120MPGe? What -IS- this shit? ( MPGe is how the EPA rates electric cars )
Does that number have ANY connection to reality?
Lets look at dollars per mile, since that's what most folks actually care about.
Here, Gas is sold in Dollars per gallon ($/Gal) and Electricity at a Dollars per KiloWattHour (KWh)
The average (for current sedans) on the gas side is around 36MPG
At $5/Gal that works out to around $0.14 per mile. Obviously if you have a higher efficiency car or are paying less per gallon then your numbers might be closer to $0.10.
OTOH your fancy new pickup might be closer to $0.30 per mile.
On the electric side we have two radically different price structures.
Home charging and Public charging:
On the home side at an average of $0.12/KWh and an on-the-road use rate somewhere between 4-5 Miles/KWh we're looking at between $0.025 and $0.030 per mile. Wow, three cents per mile. Way better, right?
But if we look at Public Charging rates things don't look so rosy.
EVGo, ChargePoint and EA (Electrify America) are all right around $0.43/KWh. EVCS and a few others are around $0.49/KWh. So that works out to somewhere between $0.086/mile and $0.126/mile.
Wait, that's no better than my gas car!!
These are just averages. We've seen cost numbers between $0.11/KWh+$2.50 'transaction charge' (a charger on a Reservation that was allowed to only pass on their costs) and states out there who only allow 'Per Min.' charging (instead of per KWh) where the effective rate was above $0.60/KWh. As usual YMMV.
The average person who does 90% of their charging at home should then see an average cost below four cents per mile. Their buddy who lives in an apartment complex and uses public charging all the time might see ten or twelve cents per mile, which is at least no worse than their gas powered brethren.
So about that 120MPGe? If we compare the 36MPG gas car at $0.14/mile and the electric car at $0.03/mile we might conclude that the electric car is 4 - 5 times more efficient on a per dollar basis. So that would make the electric car look more like 140MPGe.
If we compare with a more efficient gas car that has gets 50MPG it would be more like 100MPGe. (by comparison)
120MPGe seems like a reasonable compromise.
So the average gas car above, going 12K Miles/Yr is around $1600/year. The electric is more like $400.
Now the obvious question is: "Will the difference in cost/mile cancel out the 'higher price' of an EV?
Say you're comparing with a new lower end $25K gas car.
If you're comparing with a new Leaf (actual out of pocket ~$20K) then of course it will.
If you're comparing with a new bottom-end Tesla at $50K, of course it won't!
"But what about maintenance and licensing cost differences?"
Well yes, those will push it a bit one way or another, but it'll hardly erase the larger point.
We might note that not everyone prices charging at such ridiculous rates. Tesla is between $0.27 and $0.35/KWh. How can that be? They're all just selling Electricity right? Which, just like Gas has pricing that fluctuates as you move around the country. How can they do that? are they subsidizing the cost of electricity for Tesla customers?
Well, actually, as the system was in it's initial setup phase there was subsidizing, but these days, according to their stockholder reports it's a profit center.
Wait, how can they charge less money for charging -and- make money at it? ...while their competitors are claiming to be losing money on it hand-over-fist despite the (MUCH) higher prices.
One obvious reason is that the competitors have contra-incentives:
"See! We're not making anything on this,
please PLEASE give us -much- more government money!"
"We'll even lobby the heck out of you! ...instead of having a CEO who pisses you off."
But the biggest reason ends up being a comparison between what happens when you pit Corporate/Government bureaucracies/accountant types with almost no knowledge of the electric car industry, against a bunch of engineers [With decision making capability!] who have been given the task of making charger infrastructure quick and efficient.
The engineers have access to literally billions of miles of telemetry data from cars, including where they go and what state of charge the batteries are at (and therefor where the best locations for chargers might be) -and- they'll negotiate land and electric rates and maintenance costs based on intelligently placed sets of 8 to 20 chargers-per-location (instead of 1 - 4) based on that car-use-data. Economy of scale is a real thing. Minimizing bureaucracy pays off. Making decisions without being a 'Government partnership' is massively more efficient.
While we're talking about dis-incentives pushing up the cost of public charging it might be wise to discuss Peak Use electric billing. Many electric utilities tack on giant surcharges (2X to 4X) on the base rate if the usage exceeds a certain amount, even for a moment. That higher rate may be applied for an hour, a day, or even the entire billing period.
If you are buying individual chargers from a vendor and plunking them down a few at a time (therefor meeting the exact letter of your contract) whoever's the actual end operator of this mess might see extremely high electric rates, which they would have to pass on to their customers.
If on the other hand, you treat the entire (larger) charging location as a single intelligently interconnected system you can negotiate a slightly higher average rate, and then make sure you limit the peaks so you don't stray into surcharge territory. This of course costs more up front and 'quotes' a slightly higher electric rate, even though the real average billing will be much lower.
Obviously this second system would never make it through a bidding process or find favor with a bureaucracy. Despite having lower costs to the customer -and- being much more reliable.
Another fun fact associated with incorrect incentives giving bad outcomes: Public/Private 'partnership' charger locations (those partially or completely funded with government/taxpayer money) have, in actual real-world surveys shown about 75% usability/uptime. This is a combination of poor software/payment systems, poor maintenance and bad design. Rest assured the people who put these systems in got paid the full amount in their contracts though. How would you like every fourth gas station that you actually needed out in rural areas to be randomly unavailable.
Yeah, me neither.
For comparison Tesla has around 99.4% uptime. How can they do that?
They have real-time telemetry from their chargers - and cars. They iterated rapidly in the early days to get the designs sorted out so they don't fail, an advantage of not being beholden to a contract negotiation process that may span years ... before installing previous-generation equipment late and over budget. -and- since they make money on charging, they're actually incented to keep them running.
Plus of course their customers would be really pissed off. Online. Where everyone can see.
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