Need help calculating electric cost for 2024 Prius Prime in L.A

Monthly access charge for utility hook up is an interesting element to consider. You bake it into your cost .... but if it's a very small monthly usage, its average adds more to the per kWh usage cost. Use a ton of electricity, even needlessly & it becomes smaller per kilowatt-hour over the monthly total .... since we're now picking nits.
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It's a flat rate; under service charge - so doesn't enter into equation. Unless your house is off-grid or it's an incremental charge based on usage. That charge is going to exist whether you plug-in your car or not, so IMHO shouldn't be tied to the car charging.

If you really wanaa pick nits; What about someone suggesting installing a solar array to "save money". The last I checked, that usually runs in the $20K+ range. How does that math work??? I consider that prepaid electricity, with the hope that nothing breaks, because it's going to cost you even more money if it does. Those rosy estimates the solar sales person shows you, assumes full 100% output rating for the life of the panel. We all know that as things get older, they slow down and get less efficient.

Respectfully.....

 

That's fine ... nevertheless - by example, if you are charged $20/month hookup ... & only use 200kWh/month, of which 100kWh is charging - then ½ your $20 hookup fee absorbs the $20 (ie $10) BUT ... if you use 2,000kWh as we do ... then your hookup to grid fee, for that same 100kWh charging is baked into a mere 5% instead of ½ of the example bill. Thus adding a much smaller fraction of your hookup fee assigned to charging (1¢/kWh back of the napkin)
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I’ve thought about this a lot, and it’s kind of like budgeting the time in my day for breathing. The utility bill of $18/month could only be avoided if I lived off grid or lived out of my car. It is so baked in that I can’t live in this city without paying it, whether I own a home or rent a home.

I am only comparing fueling up with electricity to fueling up with gas for the same car over the same miles. If I factor in the minimum cost of the utility bill to my per-watt rates for plugging in my car, I should also factor it into my per-gallon rates for fueling up my car, since the number is the same no matter what I do.

I agree that it makes my electricity bill more expensive per watt if I underuse my home electricity, but that means my electricity bill efficiency also goes down if I don’t use it, which I would never want to optimize for. I’m not interested in improving the per-watt rate through more use except if it actually affects my bottom line. The overall savings is the only thing that matters in this case, and I save more by using home electricity compared to filling up the pump, for those 0-80 miles per day that I can use a PHEV for.

 

I'd definitely set up a level 2 (240V) charger so I could get a full charge in 4 hours. That way I'd be charging at the lowest utility rate.

With the standard level 1 charger, the charge time is 11 hours - forcing you to charge some during the highest rate periods.

If you don't have a level 2 charger or a 240V outlet in the garage, check to see if your utility company has a program for adding this to your home. Also, check to see if they have a recommended charger, or an EV rate plan.

 

The gen4 takes 4.5 hours on L1 to fully charge; 2-2.5 on a L2 charger. Your correct, my utility offers incentives to install a L2 home charger along with federal rebates. A L2 charger will also cost you less to recharge your battery (again, we're talking pennies - but a saving to be fully transparent). Since I don't need the fast charging, I passed on the install and shelling out the extra money. If you've got an EV only; that's a must have and should be built into the math on your EV only purchase. IMHO

 

Even with a gen 5 and it's bigger battery, unless we had 2 to plug in, having to share a circuit and balancing the charge overnight, a L2 isn't worth it for us either.

Charging the existing range in roughly 10-11 hours is enough for the majority of our needs given the engine as backup

 

Some very good points. I had a grid-tied solar system estimated for our house here in Maritime Canada, and it looks like probably a 10 to 11 year payoff, and that’s with a lot of government assistance in the solar cost here in Canada. The big problem is storing enough energy during the daylight hours to release it back into the car from the batteries at night, since most people don’t charge their cars during daylight hours. Batteries that will hold 10 or 12 kW are expensive and not particularly efficient yet so it’s a questionable investment.
The main thing is the price of gas in the US is just so cheap compared to Canada that I don’t understand why I would buy any kind of EV or plugin here unless it’s just a philosophical statement. You aren’t saving any money since gas is cheaper in the US than bottled water. You can debate all you want as to whether that should be the case but it is.

In Canada, charging at home, it costs me 1/3 as much to drive an electric mile as it does to drive a gasoline mile. That is an economic choice worth making, particularly when the government will give you enormous incentives to buy EVS and Phevs. Not so much in the US. They even provided a quality level two charger for free.

