Traveling by Supercharger can be more expensive than ICE

[dmurphy]

I've been driving my Model 3 for 2.5 years now and have NEVER needed to charge anywhere but at home. Supercharger costs would/should only be a concern if you take a lot of long trips. I'd 90+% of EV drivers operate within the round trip range of their cars nearly all the time. If they don't they probably should have thought about their choice harder.

I agree with the first part, but not the second. Long drives can be absolutely manageable with a Model 3. Not quite as cost effective but definitely manageable.

I’m sitting on 7000 miles of free supercharging that are good through mid 2023. They’ll almost certainly expire long before I use them....

 

[natman316]

BMW 3 series is £10,000 cheaper than an entry model 3? So i am not sure how that works. That is at least 80k in fuel.

wow interesting, here the BMW is 6k more base price before options. But they offer crazy discounts so out the door may be close

That's a very valid concern. Or observation. And that brings me to the crap savings claim Tesla makes on their website when showing the 'price with gas savings'. I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't any for people who use the car to travel at least some. And if you travel a lot, having to use superchargers, it might be the opposite. Ha ha. I don't keep tabs of 'mileage' on any vehicle, and I honestly don't expect the EPA ratings to be right, but some folks like to do keep tabs of every trip, compare, and complain. Ha ha. And those are typically the ones who keep things in check, so I have zero problem with them .

Yup. I was under the impression that electric is always cheaper, which turns out is not the case depending on where you live and how you use the car. Its a good observation, especially for new EV users. In CA where I am electric is still cheaper...probably. Gas is nearly 4/ gallon

 

[SageBrush]

electric is always cheaper

'always' is a high bar, best reserved for death and taxes

Average grid kWh prices in the USA are ~ 12 cents, so ~ 3 cents a mile. It would be an unusual petrol car that could be anywhere near as cheap. Not everyone is average.

This melodrama has a second and third life because ~ 1/2 of EVs sold these days in the USA are in CA which tends to have expensive electricity. But then again, CA tends to have a good solar resource so a large fraction (but not all) CA EV owners are able to mix EV + PV, which is a match made in heaven.

 

[SSonnentag]

It’d be a political mistake to combine the two, as you argue, people would be upset if gas taxes benefitted EV owners.

Just raise gas taxes and use the revenue to fund improving roads and bridges. And raise some EV tax to build out charging infrastructure on all the highways. No one is against improving roads and bridges. And EV owners shouldn’t be against building out EV charging infrastructure.

I’m 100% against government-run charging infrastructure. The chargers would not fare any better than the roads and bridges do now. Private industry is the only way to maintain things in good working order. EA doesn’t count as they are not vested in their forced infrastructure.

 

[Nickage87]

'always' is a high bar, best reserved for death and taxes

Average grid kWh prices in the USA are ~ 12 cents, so ~ 3 cents a mile. It would be an unusual petrol car that could be anywhere near as cheap. Not everyone is average.

This melodrama has a second and third life because ~ 1/2 of EVs sold these days in the USA are in CA which tends to have expensive electricity. But then again, CA tends to have a good solar resource so a large fraction (but not all) CA EV owners are able to mix EV + PV, which is a match made in heaven.

Your math is wrong. You base your calculation on theoretical numbers provided by marketing people. EV consume energy while parked, to heat battery. Battery charging is 80-90% efficient. Real model 3 consumption translated to gas units is about 50mpg. Many ICE cars can do it now, and in the upcoming years will do closer to 70mpg with PHEV, while pure EV reached the maximum efficiency. It looks like PHEV is the future, not EV.

 

[one2many]

OK math is an issue. I can say I do not like math. When I do taxes,
math is not on my side. When I go to the store, math is not on my side.
When I buy a Jack and coke for $15 at a upscale club. It really makes no difference
at this point. ICE is on its way out, well I still use it in my black Russians , sorry.
What is the question?

 

[drtimhill]

Your math is wrong. You base your calculation on theoretical numbers provided by marketing people. EV consume energy while parked, to heat battery. Battery charging is 80-90% efficient. Real model 3 consumption translated to gas units is about 50mpg. Many ICE cars can do it now, and in the upcoming years will do closer to 70mpg with PHEV, while pure EV reached the maximum efficiency. It looks like PHEV is the future, not EV.

Yawn. Clearly you have you marketing people too. EVs heat the battery when parked? Nonsense. All modern cars (ICE and EV) use power when parked, for ancillary systems, car alarms, door opening etc etc. Battery charing efficiency of 80%? How much allowance did you make in your 70 mpg gas car for all the energy lost in extracting the oil, refining it, and transporting it to the car pump? And how much of that gasoline energy does the car convert to motive power?

There have been many genuine unbiased studies comparing true energy costs of EVs vs ICE, and they dont support your assertions. Far from it. And let's not forget the emissions/environmental aspects either, shall we?

