Four months of driving an EV some observations

[justoffal]

I wonder what coal fire power plant is operating that enables you to charge your car?

I've been wondering that myself it's hard to get information here in Massachusetts they hide it from you. As far as I know there are no longer any coal fired plants running in our state however we do have numerous gas turban power plants contributing to our power grid. Without those we would just be in darkness. The electric bills went up by 300% in Massachusetts over the past 5 years as one coal fired plant after another was shuttered.

 

[Concerned American]

subsidized by the federal government

and Tesla

 

[justoffal]

and Tesla

Gas Turbine no Gas Turban... I have no idea what a gas turban would look like.....

 

[krichton]

1.) It's not cheaper than gas.

It is for me because I have free charging at the dealership that's 2 miles down the street and free charging at work. Very few people are going to have those options. The commercial charging stations are all right around $0.30 a minute. Now EV batteries have what you call a cumulative resistance to charging which means the higher the charge the slower the charging takes place. So if you drive into the charging station at roughly 5% your first 40 or 50% will happen very quickly. After that it slows down. By the time you hit 90% you're spending up to 5 minutes for 1% of charge.
I've learned to do different things while I'm waiting at the charger since you really can't walk away from your car trusting that somebody else won't unplug it. ( Something I never thought of until it happened to me). I'm currently working on my next degree in mechanical engineering and I find that down time an excellent opportunity to catch up on course work. But it is very time consuming and you do have to plan differently than if you were just going to the gas station for a quick fill up. With the current pricing at the commercial charging station even with the high price of gas right now it's pretty much a wash. And you're definitely better off with a little four cylinder turbo diesel that gets 50 to 60 miles a gallon.

2.) Total cost of ownership is another way to look at an EV. I don't need oil changes, I don't need antifreeze, I don't need transmission fluid, I don't need to be bothered with emissions testing or all the very expensive fixes that follow failures. I do still need tires now and then but I'm still working on my first pair of course.... And the automobile will need brake maintenance and drivetrain maintenance although it does not have a transmission.

3.) I don't miss the smell of spent exhaust. I can sit in the William's tunnel during a traffic jam and use absolutely no energy while sitting. It's very quiet.... So was my Maxima but this is even more quiet than the Maxima. The automobile itself has plenty of horsepower though I'm not sure exactly what it is it's very responsive to the accelerator.

4.) Heat in the winter is a problem... it probably decreases the car's range by up to 15% which is considerable.

5.) Having said that I expect that air conditioning will also do the same thing.

6.) Most information available right now indicates that EV's actually have a larger carbon footprint than the gas powered alternatives. Not sure where all of this is going but it looks like everyone's bought into the circle jerk so we're heading into EV land like it or not. Carbon footprint be damned!

Just a side note here I hope everyone realizes that there's only one way to make steel and that's with Coal. The simply is no other way to do it. So the more electric vehicles we need the more coal burning we will have to do to create the steel unless we begin to build them out of something else.

Jo

There are free supercharging sites in a lot of cities, although how convenient they are to where you live is another story, but they exist. If you commute 25-40 miles a day then your electricity is basically free since you'll only need to stop at these places maybe twice a week. In some states charging your car at home can be as little as 8 cents per kwh. There is no such option to get free gas anywhere, or pay so little for it. Score one for evs.

I'm not aware of a single non hybrid car that can do 50-60 mpg. Most ice cars do around 30-35mpg.

How do ev cars have a large carbon footprint than gas powered ones? I'd like to know the answer to this one.

Are ice cars not made of steel as well? What difference does it make?

 

[Captain Caveman]

1.) It's not cheaper than gas.

It is for me because I have free charging at the dealership that's 2 miles down the street and free charging at work. Very few people are going to have those options. The commercial charging stations are all right around $0.30 a minute. Now EV batteries have what you call a cumulative resistance to charging which means the higher the charge the slower the charging takes place. So if you drive into the charging station at roughly 5% your first 40 or 50% will happen very quickly. After that it slows down. By the time you hit 90% you're spending up to 5 minutes for 1% of charge.
I've learned to do different things while I'm waiting at the charger since you really can't walk away from your car trusting that somebody else won't unplug it. ( Something I never thought of until it happened to me). I'm currently working on my next degree in mechanical engineering and I find that down time an excellent opportunity to catch up on course work. But it is very time consuming and you do have to plan differently than if you were just going to the gas station for a quick fill up. With the current pricing at the commercial charging station even with the high price of gas right now it's pretty much a wash. And you're definitely better off with a little four cylinder turbo diesel that gets 50 to 60 miles a gallon.