So it does pay to do your homework, calculate your gas and actual per kilowatt hour, cost, etc. before deciding between hybrid, plug-ins, and EV‘s, or just staying ICE-only.

 

The Prime regenerates more power as you drive. I am always surprised how much the engine is off in hv mode. On and off all the time. Maybe that’s why it can get such good gas mileage. Free charging is surely available somewhere in your area. I haven’t paid anything yet to charge. I usually am charging little bits, like 1hour or 1.5 hrs. on 120 volts. Sometimes level 2. I don’t run it out then charge to full very often. The plug share app has most of the charging stations and if free or not. Combine the free charging with an activity and no time is wasted. The wall plug makes the difference over a hybrid, where all electricity is from driving.
Again this topic, CA isn’t a little town, it’s a large state, some places have low rates, like Santa Clara I know has a rate less than half 1/2 PGE. The city owns the utility.
https://www.siliconvalleypower.com/residents/rates-and-fees

 

I have been noticing this too. I think the weight penalty can work against the Prime in urban driving in HV mode (maybe far less on the highway since the aerodynamics are identical), but the EV coasting and aggressive regen seems like it can run slightly more often than on the standard Prius I test drove. The ability of the car to coast in EV at highway speeds seems quite efficient. Getting multiple miles of range down a mountain road is useful as well.

There are slight differences in the way they perform, since the Prime is slightly quicker and the standard Prius is significantly lighter weight. I value a car that runs as an EV most of the time, but I can’t justify a true EV as an only car since I want to do longer trips. Even if the price were the greater, I would prefer the Prime, but for me the price should eventually end up the same or slightly less in the long run.

 

Your plug has a life expectancy you know. Plugging for just 4 or 5kWh at a time means it will wear out ~ 3X faster. As in life, there are always trade-offs.

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Obviously, if you're a Prime owner who is able to charge for free and never drive over ~40 miles your fuel cost will be zero.

I'd be more interested to hear from Prime owners who charge at home about their total fuel cost per mile, which would include the non-EV miles. When you look at the overall picture the fuel cost advantage of the Prime over the regular hybrid will be considerably less depending on how often you travel over ~40 miles per day.

Using your example . . . the electric rate here (including all the extra charges and taxes) works out to be $0.17 so that would be $0.0292 / mile if I never drove more than 42 miles per day.

So far my LE's fuel cost works out to $.053 per mile. Not all of that was less than 42 miles per day, though, so the difference between that and a Prime would be less.

It will likely drop a bit after my next fill up is figured in because I think this entire tank has been shorter trips around town.

 

I could take pin samples to have them looked at under an electron microscope for changes every 5-10 years. As in life is probably about over then.

 

See my post #20, gen1 Prius C to gen4 Prime.
Big difference in acceleration and increased cost saving with nightly recharging. If I had a gen5; I would probably only gas up once a quarter or biannually.

 

Equally pragmatic ... the J plugs are going the way of the Kodak camera in a few years - as NACS becomes the national standard. Let the J1772 death rattle begin !
(I got a couple J plug to Tesla adapters ... they should sell pretty easy )

 

Don’t take my Kodachrome away. I have a Nikon camera….
In the end the survivors won’t have any digital images at all to look at only black and white Kodak prints they dig out of the rubble. Maybe a Kodachrome slide here and there which seem to hold up.

 

Yup, sounds about right unfortunately, SoCal Edison customer as well and the rates are quite high compared to others around the country. I did some very rough (and probably inaccurate) math and came up with an “average” equilibrium price of gas vs electric to be $4.31 off peak in the winter and $4.53 in the summer. If the price of gas is lower than those values, I’ll “save” money going with gas. Opposite if gas is more expensive, which unfortunately it usually is. Again, super rough calculations where I’m sure I missed a step or some important variables somewhere.

 

colorado has some of the cheapest gas prices in the whole country. i get excited when i get to colorado to fill up on road trips. and road trips thru the mountains dont matter for their gas prices. you can fill up in denver and then travel the whole rockies and loop around and come back and have plenty of gas to spare in these cars. with a jeep or truck, probably not

 

85 is usually cheap. 87 is not. I do not fill up with 85 since 87 is safer for the long-term health of my engine.

2022 was a different story, where it was significantly more expensive all around in Colorado compared to many other states. Gas prices peaked at $5.00 for 85 and $5.50 for diesel, which is high. Even in early 2023, 87 was something like 40 cents more expensive than the national average.

Maybe you were traveling through a cheaper part of the state, but CO is average or worse than average for fuel cost, at least for the past few years.

Check out: AAA Gas Prices