Give up charging during winter?

I've saved this for years, basically our last grandson's age. My wife went back east to help our daughter out at that time, and a week later I followed, leaving one "adult" son at home, for about one week. Spot the week:


Addendum: I dread to think what the graph would look like if it'd been a month...

 

WOW!! We got really frugal with electricity living on the island of Roatán for nine years. Not that we were ever extravagant. Electricity was about $0.50 per kWh and we had to run the A/C pretty much every single day to survive. Now, at around $0.09 per kWh, we live the same way and our last bill was $55. One time, it was a whisker over $100. That was the month my mother-in-law was here and it was summertime. More A/C and more electric hot water, but not extravagant because I followed her around turning off lights after she'd leave the room.

 

Wow, I pay $0.18 & $0.22 per kWh for tier 1 & 2 which maxes out at ~560 kWh. It's a different number every month based on weather. Go into tier 3 and you get into $0.30 per kWh; a significant jump. Petrol is $0.79 a litter. All in USD and completely backwards. Should be low electricity rates and high fuel costs. Still, California is leading the world in EV ownership despite the disadvantage.

 

Someone mentioned reserving a Prime here in BC, for sometime in January, IIRC. They are coming? 4th gen of any ilk are slow to catch on, fwiw. And I'm pretty sure we never got PIP, I had to fight tooth-and-nail to snag some PIP rims.

I wouldn't touch the Prime, for numerous reasons, the lack of spare right up front. But yeah, much more favourable scenario for electric adoption up here.

 

Here in Finland it starts to get cold..last night 5 Fahrenheit and when skiing it was around 14 Fahrenheit..it seems that the heatpump can operate and reduce enough warm to the cabin until 20 but when it goes colder..better to use ICE..when I leased the car I did not order any pre-heater to ICE..wanted to test the heat pump first..now reconsidering that..the mileage also drops quite drastically when using EV below 20..so it seems HV car for 3 months and EV rest of the year❄️❄️ Merry Christmas

 

-2°F two nights ago.

Cruising at 80 mph with a nasty headwind resulted in the usual much-lower efficiency, but heat stayed quite comfortable after getting off the highway. I switched to EV and took advantage of the battery for the rest of the drive.

No matter how cold it gets, you'll have the opportunity to use heated coolant to stay warm for awhile while the engine is off.

 

3°F this morning. Engine shut off for EV just fine, even with the heater set at HI.

 

We're going through a -4 (F) to about +16 degree spell for the next 10+ days here. I do really need to use up that stale summer gas anyway. Oh well. I'm perfectly OK with it.

 

Accused of being against global warming, here we spend time dealing with winter cold effects on our rides. <grins>

Bob Wilson

 

Sorry, I write things where they make sense in my mind but they are hard to follow on paper for others. Basi, ally when you add in the charging inefficiency and the higher cost of electricity it's like getting 49mpg.

But hey perfect OP gave me his electricity and gas cost.
(kinda sucks that your gas prices are only 12% more but your elec cost 25% more)
For OP:
Elec cost: $0.12/kWh
Mpge EPA estimate: 95 (EPA estimates a gallon of gas is 33.7kWh to make the mpge conversion)
Gas cost: $2.30/gal
Mpg EPA estimate: 50
Gas per mile cost= $2.30/50mpg= $0.046/mi <--- skimmers focus here
Elec per mile cost= $0.12/kWh *33.7kWh *(0.85)^-1 / 95 mpge = $0.050/mi <-- skimmers focus here
Low and behold it's more expensive for the OP to be grid charging his car than using it as a hybrid just basing this calculation on the EPA numbers. Real world values wise the ICE or Ev system may be performing much worse than the EPA value during the winter. ex: battery charges more inefficiently in cold weather or the ICE motor/hybrid system runs more inefficiently when it can't maintain optimum running temp. So you'd have to calc this in more depth.

Do you know what your actual hybrid mpg is for your average travel? (I suspect its much less than 50mpg)
Do you know what your actual electricity usage is for your average travel? (I'm not sure how cold weather affects the amount of electricity that actually makes it to the battery specifically I just know it is a little more than charging in optimal temps)

*re read. So yeah if you're getting 55mpg in cold weather on your commute stop grid charging your wasting your money currently for this month's energy cost.