 

[CertLive]

Your math is wrong. You base your calculation on theoretical numbers provided by marketing people. EV consume energy while parked, to heat battery. Battery charging is 80-90% efficient. Real model 3 consumption translated to gas units is about 50mpg. Many ICE cars can do it now, and in the upcoming years will do closer to 70mpg with PHEV, while pure EV reached the maximum efficiency. It looks like PHEV is the future, not EV.

Also the MPG fluctuates quite a bit from summer to winter.

Yawn. Clearly you have you marketing people too. EVs heat the battery when parked? Nonsense. All modern cars (ICE and EV) use power when parked, for ancillary systems, car alarms, door opening etc etc. Battery charing efficiency of 80%? How much allowance did you make in your 70 mpg gas car for all the energy lost in extracting the oil, refining it, and transporting it to the car pump? And how much of that gasoline energy does the car convert to motive power?

There have been many genuine unbiased studies comparing true energy costs of EVs vs ICE, and they dont support your assertions. Far from it. And let's not forget the emissions/environmental aspects either, shall we?

What about if the car company is making its investments in bitcoin? You need to add the CO2 footprint of this into the mix as it is quite a chunk. Quite some bolt on that would be until it is Co2 neautral.

But if electricity in your area is more than petrol then yes there is an issue to be addressed if it can be or that £10,000+ extra for it being an EV is looking a very expensive preposition indeed but granted the cars are fun. Its amazing all this debating we do on here about the efficency of EV's vs ICE but at the end of the day if the governments really wanted to save the eco systems of this planet by 2030 then EV's would be fully loaned or subsidised. So far uptake and base model price are not helping humanity in any shape or form. The governments should be paying Tesla to expand and should be requesting fleets of replacement cars instead of the trillions that will be spent shoring up the world from the climate changes racing towards us at the great loss to our eco system and species.

 

[SageBrush]

EVs heat the battery when parked? Nonsense

It can happen, but it is a rare event. For a nation-wide fleet, it is a rounding error.

I live in a 4 season climate and neither our Tesla or our small battery LEAF has yet to heat the battery while parked. I know, because neither has dropped below 20F, but the threshold for heating is quite a bit lower.

 

[Nickage87]

Yawn. Clearly you have you marketing people too. EVs heat the battery when parked? Nonsense. All modern cars (ICE and EV) use power when parked, for ancillary systems, car alarms, door opening etc etc. Battery charing efficiency of 80%? How much allowance did you make in your 70 mpg gas car for all the energy lost in extracting the oil, refining it, and transporting it to the car pump? And how much of that gasoline energy does the car convert to motive power?

There have been many genuine unbiased studies comparing true energy costs of EVs vs ICE, and they dont support your assertions. Far from it. And let's not forget the emissions/environmental aspects either, shall we?

My energy cost is what I pay at the gas station. This is finilized cumulative price for all work and logistics that has been done.
EV production is worse for emissions. There is no way to recycle the batteries, and child labor is used for digging rare materials for batteries.

 

[dmurphy]

My energy cost is what I pay at the gas station. This is finilized cumulative price for all work and logistics that has been done.
EV production is worse for emissions. There is no way to recycle the batteries, and child labor is used for digging rare materials for batteries.

I don’t know if I’ve ever read a post at TMC with more inaccuracies than this one.

Your use of possessive forms was spot on, though.

 

[diamond.g]

My energy cost is what I pay at the gas station. This is finilized cumulative price for all work and logistics that has been done.
EV production is worse for emissions. There is no way to recycle the batteries, and child labor is used for digging rare materials for batteries.

This seems overly pessimistic on the EV side and overly generous on the fossil fuel side.

 

[bobby g]

I thought Tesla said they wouldn’t make the superchargers a profit center? After paying $14.56 for driving 140 miles from home charger to Supercharger and topping off, I realized it would have been cheaper to drive my pickup. At the current cost of fuel which is $2.25 per gallon here this equates to an ICE getting 21.5mpg. Not too impressive. A regular car comparable to a Model 3 would easily get 30mpg, probably more like 35-40mpg.

Are the supercharger rates here in Montana just excessively high, or is that the normal across the nation.
Makes me really miss free supercharging....

And as for me, it wasn't just about the cost of fuel

 

[mk677]

Yawn. Clearly you have you marketing people too. EVs heat the battery when parked? Nonsense. All modern cars (ICE and EV) use power when parked, for ancillary systems, car alarms, door opening etc etc. Battery charing efficiency of 80%? How much allowance did you make in your 70 mpg gas car for all the energy lost in extracting the oil, refining it, and transporting it to the car pump? And how much of that gasoline energy does the car convert to motive power?