2.) Total cost of ownership is another way to look at an EV. I don't need oil changes, I don't need antifreeze, I don't need transmission fluid, I don't need to be bothered with emissions testing or all the very expensive fixes that follow failures. I do still need tires now and then but I'm still working on my first pair of course.... And the automobile will need brake maintenance and drivetrain maintenance although it does not have a transmission.

3.) I don't miss the smell of spent exhaust. I can sit in the William's tunnel during a traffic jam and use absolutely no energy while sitting. It's very quiet.... So was my Maxima but this is even more quiet than the Maxima. The automobile itself has plenty of horsepower though I'm not sure exactly what it is it's very responsive to the accelerator.

4.) Heat in the winter is a problem... it probably decreases the car's range by up to 15% which is considerable.

5.) Having said that I expect that air conditioning will also do the same thing.

6.) Most information available right now indicates that EV's actually have a larger carbon footprint than the gas powered alternatives. Not sure where all of this is going but it looks like everyone's bought into the circle jerk so we're heading into EV land like it or not. Carbon footprint be damned!

Just a side note here I hope everyone realizes that there's only one way to make steel and that's with Coal. The simply is no other way to do it. So the more electric vehicles we need the more coal burning we will have to do to create the steel unless we begin to build them out of something else.

Jo

There's one big comparative that many miss out when comparing the running costs of an EV to an ICE vehicle, and that's the initial difference in cost to buy the EV. It must be a like for like car as well because you will find the EV costs about a third more than it's ICE equivalent. So if you divide this extra cost by mileage saving an EV gives you, you only start saving after 170,000/200,000 miles.

I can buy a diesel van and the exact same one in electric, but the electric is some £34,000 more. If I divide that by what I can save charging the electric version than buying diesel, it's some 200,000 miles before I break even.

So if someone says it's cheaper to charge an EV and their maintenance costs are lower, then yes, I agree. But overall, if I don't do over 170,000/200,000 miles, the EV is more expensive. And all I hear is, "Yeah, but EV prices will tumble". Actually, they've been increasing.

And in the van example, the electric version can't tow!!

AN EV will reduce your ICE carbon footprint by 17% to 30%, and it will also reduce the weight of your wallet because you have to pay the more expensive EV price at the start, or put it on a loan and pay interest on top of the extra cost.

 

[justoffal]

There's one big comparative that many miss out when comparing the running costs of an EV to an ICE vehicle, and that's the initial difference in cost to buy the EV. It must be a like for like car as well because you will find the EV costs about a third more than it's ICE equivalent. So if you divide this extra cost by mileage saving an EV gives you, you only start saving after 170,000/200,000 miles.

I can buy a diesel van and the exact same one in electric, but the electric is some £34,000 more. If I divide that by what I can save charging the electric version than buying diesel, it's some 200,000 miles before I break even.

So if someone says it's cheaper to charge an EV and their maintenance costs are lower, then yes, I agree. But overall, if I don't do over 170,000/200,000 miles, the EV is more expensive. And all I hear is, "Yeah, but EV prices will tumble". Actually, they've been increasing.

And in the van example, the electric version can't tow!!

AN EV will reduce your ICE carbon footprint by 17% to 30%, and it will also reduce the weight of your wallet because you have to pay the more expensive EV price at the start, or put it on a loan and pay interest on top of the extra cost.

Exactly.... I don't know where you charge but in my area it's just as expensive to run an EV as it is to run a gas-powered vehicle... I was fortunate I picked up an EV that had a few thousand miles on it so I got 10 grand off the price.... I also have free charging at the dealership a few miles down the street and at work otherwise it would not work for me. I'm not even sure an EV reduces your carbon footprint to tell you the truth. Even if a person claimed all of their charging was done by solar and wind power you're still vested in the machinery that creates the electricity. For a single wind turbine alone the hundreds of tons of war that have to be excavated from the Earth for the neodymium require massive internal combustion machines to dig it out process it and move it.

 

[AZrailwhale]

I thought it was high as it was.....Total EV is a joke, hybrid made a lot more sense.....Some even recharged themselves and you topped them off on house current.

