Which goes further for $43 - a Tesla or a Gas Car?

[airborne spoon]

Y'all are forgetting one variable... those of us that have free supercharging
So when I travel, (which I do an excessive amount of the time) all the charging I do is free. when i don't travel my utilities are free at home as part of my lease. but as always I am the outlier when it come to data points.

For the average person where i live gas is $4.10 for cheap crap, home power is $0.15/kWh if you remove the variable of the losses to charging and say you pull 76kWh and travel 200 miles it would cost $11.40. In a similar ICE car that gets 20 mpg it would cost $41 to go the same distance, even if you bump that ICE car up to 30 mpg it would still cost $27 in gas to go the same distance.

Now i have no idea how much it costs to use a supercharger, and I'm lead to believe it varies not only by state buy by utility provider to that SC station. But you never (almost) fill to 100% at a SC, in all my travels, (I have 21,000kWh from SC and 25,000kWh from AC) I usually add 40% which equates to about 30kWh or about 120 miles. So even if a SC cost .40/kWh that would still only be $12. For the ICE in my example of 20 mpg you're looking at $24.6 to go the same 120 miles. So again the ICE loses.

And yes I ignored the OP example of comparing a model S to a corolla because its an asinine comparison. a carolla is a freaking canoe and the S is a yacht you cant evenly compare them, and any attempt to do so is a fools argument and should be discarded with the trash.

 

[jerry505]

The key metric here is this:

The energy in one gallon of gas equals the energy in 33.7 KWH.

Therefore, an EV with a 100KWH battery has the same energy as about 3 gallons of gas.

A new Model S, Long Range, has a range of 405 miles.

There is no gas car weighing 4700-4800 pounds that will go 405 miles on 3 gallons, which would be 135 MPG. Even economy cars can't get half way to 135 MPG.

Internal combustion engine people don't believe in MPGe - MPG equivalent. They pass it off as a federal government trick.

They do believe in how much is a fill up and how far can you go. So, they like to look at the cost to fill up at a charging station, versus the cost to fill up at a gas station. When the cost is about the same, and the cars go about the same distance for the money, they lose interest in an EV.

Now, try to explain to them an EV goes at least 3 times as far on the same amount of energy as a gas car, and they zone out. This is frustrating to me after promoting the efficiency EV's for years.

 

[WhiteWi]

And Tesla charges 28 cents per kW at a Supercharger

Or less

 

[ucmndd]

When the cost is about the same, and the cars go about the same distance for the money, they lose interest in an EV.

Maybe you should figure out how to illustrate the differences in better terms? As we already covered, the figures you’re using to arrive at your “cost is about the same” conclusion are completely misleading and inaccurate.

 

[Gadget-X]

+1 on free supercharging !!

M

 

[bob_p]

Except for road trips - we charge our S and X at home.

Since we're under a Free Nights electricity plan (with solar panels and PowerWalls) and do EV charging only at night - our fuel cost (except for road trips) is $0!

 

[WhiteWi]

Spend 72 dollars to travel 1700 + miles round trip. Seems pretty good to me.

 

[snorp]

This is my attempt at trying to compare the two in simpler terms. I'll set aside the fact that my home charging is .01/kWh 11p-7a and that I have FUSC. Let's compare filling up at a gas station with charging at a supercharger.

Superchargers are .25/kWh around me, so $43 = 172kWh. Looking at TeslaFi, I historically get around 400 highway miles out of 172kWh. That's based on my driving and I'm not trying to extrapolate that out to every Tesla driver. Just my personal experience.

Premium gas around me is $3.60/gal. So I could purchase 12 gallons for $43. If I owned an equally sized SUV, it would need to get 33 mpg to achieve the same 400 miles that I could travel with $43 worth of supercharging.

This is the absolute worst case scenario using me and my vehicle as a sample of one. Including home and destination charging in the calculations easily raises the mpg needed to achieve the same amount of miles by an order of magnitude or more.

 

[WhiteWi]

Spent*

 

[bob_p]

Regular gas prices here are around $2.50/gallon. Assuming 25 MPG - 200 miles would use 8 gallons or $20.

Current fixed rate plans in our area are available for $.10/KWh. Assuming 330 W per mile - a 200 mile trip would use 66 KWh or $6.60 (though because we get free electricity overnight - our cost would be $0).

I did a gas vs. electric evaluation before purchasing our first Tesla (S P85 in Jan 2013) - and even when paying for electricity, there was a net lifetime savings for fuel - and based on current prices in our area - that remains true.

Of course, using public chargers (Blink, Chargepoint, ...) or paying for Tesla Superchargers introduces some additional cost. Based on the above assumptions, EV fueling would be more expensive if the cost was more than $.30/KWh.

We were in LA last week - and saw gas prices around $5/gallon - which would increase the 200 mile trip cost to $40.