There have been many genuine unbiased studies comparing true energy costs of EVs vs ICE, and they dont support your assertions. Far from it. And let's not forget the emissions/environmental aspects either, shall we?

one point that you are wrong on is that the tesla will use the battery to protect the battery [heat] in cold temps. I learned that the hard way while on a trip, I parked the car at my hotel with 42 miles on it, the supercharger was 24 miles away, I woke to the car reporting only 18 miles of range. I limped at 5am on the interstate at 40 mph. this was the message about 1/2 mile from the supercharger.

 

[SageBrush]

I learned that the hard way

You are confusing temperature effects with heating.

 

[sduck]

nickage87 is a troll. please don't feed...

 

[drtimhill]

one point that you are wrong on is that the tesla will use the battery to protect the battery [heat] in cold temps. I learned that the hard way while on a trip, I parked the car at my hotel with 42 miles on it, the supercharger was 24 miles away, I woke to the car reporting only 18 miles of range. I limped at 5am on the interstate at 40 mph. this was the message about 1/2 mile from the supercharger.

Yes, I was aware of that subtlety, but I was simplifying since the post to which I was responding was grossly simplifying with unqualified statements to bias against EVs.

 

[drtimhill]

My energy cost is what I pay at the gas station. This is finilized cumulative price for all work and logistics that has been done.
EV production is worse for emissions. There is no way to recycle the batteries, and child labor is used for digging rare materials for batteries.

Randomized nonsense, you are muddling all the arguments together, and throwing in random junk as well.

-- The energy cost at recharge point (outlet or gas station) is lower for EVs than ICE per mile driven pretty much anywhere in the US. Never mind arguing about hypothetical cars with 70mpg that dont exist. In some areas, such as the PNW, it's EVs are vastly cheaper. In the summer my Tesla gets 125mpge, in winter it goes down but is still approx 90mpge. It's somewhat less elsewhere but still much better than 20-30mpg you see from most ICE cars.

-- Both EV and ICE production has significant carbon footprint. There are several bogus studies out there (ICE sponsored), but the accurate ones show that you "win" on carbon with an EV in about 3 years (compared to ICE). The longer times computed in the biased article omits the carbon footprint of gasoline production/distribution, which makes it invalid.

-- Who says "there is no way to recycle batteries"? Based on what? It may, at the moment, be economically disadvantageous to do so, but that's purely accounting, not feasibility.

-- Child labor digging for raw materials? So what are you going to do with your cell phone, or laptop computer then? Clearly child labor is an evil, but that's hardly an argument specific to EVs. And are you so sure ICE production is free of such issues?

 

[SageBrush]

In the summer my Tesla gets 125mpge, in winter it goes down but is still approx 90mpge.

I have no idea why you are engaging the troll, but fwiw MPGe is not a surrogate for carbon emissions. it cannot be used in that manner.

Why not ?

• No attempt is made to quantify the lifecycle carbon emissions of the energy used

If you are comparing ICE to ICE then the carbon emissions related to the production of the energy used may be unknown but it does matter since they are presumed equal. No such assumption is reasonable when an ICE is compared to an EV

 

[AmokTime]

Your math is wrong. You base your calculation on theoretical numbers provided by marketing people. EV consume energy while parked, to heat battery. Battery charging is 80-90% efficient. Real model 3 consumption translated to gas units is about 50mpg. Many ICE cars can do it now, and in the upcoming years will do closer to 70mpg with PHEV, while pure EV reached the maximum efficiency. It looks like PHEV is the future, not EV.

Not sure where you got your efficiency numbers, but they’re wrong. They are substantially wrong for 240V L2 charging. Also, Model 3 doesn’t heat the battery when parked. At $2.50/gallon for gasoline, your PHEV would have to do close to 100 mpg to be equivalent to the Model 3, using the SR+ for comparison purposes. At the current east coast prices of $2.79/gallon it would need closer to 110 mpg. Also, consider that Tesla is continually improving their tech. By the time PHEVs reach 70 mpg (which they probably won’t), Tesla will have even more efficient battery chemistry - you’ve overlooked the fact that battery and EV tech is improving much faster than ICE tech. ICE engines will not make substantial strides in efficiency until they figure out how to burn petroleum products without making heat or how to efficiently capture the heat and turn it into useful power.

Remember that the true environmental magic of EVs is in shifting emissions upstream to the generation facilities. That allows improvements in generation technology to benefit all EV drivers immediately - no need to retrofit every EV car on the road. When improvements are made to ICE or PHEV engine tech, it usually cannot be retrofitted - we have to wait for older tech to be diluted out by new car purchases and junking of older cars. With cars lasting 200K or more miles these days, that is taking longer and longer. Just think about how much better EVs become every day as coal-fired power plants are shuttered and replaced with natural gas or renewable power, like hydro, wind, and solar.