmyers300
Member
Thanks, you are correct about the pricing data: Comparing supercharging costs per kWh in ABRP vs Tesla navigation, it looks like the ABRP costs are 10-20% higher. I mistakenly assumed that this was readily available real-time data to ABRP and would be accurate...
I was going solo to visit my mom and possibly make some other stops and I expected it to cost ~$250 round trip. I wanted to take a cheap-as-possible road trip, so it was all about my initial expectations.
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