> Oh and I pay £1.28 per litre and 7p per KWh (for overnight car charging). The petrol price is low at the moment for here (it hit £2+ when Russia went mental).

I (in the US, California) pay less for petrol than you and more for electricity; 87p/L and 23p/kWh overnight.

▲ gerdesj 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

That might be where the EV wheels fall off!

CA is notionally EV friendly but it is also a US state and it is rather large, so range is king. CA is mostly very warm so that helps with range. Gas (petrol) is relatively cheap and 'leccy is quite expensive.

The UK extracts rather a lot of tax (fuel duty) on top of the actual market cost of petrol. That's why our petrol/gas cost is pretty extreme. I have no idea how we ended up in this pickle (I have a few ideas), given that we have the North Sea oil deposits nearby. I think we failed to work that as well as Norway did. Bloody amateurs!

You probably have rather more land than me and could consider solar cells. My house conveniently faces south but its a two storey bungalow with three dormers, which means I can't put PV cells on the roof, facing the sun. My garden is also rather unsuitable for PV, being about 1/2 acre with mostly a 30% slope (its quite odd).

The world's climate woes are not yours or my responsibility. PV and EV may help or not. I can manage EV but not PV. You may find that the capital cost of deploying PV in CA might pay off quite quickly.

My IT company has a customer ... . They have a PV (solar panel) deployment on top of a building. This is in Dorset (UK). There are something like 20-30 panels on the roof. I've seen the monitor on a fairly bad day - 2 KW and in bright sunshine something like 8 KW. I'm pretty sure that CA could do rather better.

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aidenn0 2 days ago | parent [-]

My total lot is under 5000 square feet (about 450 square meters), much of which is covered with house. I do have rooftop solar.

A few other notes:

- On average, both petrol and electricity is more expensive in CA than most of the US

- Petrol is expensive throughout the state, but electricity can be cheap if you live in a city with public utilities (The city of Sacramento has a public utility and rates are about half what they are on a private utility where I am).

- Peak rates are about $0.55/kWh (41p), but off-peak times are a generous 19 hours a day 21:00-16:00) in the summer, mainly because there is so much solar, so we have the "duck curve[1]" here.

- I live near the coast, so get fog in May and June, but July and August I generate quite a bit (over 10kWh per day this July).

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_curve

	▲	gerdesj 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		You note that you have rooftop solar - how is that going? I'd love to deploy it but the south facing side of my house has three dormers on it which means: I'm stuffed. I can't fit panels on a 12m (40') long roof, with inclusions. I wish you all the best, mate.

▲ tonymet 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You're highlighting something that's not relevant. The people who are abandoning their EVs are doing so in spite of the tremendous savings. That should raise alarms.

▲ aidenn0 3 days ago | parent [-]

Tremendous savings? I save less than 10% charging at home, at off-peak, vs a Prius for highway driving (3.8mi/kWh vs 50 miles/gallon):

  You have: (0.28USD/kWh)/(3.8miles/kWh)
  You want: USD/mile
   * 0.073684211
   / 13.571429
  You have: (4USD/gallon)/(50miles/gallon)
  You want: USD/mile
   * 0.08
   / 12.5

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gerdesj 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

There are 3.8 litres to the US gallon. You pay $4.00 per gallon and I pay 3.8 * £1.30 = £4.94. I remember the days when it seemed like fuel was almost free in the US compared to here!

Your electric rate looks high at $0.28 per kWh. Its still less than I pay in general - £0.287 but I get an overnight rate at £0.07 (23:30 to 05:30).

It seems reasonable to have a low rate at night and always has been. In the UK it used to be known as "Economy 7" (seven hours not 7p!) That's nothing new and I remember it being a thing from the eighties. I'm surprised you don't have something similar.

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aidenn0 2 days ago | parent [-]

I misremembered the cost for electricity; it's $0.26 not $0.28 (and that is the discounted overnight rate). Peak usage is over $0.50, but that's only 4pm-9pm in the summers.

The bill is rather maddening because there is no one place where they put the price per kWh. There is "Delivery Cost" "Generation Cost" and "Non bypassable charges" each with different values for peak/off-peak so I have to do the math myself.

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gerdesj 2 days ago | parent [-]

Bloody numbers! I also have snags dealing with them and I have an A level in Maths.

Your discount rate at $0.26 - I assume that is for overnight usage - sounds a bit nasty. Are you able to move to another provider or are you tied to a single provider?

If the latter, then that is another discussion 8)

	▲	aidenn0 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Basically one provider. More details: All but the generation charges are from a single company that (among other things) is paying off a lawsuit for having not properly maintained lines running through highly flammable forests. The generation charges can com from two companies; one has a slightly higher sticker-price, but discounts down to what the other charges, so the rates are identical.

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aidenn0 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I had my overnight electricity rate wrong it us $0.2608 which makes it about 6.8 cents per mile vs 8 cents.

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dogmatism 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

agree

here on the other coast, with cheap gas and expensive electric, Prius would be about 6 cents/mi, Bolt costs me about 8 (on average winter/summer)

gas is $2.80/gallon, electric (with off peak program) $0.30/kWh. Bolt (fairly efficient EV) 3.8 mi/kWh (3.4- Winter 4+ summer)

▲ yumraj 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Yup, in CA with PG&E a gas car is cheaper to drive than EV unless one has solar or free charging at work.