I have a fusion hybrid. It's a nice practical car that gets between thirty-eight and fifty-four mpg on the street depending on the weather. Mileage really falls off in hot weather. Range is essentially unlimited as long as there are gas stations, although I get around five hundred miles on a tank of gas. I don't even think about filling up until I get under a quarter which is still over a hundred miles, or half a tank's range on my old Escape.

 

[Cardinal Carminative]

1.) It's not cheaper than gas.

It is for me. I charge mine at home and have solar PV on the house which generates an excess month-over-month so I effectively drive for free.

Also maintenance is much, much less.

It is for me because I have free charging at the dealership that's 2 miles down the street and free charging at work. Very few people are going to have those options.

This is true. Probably not unlike the early days of gasoline powered cars and gas stations.

4.) Heat in the winter is a problem... it probably decreases the car's range by up to 15% which is considerable.

Yeah, you really start to become aware of all the systems pulling energy on your car.

Just a side note here I hope everyone realizes that there's only one way to make steel and that's with Coal.

Well, in that you require coke which comes from coal, yes. But the idea would be to eliminate as much of the coal economy as humanly possible. Same thing with oil. It is a source of a HUGE amount of the organic chemicals our economy relies on (including but not limited to plastics). We are never truly going to be free of these things but we will significantly reduce them.

 

[Cardinal Carminative]

Not to mention those working poor that liberals are always crying about, who drive twenty year old Honda's, will never be able to afford them. Even at that magical 15 bucks an hour.

You guys act as if EV's are somehow a quantum leap up in price. I bought a Chevy Bolt for about the exact same amount I would have paid for a new ICE engine Chevy of a similar size.

The secondary market is yet to be established, but indeed, it will at some point.

Again, this is like the rise of gasoline powered cars initially. At some point the "working poor" had to trade in their horses.

But the LEft is more likely to work toward ensuring that the market doesn't gouge the poor unlike the party that supports every excess of the wealthy imaginable.

 

[Captain Caveman]

Exactly.... I don't know where you charge but in my area it's just as expensive to run an EV as it is to run a gas-powered vehicle... I was fortunate I picked up an EV that had a few thousand miles on it so I got 10 grand off the price.... I also have free charging at the dealership a few miles down the street and at work otherwise it would not work for me. I'm not even sure an EV reduces your carbon footprint to tell you the truth. Even if a person claimed all of their charging was done by solar and wind power you're still vested in the machinery that creates the electricity. For a single wind turbine alone the hundreds of tons of war that have to be excavated from the Earth for the neodymium require massive internal combustion machines to dig it out process it and move it.

I don't have an EV, the current technology is not suitable at the moment. I need to tow and I can't charge at home. Parking is on the opposite side of a street. Charging points are wilfully poor in the UK. I fully retire in 12 years, new ICE vehicle sales are banned 2030, so 8 years to go. So in 6 to 7 years, I'll buy a new or newish ICE vehicle and that should be my last vehicle for me. As it stands, EV's are not as convenient as ICE vehicles, I don't want the hassle of taking a backward step.

If I do buy an EV, it would never a new one, I'm not prepared to waste that amount of money. If hydrogen came out, I would prefer that route, as I can fill up like a diesel vehicle and park etc.. where I want too without trying to get an extension lead into a socket.

 

[Captain Caveman]

It is for me. I charge mine at home and have solar PV on the house which generates an excess month-over-month so I effectively drive for free.

Well, in that you require coke which comes from coal, yes. But the idea would be to eliminate as much of the coal economy as humanly possible. Same thing with oil. It is a source of a HUGE amount of the organic chemicals our economy relies on (including but not limited to plastics). We are never truly going to be free of these things but we will significantly reduce them.

You would have to factor in the cost of a solar system when working out how much it costs to charge the car. So a much more expensive car, coupled with the price (or part price) of a solar system kinda masks the true cost of charging a car. That's why those costs wipe out hundreds of thousands of miles before you start to save.

So to process crude oil in a fractional distillation column, there are many products that you would use from this process. For example, 90% of the worlds sulphur comes from this process, it's used to vulcanise rubber to make tyres etc.. So my question is, after this fractional process, how will the unwanted products, such as gasoline, be disposed of?

