Featured The Dirty Truth About Combustion Engine Vehicles

I think I'm gonna take a nap now....

 

Turns out I didn't fill up in New Jersey.

This was a work trip so I have my travel expense report. I flew into the Philadelphia airport, rented a car, drove to Cape May, did my thing, drove back and filed up just outside the airport. That's what having a good amount of range does for you.

 

At the end of the day it’s a case of “how much does it cost me to run”
A recent survey in the uk found that charging a “full electric” mid size car on express charge at hourly rate cost 4x the standard petrol hybrid equivalent. Or in real terms £4000 per year against £849 for average mileage.

 

Kind of hard to belive given how expensive petrol is over there.

My plugin is just under half as much on electricity as it is on gas, and that's when getting 56mpg on gas.

 

Wish I could say that. The electricity rates here make the grid slightly less expensive than gas. I charge it in order to reduce pollution that extra little bit.

Dan

 

What’s your hourly rate on a fast charge ?

 

What’s you hourly rate on a fast charge ?

 

What’s your hourly rate on a fast charge ?

 

I pay just over 2 cents a mile for electricity. At 56mpg, I'd need a gas to be a little over $1.12 for break even. Gas is over twice that.

 

The Prius Prime doesn't support fast charging. I pay just over 10 cents per kwh on 240V charging at home.

 

That’s not what I asked. How much for your hourly rate on a supercharge

 

Not unheard, we have a 2014 BMW i3-REx and in 2016 found:

• $6 - gas cost between Huntsville AL and Nashville TN, ~120 mi each way
• $24 - EV cost between Huntsville AL and Nashville TN

The problem was the slow, less than 50 kW, fast DC charging rate and excessive costs of Electrify America and EVgo. In contrast, I drove from Huntsville Al to Murfreesboro TN and home, total of 200.9 mi, and the one SuperCharger cost:

• $2.64 - EV cost at Manchester supercharger
• $5.72 - for 52 kWh @ $0.11/kWh
• $3.08 - electricity bought at home minus the SuperCharger cost

Bob Wilson

 

How do you figure?

With a goal of all local driving being on grid electric so that you only need hydrogen stations on the highway, the PHEV's EV range needs to be longer than the Prius Prime in order to be viable to more potential customers. There also won't be an engine for back up heating anymore.

50 miles is probably the minimum you need in order for the car to sell more than Prius Prime numbers. In a car form like the Prius, than is at least a 16kWh sized pack. But people aren't buying efficient car forms, so the pack might need to be as much as 25kWh.

Tesla batteries are in the 75kWh to 100kWh range.

26 cents a kWh, though that will vary by location. It is an actual Supercharger rate, and Tesla has the best rates because they aren't running the chargers for a profit.

The others are, and so they cost more . As a stand alone group of stalls, the operator doesn't have a store to make money like a gas station does. That lack of additional revenue is why even Tesla's chargers cost more than gas. Imagine if you had to buy an overpriced drink and snack from one of those convenience stores before you could fill the tank? What they charge for the gas is enough to get by at best. Luckily for the owner, enough people willing buy stuff from the store. The charger owner doesn't have that luck.

It really isn't a problem if you can slow charge, at much lower rates, for your daily driving. Then you are paying more than gas for a small fraction of your miles, and lower for the rest. But for some that isn't possible yet.

 

That's a lot of unfounded guesswork there. You are guessing as to the required minimum range. You're guessing that the residual heat of an ICE is a necessity. You're guessing that people are not going to buy cars that are efficient.

Two can play that game... Once the subsidies for building fast public chargers are gone, people will shy away from the high cost of long distance travel in a BEV if they have an alternative.

Two can play that game... In post pandemic USA, a lot of those who are wealthy enough to buy a $50,000 BEV will no longer be commuting every day. Many high paying jobs in California (nearly 1/2 of the US Tesla sales) adapt well to telecommuting. No commute means no nead for huge battery packs.

Two can play that game... The Feds and many states have been promoting the use of very large batteries; subsidizing the sale of huge batteries for people who never leave home. That will change when there is a artificial shortage of nickel, lithium, etc.

It's easy to come up with things like that. I could make them up all day, and probably be right at least half the time.

Dan

 

Which part of, "The Prius Prime doesn't support fast charging" didn't you understand?

 

Many people don't understand that Superchargers are for Tesla Only... up till this year when a new standard for billing (plug and charge) was introduced. But that does not matter to US, since the supercharger does not support any charging protocol that would be compatible with the Toyota.

