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Jul 25, 2012
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A Different Aspect About Electric Cars!!

INTERESTING - IF ELECTRIC CARS DO NOT USE GASOLINE, THEY WILL NOT PARTICIPATE IN PAYING A GASOLINE TAX ON EVERY GALLON THAT IS SOLD FOR AUTOMOBILES, WHICH WAS ENACTED SOME YEARS AGO TO HELP TO MAINTAIN OUR ROADS AND BRIDGES. THEY WILL USE THE ROADS, BUT WILL NOT PAY FOR THEIR MAINTENANCE! WHO WILL BEAR THE BURDEN?

In case you were thinking of buying hybrid or an electric car:

Ever since the advent of electric cars, the REAL cost per mile has never been discussed.

All you ever heard was the mpg in terms of gasoline, with not a mention of the cost to run it.

This is the first article I’ve ever seen and tells the story pretty much as I expected it to.

Electricity has to be one of the least efficient ways to power things yet it’s being shoved down our throats. Glad somebody finally put engineering and math to paper.

At a neighborhood BBQ I was talking to a neighbor, a BC Hydro executive…I asked him how that renewable thing was doing. He laughed, then got serious.

If you really intend to adopt electric vehicles, he pointed out, you had to face certain realities. For example, a home charging system for a Tesla requires 75 amp service. The average house is equipped with 100 amp service. On our small street (approx. 25 homes),the electrical infrastructure would be unable to carry more than three houses with a single Tesla charge.

For even half the homes to have electric vehicles, the system would be wildly over-loaded.

This is the elephant in the room with electric vehicles. Our residential infrastructure cannot bear the load.

So as our genius elected officials promote this nonsense, not only are we being urged to buy these things and replace our reliable, cheap generating systems with expensive, new windmills and solar cells, but we will also have to renovate our entire delivery system! This latter "investment" will not be revealed until we're so far down this dead end road that it will be presented with an 'OOPS...!' and a shrug.

If you want to argue with a green person over cars that are eco-friendly, just read the following.

Note: If you ARE a green person, read it anyway. It’s enlightening.

Eric test drove the Chevy Volt at the invitation of General Motors and he writes,

"For four days in a row, the fully charged battery lasted only 25 miles before the Volt switched to the reserve gasoline engine.” Eric calculated the car got 30 mpg including the 25 miles it ran on the battery. So, the range including the 9-gallon gas tank and the 16 kwh battery is approximately 270 miles.

It will take you 4.5 hours to drive 270 miles at 60 mph. Then add 10 hours to charge the battery and you have a total trip time of 14.5 hours. In a typical road trip your average speed (including charging time) would be 20 mph.

According to General Motors, the Volt battery holds 16 kwh of electricity. It takes a full 10 hours to charge a drained battery. The cost for the electricity to charge the Volt is never mentioned, so I looked up what I pay for electricity. I pay approximately (it varies with amount used and the seasons) $1.16 per kwh. 16 kwh x $1.16 per kwh = $18.56 to charge the battery.

$18.56 per charge divided by 25 miles = $0.74 per mile to operate the Volt using the battery.

Compare this to a similar size car with a gasoline engine that gets only 32 mpg.

$3.19 per gallon divided by 32 mpg = $010 per mile.

The gasoline powered car costs about $20,000 while the Volt costs $46,000-plus.

So the Canadian and American Governments wants loyal citizens not to do the math, but simply pay three times as much for a car, that costs more than seven times as much to run, and takes three times longer to drive across the country.


The poster of this information bears no resemblance either physically nor mentally to the author of this article..
 
I sold industrial batteries and chargers, including the "rapid charge" technology the last 20 years of my working life. What you are say does not surprise me at all. If you argued against technology like this you were immediately labeled as being with "Big Oil". Trust me big oil is minuscule in comparison to Big Government.
 
Not that i am trying to defend electric cars...they have advantages and disadvantages....BUT where the heck does "Eric" live. Paying $1.16/ kwh ! I do not think an electric car makes sense in Sask but here would be the math using my power rate:

16 kwh x $0.14228/kwh (Sask Power residential rate) = $2.28
$2.28 Charge / 25 Miles = $0.09 / mi

Using local fuel prices (which are reasonable for Canada) = $1.18 /L ($4.46 / us Gal)
$4.46 / 32 MPG = $0.14 / mi

The gas car is 50% more costly to run for the first 25 miles!

Now I don't think you should jump ship and get and electric car but at least get some information straight. Besides it is a lot easier to offset power costs with solar and wind than to refine your own fuel.

T
 
Use cases for EVs are definitely limited until infrastructure and battery tech improves but hate them or not they are evolving and will be the future of motoring until flying cars. There are also much better examples than the Hybrid Volt out there in terms of range and capabilities. We will see many more competitive EVs in the very near future that should hopefully start driving costs down. Unfortunately as with any tech without first and second gen cars the tech simply will not evolve so early adopters will be paying the fee to play in this field.

Disclaimer: I don't own and don't plan on buying an EV unless it's an electric motor strapped to a V8.
 