 

Extremely bad miscalculation which is pretty common for most people to assume. The fuel sources do not cost the same for one and the amount of energy that makes it to the ground is so completely different its incomparable how you did your math. The electric equivalent of a gallon of gas at $0.12/kWh cost (33.7kWh= 1 gal of gasoline) $4.044. Then you must calculate in that every time you charge your electric car 15% is going to fly away through heat so only 85% of your energy will actually make it to the battery. ex: It will probably take 10.35kWh to charge your battery to 8.8kWh. 4.044/.85= $4.76 per 33.7kWh that make it into the battery. So per kW that actually makes it to the battery is $0.1411/kW.
Remember ICE/EV don't put their power to the ground at the same efficiency. So yes the EV system uses less energy per mile... BUT the electric fuel source is still too expensive and/or the charging inefficiency is still to great (unless you are bad at spilling gas at the pump as well ).

I know this is a hard concept to understand that sometimes an electric car is more expensive to drive than a hybrid so stay with me here.

I might attach a spread sheet where people can type in their distance per energy input numbers and cost of fuel source numbers to determine if they should grid charge or buy gas

 

I'm spending less than half what I spent in gas than my gen 3 prius, and my electricity really isn't that much more than before. Maybe $20-$25 a month and around a third of my commute is on electricity. The only thing I see that's off is the 95mpge, it's rated at 133mpge in normal weather.

No, I don't know my exact mpg in hybrid only, i've never done a tank full of gas in hybrid only mode. Before the fall, I was getting 29 miles to a charge, and right now i'm getting about 23. I doubt seriously if i'm getting 55mpg for gas on cold mornings too, but it's close to what the car shows. Given what my gen 3 did and what my car says overall, I'm getting in the mid to upper 40's. My gen 3 got about 40.

As for how much electricity, no, nothing exact, just full charge to no EV left every commute. (Though I do only use EV during the slower parts of my commute.)

"So you'd have to calc this in more depth."

There is no way to calculate it exactly for anyone's commute, there's too many variables, not the least of which is temperature which you mention, but also speed and traffic conditions and even attitude. Impatient is way different than chillin.

I do *know* that i'm spending a good margin less on fuel than with my gen 3...

 

You could buy a kill-a-watt. Its the easiest method. You just need one for 240v which is what i'm assuming you use. I've seen 90s for the other electric cars as well so seems about right (hypermiles can also get 50-60mpgs average in the standard prius which is also only rated for 48mpg). Now way to tell unless you use the kill-a-watt to see what is going into your battery and what you are getting out of it.

Not even that. You just need to a tool to count the total amperage (at 240v) going into your battery and you know now how much fuel you're putting into your battery.

 

Nah, no 240V, I use plain old 120V. I think people say ~6.6kWh is what a full charge is. The car does live in a garage, so charging losses aren't as bad in the winter as they could be. It never gets freezing in there.. The 133mpge is the Toyota EPA tested number...

 

Not arguing with you on that. The EPA just replaced the old cycle numbers because the test was too easy to achieve high numbers and it wasn't realistic. Ex: the 55mpg original window sticker on the gen 2 prius.
http://john1701a.com/prius/images/Prius_WindowSticker.jpg

 

I think they replaced them before the Prime came out, but I'm not sure. Toyota still says 133mpge and 54mpg combined on their webpage.

 

I'm in Rochester, NY. At Zero Degrees I still get over 25 battery miles. When I turn on the Fan, it drops to 21-22. However, if during the trip I turn off the Fan and add up the distance traveled and battery miles remaining, I get 24-25 miles.

I LOVE this car !!! I drive 15 miles to work, where I can also charge it. I bought the Prime in January 2017 and didn't need a gas fillup until June, in order to drive up to Canton, NY.

 

Today when I left home it was -5 F. I didn’t turn on heat and was fine with heated seat & steering wheel and lap blanket, and drove with EV. About 4 miles in my windshield started to fog, so I turned the fan on low and the engine came on. Shoot! Coming home I made it on EV all the way.

 

Had no choice today. The dash read 13 degrees F. The heater was not on. Started immediately in HV. SOC was at 72% when I turned the car off last. Engine never stopped on the way to work. My guess was it was a bit colder than 13, but that's what the dash had displayed. Batteries were no doubt much much colder after sitting outside all night at -4. Wanting my EV back.

 

i suspect your temp was turned up. if it was set to 'low', the engine shouldn't fire when you turn on the fan.