 

[AZrailwhale]

You guys act as if EV's are somehow a quantum leap up in price. I bought a Chevy Bolt for about the exact same amount I would have paid for a new ICE engine Chevy of a similar size.

The secondary market is yet to be established, but indeed, it will at some point.

Again, this is like the rise of gasoline powered cars initially. At some point the "working poor" had to trade in their horses.

But the LEft is more likely to work toward ensuring that the market doesn't gouge the poor unlike the party that supports every excess of the wealthy imaginable.

Actually, before Henry Ford and mass production of the Model T, the working poor walked everywhere, they couldn't afford to stable and feed a horse. Plus, the government never eliminated the horse or offered subsidizes to car buyers to change form horses to cars.

 

[Cardinal Carminative]

You would have to factor in the cost of a solar system when working out how much it costs to charge the car. So a much more expensive car, coupled with the price (or part price) of a solar system kinda masks the true cost of charging a car. That's why those costs wipe out hundreds of thousands of miles before you start to save.

I put the PV system on for my home electric use, so I also benefit from not having paid an electric bill in a very long time.

So to process crude oil in a fractional distillation column, there are many products that you would use from this process. For example, 90% of the worlds sulphur comes from this process, it's used to vulcanise rubber to make tyres etc.. So my question is, after this fractional process, how will the unwanted products, such as gasoline, be disposed of?

I don't know. The key is not to burn it all which would not really solve the primary problems with this material. I don't know how far down the refining chain one has to go before getting out the necessary S content.

 

[Cardinal Carminative]

Actually, before Henry Ford and mass production of the Model T, the working poor walked everywhere, they couldn't afford to stable and feed a horse. Plus, the government never eliminated the horse or offered subsidizes to car buyers to change form horses to cars.

But the government still to this day subsidizes the oil companies.

 

[koshergrl]

Oil is better. The Gulf of Mexico is full of oil, it's why it's such an incredible, rich environment. The oil seeps up from the ground.
It's biodegradable, and the wells are infinitely better than the lithium mines.
And when it's used, it's used...you don't have to process it in vast ponds for millennia.

"The production of lithium through evaporation ponds uses a lot of water - around 21 million litres per day. Approximately 2.2 million litres of water is needed to produce one ton of lithium.

“The extraction of lithium has caused water-related conflicts with different communities, such as the community of Toconao in the north of Chile,” the FoE report specifies."

South America's 'lithium fields' reveal the dark side of electric cars

Demand for lithium-ion batteries is unprecedented - but is mining the chemical harmful to the environment?

www.euronews.com

 

[Cardinal Carminative]

Oil is better. The Gulf of Mexico is full of oil, it's why it's such an incredible, rich environment. The oil seeps up from the ground.
It's biodegradable, and the wells are infinitely better than the lithium mines.
And when it's used, it's used...you don't have to process it in vast ponds for millennia.

"The production of lithium through evaporation ponds uses a lot of water - around 21 million litres per day. Approximately 2.2 million litres of water is needed to produce one ton of lithium.

“The extraction of lithium has caused water-related conflicts with different communities, such as the community of Toconao in the north of Chile,” the FoE report specifies."

South America's 'lithium fields' reveal the dark side of electric cars

Demand for lithium-ion batteries is unprecedented - but is mining the chemical harmful to the environment?

www.euronews.com

If we don't develop EV's do you think Li will go unmined?

How about Rhodium mining for catalytic convertors? (EV's don't have those).

What about the ecological impact of oil extraction?

You mentioned the Gulf of Mexico. Did you factor in the effect of oil spills on local economies all along the Gulf Coast? Like the time BP had a major blow out that couldn't be repaired for a very long time cratering vast swaths of American economy there in the Gulf Coast and costing a HUGE sum of money to clean up?

 

[AZrailwhale]

But the government still to this day subsidizes the oil companies.

Except it doesn’t. They pay for leases and pay for the oil they extract and pay taxes on their profits.

 

[Cardinal Carminative]

Except it doesn’t.

Wrong.

Fact Sheet | Fossil Fuel Subsidies: A Closer Look at Tax Breaks and Societal Costs (2019) | White Papers | EESI

www.eesi.org

Why fossil fuel subsidies are so hard to kill

Behind the struggle to stop governments propping up the coal, oil and gas industries.

www.nature.com

Fossil Fuel Subsidies

Subsidies are intended to protect consumers by keeping prices low, but they come at a high cost. Subsidies have sizable fiscal costs (leading to higher taxes/borrowing or lower spending), promote inefficient allocation of an economy’s resources (hindering growth), encourage pollution...

www.imf.org

PRO TIP: When the world disagrees with you it is FAR MORE LIKELY you are wrong.