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Not that i am trying to defend electric cars...they have advantages and disadvantages....BUT where the heck does "Eric" live. Paying $1.16/ kwh ! I do not think an electric car makes sense in Sask but here would be the math using my power rate:

16 kwh x $0.14228/kwh (Sask Power residential rate) = $2.28
$2.28 Charge / 25 Miles = $0.09 / mi

Using local fuel prices (which are reasonable for Canada) = $1.18 /L ($4.46 / us Gal)
$4.46 / 32 MPG = $0.14 / mi

The gas car is 50% more costly to run for the first 25 miles!

Now I don't think you should jump ship and get and electric car but at least get some information straight. Besides it is a lot easier to offset power costs with solar and wind than to refine your own fuel.

T


Just to clarify, the 'Eric' mentioned above and throughout is not me.... lol...
 
Use cases for EVs are definitely limited until infrastructure and battery tech improves but hate them or not they are evolving and will be the future of motoring until flying cars. There are also much better examples than the Hybrid Volt out there in terms of range and capabilities. We will see many more competitive EVs in the very near future that should hopefully start driving costs down. Unfortunately as with any tech without first and second gen cars the tech simply will not evolve so early adopters will be paying the fee to play in this field.

Disclaimer: I don't own and don't plan on buying an EV unless it's an electric motor strapped to a V8.

But there is the rub Nik, we as taxpayers are indeed subsidizing both the purchase of these cars as well as the infrastructure to run them not to mention the actual cost of the hydro to power them. Nothing is free unless you are in the government, then it is all free.
 
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So did a little more research and BC, AB, MB, And Ontario (overnight time) are all around $0.08/kWh.

That works out to $0.051 /mi (first 25 mi on electric)
An gas cost more in all of those provinces than SASK but say it is the same $0.14/mi (32 mpg and $4.46/gal)

That means the electric car is almost 300% more efficient (in dollars) in the first 25mi on electric power

T
 
But there is the rub Nik, we as taxpayers are indeed subsidizing both the purchase of these cars as well as the infrastructure to run them not to mention the actual cost of the hydro to power them. Nothing is free unless you are in the government, then it is all free.

For sure Murray I'm not disputing that at all. They cost everyone a little bit. But without early subsidies I suspect purchases would be really sparse and the private sector won't be too keen to develop the tech to sell them to the masses if it can't break even at least. If you look at the big EV players today it's definitely not an industry that's highly profitable. Same can be said for any government subsidies in any private industries for R&D i.e. IT, pharma etc etc. Government gives out hundreds of millions if not more in grants and tax incentives like SR&ED every year the net of which most of us will never see the light of day (not to dispute the incentives, they are needed in many places).

Anyway, no right or wrong as always just varying degrees of insanity :)
 
So did a little more research and BC, AB, MB, And Ontario (overnight time) are all around $0.08/kWh.

That works out to $0.051 /mi (first 25 mi on electric)
An gas cost more in all of those provinces than SASK but say it is the same $0.14/mi (32 mpg and $4.46/gal)

That means the electric car is almost 300% more efficient (in dollars) in the first 25mi on electric power

T

There's a bit of misinformation on both sides of the EV vs Oil argument. EV proponents often skimp on the cost of ownership as well as actual environmental footprint (including impacts of lithium, disposal, power etc) on the other end of the spectrum your Big Oil players don't mention the fact that it takes stupid amounts of power to refine oil and deliver it to your car (so much so that many large refineries have dedicated power feeds or their own power stations attached to them). So yes there's a fair amount of information obfuscation.
 
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There's a bit of misinformation on both sides of the EV vs Oil argument. EV proponents often skimp on the cost of ownership as well as actual environmental footprint (including impacts of lithium, disposal, power etc) on the other end of the spectrum your Big Oil players don't mention the fact that it takes stupid amounts of power to refine oil and deliver it to your car (so much so that many large refineries have dedicated power feeds or their own power stations attached to them). So yes there's a fair amount of information obfuscation.

Agreed. Just wanted to point out that just cause you read it doesn't mean it is accurate or true. That being said the average consumer is not considering the true cost of ownership on almost anything they buy.

T
 
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There's a bit of misinformation on both sides of the EV vs Oil argument. EV proponents often skimp on the cost of ownership as well as actual environmental footprint (including impacts of lithium, disposal, power etc) on the other end of the spectrum your Big Oil players don't mention the fact that it takes stupid amounts of power to refine oil and deliver it to your car (so much so that many large refineries have dedicated power feeds or their own power stations attached to them). So yes there's a fair amount of information obfuscation.

Nik, there is nothing in a lead acid battery that cannot be recycled, the percentage of recycled batteries is extremely high largely due to the cost of lead. This of course is good for the environment. Not sure about other technologies.

If it cost huge amounts of dollars to produce gasoline and the refineries have their own hydro generation stations then that cost must be reflected in the cost per gallon of the products they refine. They are not going to give it away.

Hydro and the infrastructure on the other hand, and I am speaking for the folks in Ontario here, has been paid for by the taxpayers and users. Then the government decides to sell hydro off to their big business friend and they become "Big Oil" at the expense of the taxpayer. Maybe one of the biggest con jobs ever laid on the citizens of the Province of Ontario. Think hydro rates are high now? Just wait till these guys get rolling.

While it might work in highly populated areas I wonder what happens to the poor suckers who live in rural areas and are not part of the subsidy programs and will eventually be limited in petroleum products and services.
 
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