I did not understand that until I bought my Prime. I had no need for the information before that.

Dan

 

In Europe Superchargers use CCS, though they might still be for Tesla's only.

It is possible that Supercharger has morphed into a common noun for fast DC chargers like Xerox for copiers.

Well, people aren't buying efficient cars now. They are buying trucks and SUVs, with most being 4WD or AWD. While the efficiency of these has improved, the fuel economy of actual cars is still better. Even minivans are better if you need to haul people and stuff. The public will go back to efficient cars with high fuel prices, but we are talking about a car that will mostly driven on electricity, so fuel costs for many will drop.

Waste heat from an ICE isn't needed, but the lack does mean a greater loss of range in places with real winter.

The 50 miles is based upon the 40 mile target GM had for the Volt, which was a distance that would cover most Americans daily driving. I rounded up to 50 because that would work for some more of the population, and to allow for winter range reduction. More importantly, hydrogen stations are not as common as gas ones. If the the hydrogen station in over ten minutes away, and out of the way, people will want more EV range for their daily use. How these PHEVs will be used, and how they will be viewed, is as an EREV like the i3 REx than a PHEV like the Prius Prime.

This isn't an absolute minimum, but a minimum for a model to be moderately successful. Shorter range can work for a fewer amount of people, and they will buy it, buy you need higher sales to get public support for the hydrogen infrastructure.

Then they won't want to pay the high price for hydrogen under this scenario either.

Are they going to have everything they need and want delivered? Televacation?

Less annual miles from not having to commute doesn't mean less distance driven when they do go out. A shorter EV range can work for them as they won't need to visit a hydrogen station as often with daily driving, but this plan is about getting zero emission cars through out the country, not just where they are selling now.

Well, a lot more than cars will be affected then, and not just other battery using things, but also things using stainless steel, ceramics, and glass.

The federal incentive topped off at 16kWh, which isn't a very large pack. The goal was to support sales until mass production and improvements brought battery costs down. It has worked very well; we talk about $100 per kWh now instead of $900 to $1200. The problem is that it awarded manufacturers that entered the market later over those that did most of the work in making the improvements that brought the costs down. I'd rather it and the extension had the same end date for everyone.

The only state one I'm familiar with is California's, and it is to help get zero emission cars on the road. The rebate amounts are based on number of zero emission miles. FCEVs get a better amount than long range BEVs.

Lee Jay's plan for hydrogen cars is to have them be plug ins. With the majority of daily miles being powered by the grid, you can make better use of the resources for refueling stations by not having to replace every gas station with a hydrogen ones. With the fuel cell being mainly used on long trips, hydrogen stations would be built mostly along interstates and major through ways.

Now he stated that battery production good for 1% to 2% of long range BEVs in new car sales being good for 10% to 20% of plug in FCEVs under his plan. I think it's more like 6% to 8%, and these posts explain why I think so.

Honestly, if you are going to go hydrogen, it is the best plan to do it. In order for it to work, you would need someone to do what Tesla did with Superchargers. A start up couldn't do it because of costs of the stations. DC chargers are a lot cheaper, and Tesla still had to give the electricity away for free for years. So a large car company with the finances to do it, but the ones supporting hydrogen FCEVs have stated they want nothing to do with the refueling business. They also don't make plug in FCEVs, which is why a government mandate wouldn't help here.

Then their real competitors would be PHEVs, not BEVs.

 

Dear Bait...
You do realize, don't you, that you spent a lot of time refuting what were plainly presented as baseless made up assertions. It even said so: It's easy to come up with things like that. I could make them up all day.

Dan

 

Definitely a rude reply, but here you go. I was asking what the rates are in the USA. This thread is not dedicated to Prius prime but a discussion on alternative fuel. The prime doesn’t really have the range for practical journeys of a hundred miles or so each way. My point is that the cost benefits of electric over petrol ( sorry gas ) may not be consistent depending on which type of charger and time spent waiting for charge. Here we have 4 different “styles” of charging station. All have different rates.
Interestingly enough have you considered adding the diner costs while you wait for your trickle charge to complete ?

 

On road trips, I use gas. 2 minutes for 500 miles of range.

Since road trips are rare compared to around the house driving and since they are for vacations where you're spending money like crazy anyway, the cost of those miles isn't very relevant. But if I had to fast charge instead of fill up, the cost would be about the same either way - 5-6 cents a mile or so.