paywalled
Looks like the comparison vehicles were:
- Ford F-150 versus Ford F-150 Lightning
- Honda CR-V versus Tesla Model Y
- Toyota Camry versus Chevrolet Bolt
Of course, you could argue which vehicles are similar other than powertrain (especially in the Camry versus Bolt comparison). Also, some of the vehicles may have different variants with different (gasoline or electric) efficiency (e.g. is the Camry the hybrid version?).
They did note that fast charging costs more than (non-home) slow charging (most commonly found at hotels and restaurants).
For a hypothetical California road trip, they found the EV cheaper to fuel in all three cases. But for a hypothetical Detroit to Miami road trip (through places with low gasoline prices), a Bolt using fast charging would cost more than a Camry to fuel.
But they said that an EV using home charging is cheaper to fuel in every state.
I can access the article in the link. I do not have a subscription.
There is more to the article than that little summary. I highly recommend reading it.
I have a friend that bought his brother in law old prius about 15-20 years ago. It needed a battery and he knew this upfront. So he put one in. He gave it to his kids for college but they still have it in their family getting like 50 mpgā¦ Or something like thatā¦
I canāt read it. If there is a gift link that usually works. I have probably used up my free reads for the month.
Interesting article. They didnāt factor in time. Time on a long road trip is valuable too. 5 minutes to refuel versus an hour to re-charge?
We were waiting for friends to travel 60 miles to join us for lunch. They texted āsorry, we had to stop at Walmart for AN HOUR to re-chargeā.
Not a minor inconvenience in my opinion.
Sounds like poor planning on their part. Most EVs can go 200-300 miles on a single charge.
We worried about that but it was not a concern. After 3 hours of driving covering 200 miles, most humans would appreciate a bio break. 20 minutes to charge the car until the next stop is sufficient for the humans to grab a coffee and use the restroom.
If you think about the time you spend at gas stations over a year vs the time spent at charging stations over a year for an EV owner, the EV owner may well come out ahead because most EV owners charge at home or work. Depends on individual driving habits, of course. If you are someone who is racking up 1000 mile road trips every other weekend then youāll spend more time at charging stations. Conversely if youāre a person who is content to be in a 100-200 mile radius around your home you may almost never use a public charging station in which case your annual time spent refueling at a station is 0. Most people donāt have gas stations at their home, but almost everybody has an electric outlet.
I have driven an EV for 7 years. Took it down to a very remote beach about 2 weeks ago. 3 hour drive and 2.5 hour ferry ride. Did not stop to charge. Plugged it in once we got to the house. Getting ready to go to the mountains today and will charge at the house once we get there and wonāt stop on the way. Itās about a 3 hour drive.
I just checked my check-ins on the Plug Share app (I donāt always post a check in, but I try to). I charged at public chargers 3 times since January. If you drive a gas vehicle maybe you can compare. Been driving plenty. The car has almost 100K miles on it. I just donāt do cross country road trips that often.
What did they have, an old short range EV that did not have fast charging?
Weāve owned two EVs. Love not having to get gas. But donāt like them for road trips. Adding close to an hour every 2-300 miles is not relaxing, just stressful, when the trip is 5+ hours long. For now we keep a gas car in the family because of this. Also, winter battery range is way less than whatās advertised (across multiple car companies), and summer is no picnic either with running AC. EVs are so wonderful for us in regards to commuting and getting to places within 100 mi, but the āroad tripā comparison IMO comes down to time being a priority over $. Not to mention that some parts of the country require going out of the way, or stopping at weird intervals, to access level 3 charging stations.
Drove to our mountain cabin today. The nearest super charger is 65 miles away. Weād have to stop and charge to 100% - which, since it is a high use charger station might not be possible and weād be limited to 80%, Okay. start from there with 320 mile estimated if we were to charge to 100%. but only about 240 if charged to 80%, These estimates are based on our 10 month driving history and H has a lead foot.
Okay. So need to bank 120 miles to go from charger to cabin and back. Letās say we split the difference and have a 280 mile range - so we have 160 mile range to play with.
Oh dang, something broke and now itās back to the main town - a 50 mile round trip. Okay. 110 miles left. We can trickle charge overnight adding a few miles. Next dayā¦want to go to the passā¦another 50 mile round trip using A/C and going up hill one way. Some braking regen capture on the way home. More trickle charging with a few miles added.
See the problemā¦it is a planning issue for the full 4-5 days. Yup, could install a Tesla charger at the cabin (H can do it so itās just the brute cost of about $500). But hey - that CA cost per KwH and the mental cycles of planning.
So, here we are, good olā Toyota Highlander for this trip. Gas gauge low - easy problem to solve. And that fill up cost is just about on par with the E charge cost.
it is not JUST cost, it is the mental effort it takes to run and EV. And I say this while sitting in spitting range of the master EV mothership
If their battery was really low, with a modern EV it should have taken them 5 minutes to gain enough charge to drive those 60 miles.
I donāt know how you come up with that calculation. A Tesla, with a preconditioned battery at a super charger will not gain 60 miles in 5 minutes. And AFAIK, that is the best charger/car/battery combo available at the moment.
Letās suppose I am completely wrong and uninformedā¦which is not all that unreasonable of an assumption ā¦so they get the 60 milesā¦but now will need a charger at the end meeting place ā¦ so that they can go back homeā¦
The last EV road trip I did had more like 15-20 minute charging stops every two hours or so. But that was about the same as the last ICEV road trip, where those stops were needed for the people to empty their bladders, stretch out and walk around, etcā¦
The 15-20 minute charging stops were not charging to full or close to full. They were charging enough to reach the next fast charger in about two hours with some buffer (10-15%) to spare. The lower part of the state-of-charge range is where fast charging is fastest.
5 minutes to gain 60 miles probably means a relatively optimistic ~180-240kW charging power that the car and charging station need to support (~100-150kW is probably a more common charging power in the lower half of the state of charge range, considering both recent EVs and chargers; however, the Bolt can only do about 50kW).
But taking an hour to gain 60 miles probably means ~15-20kW charging power. The slowest āfastā chargers that I know of are 24kW, but those are less common these days (50kW is the most common of the slower āfastā chargers). Of course, if the people in question were trying to fill it full, that could take a while, especially as the car slows down the charging power as it gets close to full.
Why not install a level 2 charger at the cabin? We make a similar trip very often to a cabin 50 miles out of town. No gas stations closer than town. We get there at 10%, fill up every night with level 2, drive to remote locations with no concern about fuel. In the past weād have to drive to town to gas up. Total waste of time.
It was well worth the cost for us and guests (in our case tax incentives and power company subsidy made the cost very low).
From experience, at V3 chargers Tesla started deploying about 4 years ago:
Faster Charging, No More Power Sharing
V3 is a completely new architecture for Supercharging. A new 1MW power cabinet with a similar design to our utility-scale products supports peak rates of up to 250kW per car. At this rate, a Model 3 Long Range operating at peak efficiency can recover up to 75 miles of charge in 5 minutes
And while that is for Tesla, note that the chargers at WalMart are typically EV America chargers running up to 800V and 350KW. They can take Hyundai/KIA vehicles from 10% to 80% in 18 minutes.
So without a charger near the lunch spot, they would have needed about 15 minutes at WalMart, at most.