How much will I pay for a charge?

I am willing to pay $0.00 for a non-home charge - I am not willing to pay the $.5/hour to $2./hour that ChargePoint commonly charges in the DC area, usually in addition to parking garage fees. There are some free L2 chargers around here, but not enough to be useful.

 

looks good, but i would be willing to pay a lot more for a cleaner, renewable energy source and the thrill of electric driving. probably upto twice as much as gas. if obama would trade some budget cuts for reduced oil subsidies, we'd have some real fun!

 

Ditto. I've generally been willing to pay up to $1/hr, but the problem is that it keeps charging you even after you're done charging!

 

The joy of having a plug-in hybrid is that you can make that choice. So the charge stations are not really economical at all. If you drive a pure EV, it might be more of a necessity than a convenience.

 

no kidding.. i have yet to see a charging station nearby <$1/hr. at those prices, the only benefit is the lower ghg (at least here in CA) for ~12 ev miles. (not including the cost of being tied down while the car is charging)

 

How do you know that the facility with the charger isn't buying dirty coal power, which is even worse than gasoline?

 

This is another reason selecting a car based on your needs and driving patterns is so important.
Just like it would be silly for someone that has to haul a ton of rock in their vehicle each day to buy a compact car, someone that wants to not be dependent on public chargers would be foolish to buy an EV which has a range shorter than their daily needs.

In 2 1/2 years of driving an EV I have not once needed a public charger, although I have used them on occasion (4).
The infrastructure is in its infancy and changes, both good and bad are likely.

 

You don't know...but then you do know that most all incrementally added power due to increased demand (from EVs and everything else) is mostly coming from NG.

I would also say that even a 100% dirty coal EV mile is pretty clean. I am getting 200 wh/mile in EV and about 55 mpg on gas. Therefore, on EV I'm getting 168 MPGe which is using about 1/3 as many BTUs per mile.
(details: 200 wh/mile = 682 BTU/mile; 55 mpg = 2036 BTU/mile, based on 10% ethanol and 112,000 BTU/gal)

That is a large hurdle to overcome. And the domestic coal plant, as "dirty" as it may be is normally operating at peak efficiency. While driving in EV you may be on a short 1-2 mile trip, where the Prius would be getting only 30 mpg on imported oil.

Hence, I don't worry about this at all.

Mike

 

Well if there is extra merit to the charging station parking spot, I would defintely pay up to what i'm paying for Meter-Parking in NYC streets. I'm already paying about 25cents per 15minutes in most commercial based streets of Non-Manhattan borough street. I might as well charge my car if the charging station provides to be a decent parking spot.

 

Ha, the worst is at my office in Cambridge MA...$3.50/hr for a charge...No thanks!!! that's 4x more expensive than gas.

 

This is my local area math used to explain the benefit of Plug-in cars.

3Kw x $0.12/Kw=$0.36 for 10 miles of EV range x 5 to equal mpg(50) of 1 gallon of gas nominal to the Prius equals $1.80 in electric vs. $3.80/gal. current cost of gas. $0.25/Kw is about the break even point for the current cost of gas.

 

i don't care where the power comes from currently. it's the future i'm concerned with. there are many ways to generate electricity and the more we use/need, the more creative we will become. there is only one way to create fossil fuels and it takes a long time.

 

Not interested in paying for a charge away from home.
If I didn't have access to a free charge station at work- I probably wouldn't have traded in the Five for the PIP... just saying.
Now if gas went up to $8/gal that would change the equation...

 

With the current infrastructure, I also can't ever see paying to recharge. If I absolutely need to go some more miles it is much easier to buy some gas. $1 worth of gas will get me 12 miles or so. A full battery charge will get me about the same distance. If it is actually a "need" at the time the gas only takes a couple of minutes to fill up.

Mike (85% EV over the last 6 months)

 

That's certainly a good reason to buy electric vehicles, but I'm strictly speaking of charging at a station that charges money. You can't just assume that even though it's far more expensive than gasoline that you're doing the Earth a favor. You may even be doing a disservice depending on the source of power to that station.

As others have pointed out, EV mode might be more efficient in terms of BTUs per mile, but the CO2 generation per mile of travel is greater with coal power than ICE.