They pay for leases and pay for the oil they extract and pay taxes on their profits.

And they get huge subsidies.

 

[krichton]

There's one big comparative that many miss out when comparing the running costs of an EV to an ICE vehicle, and that's the initial difference in cost to buy the EV. It must be a like for like car as well because you will find the EV costs about a third more than it's ICE equivalent. So if you divide this extra cost by mileage saving an EV gives you, you only start saving after 170,000/200,000 miles.

I can buy a diesel van and the exact same one in electric, but the electric is some £34,000 more. If I divide that by what I can save charging the electric version than buying diesel, it's some 200,000 miles before I break even.

So if someone says it's cheaper to charge an EV and their maintenance costs are lower, then yes, I agree. But overall, if I don't do over 170,000/200,000 miles, the EV is more expensive. And all I hear is, "Yeah, but EV prices will tumble". Actually, they've been increasing.

And in the van example, the electric version can't tow!!

AN EV will reduce your ICE carbon footprint by 17% to 30%, and it will also reduce the weight of your wallet because you have to pay the more expensive EV price at the start, or put it on a loan and pay interest on top of the extra cost.

People who want to buy an electric car should just go with a tesla. I'm not aware of an ICE car that can give you what a tesla will give you in terms of features. You get what you pay for and more. Nor do ICE cars give you an 8 year warranty either. Here in the states it's also possible to find free supercharging stations, and in some states electricity can be as low as 8 cents per kwh to charge at home, although it can be as high as 25 cents. Good luck paying $8 per gallon in the UK.

 

[MarathonMike]

1.) It's not cheaper than gas.

It is for me because I have free charging at the dealership that's 2 miles down the street and free charging at work. Very few people are going to have those options. The commercial charging stations are all right around $0.30 a minute. Now EV batteries have what you call a cumulative resistance to charging which means the higher the charge the slower the charging takes place. So if you drive into the charging station at roughly 5% your first 40 or 50% will happen very quickly. After that it slows down. By the time you hit 90% you're spending up to 5 minutes for 1% of charge.
I've learned to do different things while I'm waiting at the charger since you really can't walk away from your car trusting that somebody else won't unplug it. ( Something I never thought of until it happened to me). I'm currently working on my next degree in mechanical engineering and I find that down time an excellent opportunity to catch up on course work. But it is very time consuming and you do have to plan differently than if you were just going to the gas station for a quick fill up. With the current pricing at the commercial charging station even with the high price of gas right now it's pretty much a wash. And you're definitely better off with a little four cylinder turbo diesel that gets 50 to 60 miles a gallon.

2.) Total cost of ownership is another way to look at an EV. I don't need oil changes, I don't need antifreeze, I don't need transmission fluid, I don't need to be bothered with emissions testing or all the very expensive fixes that follow failures. I do still need tires now and then but I'm still working on my first pair of course.... And the automobile will need brake maintenance and drivetrain maintenance although it does not have a transmission.

3.) I don't miss the smell of spent exhaust. I can sit in the William's tunnel during a traffic jam and use absolutely no energy while sitting. It's very quiet.... So was my Maxima but this is even more quiet than the Maxima. The automobile itself has plenty of horsepower though I'm not sure exactly what it is it's very responsive to the accelerator.

4.) Heat in the winter is a problem... it probably decreases the car's range by up to 15% which is considerable.

5.) Having said that I expect that air conditioning will also do the same thing.

6.) Most information available right now indicates that EV's actually have a larger carbon footprint than the gas powered alternatives. Not sure where all of this is going but it looks like everyone's bought into the circle jerk so we're heading into EV land like it or not. Carbon footprint be damned!

Just a side note here I hope everyone realizes that there's only one way to make steel and that's with Coal. The simply is no other way to do it. So the more electric vehicles we need the more coal burning we will have to do to create the steel unless we begin to build them out of something else.

Jo

I learned some things, thanks very informative! My conclusion is unless I can get some free solar panels that will charge my car for free, I ain't getting an EV.