At those prices, as long as EV charging cost less than $.60/KWh, EV charging would be less expensive.

 

[Jack_178]

Think of it more like: having a gas pump in your garage that always sells at a 75% discount to pump prices. Hard to see why anyone would use Electrify as a routine means of charging a Tesla?

 

[WhiteWi]

OP is trolling

 

[Eclectic]

We used to have Teslas (a 2013 P85, which we sold back to Tesla when the P85D was introduced, and then the 2014 P85D for four years) and never could get anywhere near the rated range on either. I think the range estimates were somewhere around 245 miles for the P85D and in real world driving we could get maybe 200 miles under ideal circumstances.

We were also told that using superchargers would harm the long term health of the battery, so we tended to avoid using the "free for life" supercharging unless we were on road trips. No idea what the harm actually was to the battery from using the supercharger or the cost that should be imputed to that harm.

After tiring of the Tesla experience, but liking the idea of at least partial EV capability, we traded the P85D for a PHEV (BMW 530e), and now we are back to an ICE (Audi A6 Allroad, which has a very mild hybrid system). We also moved from California to Montana and now drive back and forth between the two states on a monthly basis to visit family.

We just got to California and the Allroad averaged 32.8 mpg for the 1000 mile trip, with an average mph in excess of 70 mph (yes, that is significantly higher than the EPA estimates, but it's something the Audi is known for). We filled up once as we switched driving over the course of a day and arrived in CA with several hundred miles of range remaining. Total fuel cost for the trip was just under $100 and we spent a total of 10 minutes refueling (and a few bathroom/food breaks that didn't take much more than 5 minutes each). Plus, that Audi is really comfortable, quiet and a great high speed cruiser, and it carries a ton of stuff.

I don't know what the real world range of a Model S is these days, but a recent Car and Driver test had a Model S going 320 miles on a full charge at 75 mph. That test stated the Tesla's battery capacity at a bit over 100 kWh, so assuming that it would take 100 kWh to recharge at .25/kWh, the electricity cost for the same trip we took would be about $80, but it would also mean that we would have had to spend several hours recharging on the trip, when we only spend about 10 minutes total to refuel (and I'll even throw in another 10 minutes for bathroom breaks).

So for us, the EV option is not worth the higher cost of buying an EV and the time costs of using it on a road trip, given that the fuel costs are roughly the same.

 

[ATPMSD]

If you only supercharge and if you have a car with a very high MPG you are correct. On the other hand, if you charge an MS at home before you leave the cost of that 320 mile trip would have been about $10.

 

[Eclectic]

That certainly wasn't the case when we lived in CA and charged at home. We lived in a hot area and had a pool, so whatever plan we used the extra consumption of electricity by the car from charging at home always bumped us up into higher rate categories and high bills, even though we ran everything we could at the lower rate overnight rates. We were paying something like $.25/kWh, so the 320 mile trip (again, assuming the 100 kWh battery capacity) would have cost $25, not $10. In the Audi, that trip would have cost maybe $1-2 more in gas, and that's without considering the cost of a NEMA 14-50 installation or the premium to buy an EV in the first place. And for the next 700 miles of the trip, you'd be sitting a long time charging for the next 320 miles of range.

But if you want to push for lowest cost cases, compare charging at home costs to the cost of a diesel using recovered cooking oil or diesel oil that you produce from your own crops.

 

[WhiteWi]

Lol and for Audi you didn’t pay premium for right?

 

[ZilWin]

If you only supercharge and if you have a car with a very high MPG you are correct. On the other hand, if you charge an MS at home before you leave the cost of that 320 mile trip would have been about $10.

I took a 750 mi, road trip in my new M3 LR AWD in July. Supercharge was less that $35 for the whole trip. I did use a destination charger at the hotel so that was non paid (included in the room charge) charging. Probably 50% of the pack. So for fairness, call it $40 for the trip.
I could compare it to my Kia Stinger V6 turbo which surprisingly got 28 mpg highway, or my old 2009 Accord which got about the same mpg at 28 hwy.
So the same 750 mile trip with either of the ICE vehicles would cost ~ $100 at $3.75 /gallon.

 

[Eclectic]

About the same cost as a model Y with way more comfort and features.

 

[ucmndd]

About the same cost as a model Y with way more comfort and features.

… cool story?

 

[ucmndd]

We were paying something like $.25/kWh, so the 320 mile trip (again, assuming the 100 kWh battery capacity) would have cost $25, not $10. In the Audi, that trip would have cost maybe $1-2 more in gas

Lol, thanks for bumping this math-is-hard thread just to grace us with more bad math.

320 miles at your claimed 32.8mpg and an average CA gas cost of $4.40/gal right now is not “$1-2 more” than $25. It’s ~75% more.