wrote in message
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On Feb 24, 10:21 am, "Existential Angst" wrote:
wrote in message
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On Feb 24, 5:52 am, "Existential Angst" wrote:
Awl --
After a recent thread on the Volt, I'm really tryna justify the purchase
of
one, but bleeve, it's hard.
I figger my gas cost per year is $1600 or so, and payments for a Volt
would
proly be $6,000 year.... PLUS electricity costs.
Now, about those electricity costs.....
If you calculate the $ per mile of gas, you get something like this:
At $4/gal, with 30 mi/gal, it costs 13c/mi in fuel.
Now, how much does it cost to charge a battery?
Don't for a minute believe what your ripoff utility tells you about c
per
kWhr.... Do the math on your bill, divide the kWhr on the bill into what
you actually wrote on your check.
That isn't the correct way of doing the calculation. What
you want to find is the INCREMENTAL cost of charging a
car. That could be lower or higher than the rate with your
method. For example if you have a monthly fixed charge
of $25, you're paying that regardless of the car and it
should not be attributed to the car. And if you're
in an area where rates escalate if you exceed a certain
amount, then you're going to pay more for the car
charging than shown by your method.
================================================== ==
Absolutely. That's why I left the calc as it was.
Some places have, like, a 5c/kWhr rate, which quickly escalates to
50c/kWhr.
Iirc, CA goes up to pert near $1/kWhr.....!!!!
So my calcs are likely, and were intended to be, a BEST CASE scenario for
electrics, given the tier structure of most utility rates. And draconian
tier structure in some, or mebbe most.
Yeah, if as I said, you're not paying some $50 a month
"connection fee" or similar. If you are, then you've overestimated
the cost of charging an electric car.
Around NYC, that seems to be about
25c/kWhr -- which is outrageous.
Could be. Here in NJ it's been around 15c to 17c.
So let's figger that Tesla's 85 kWhr battery takes, well, 85 kWhr to
charge
it..... that's about $20 in electricity.
If the Tesla gets 200 miles on that charge, that's 10c/mile.
If it only gets 100 miles, that's 20c/mile..... !!!!
Split the diff, that's 15c/mile.... MORE than what I'm paying per mile
in
gas!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
WTF??
The Tesla is a performance car that does 0 to 60 in like
4 secs.
===========================================
They expanded their line beyond the original sports car.
All electrics are fast-ish to very fast off the block. The Tesla's are
esp.
fast.
Which was my point. I don't know how their technology choices
for a high-end $100K+ performance car effects their use of
electricity. So, Tesla is not a car I'd focus on when there are
other, more mainstream cars.
But, as I mentioned to Frank, I knew electrics "failed" from an *overall*
cost analysis, mostly due to initial cost, battery cost, and to some
extent,
electric cost.
I had no idea they would fail *from the gitgo* on electric cost alone!!!!!
Which makes those 100 MPGe claims utter fraud.
As I said, instead of winging it on assumptions and purely theoretical
calculations, it would be better to find some real, measured data:
http://news.consumerreports.org/cars...o-operate.html
"The pure electric Nissan Leaf costs just 3.5 cents a mile based on
the national average of 11 cents/kWh of electricity. That’s less than
half of what it costs to drive the most fuel-efficient four-door car
we’ve tested, the Toyota Prius. (This calculation doesn’t include
other costs such as maintenance or depreciation. But maintenance on an
electric car is theoretically miniscule compared with gasoline cars.
And depreciation is unknown for such a new technology.)
The Chevrolet Volt, which runs on electricity for the first 35 miles,
is heavier and therefore costs a little more to run—about 3.8 cents
per mile on electricity. "
Even allowing for 2X electric rates, if what CR is saying is correct,
the electric cars still cost substantially less per mile than using
gas. Not enough to make up for all the other drawbacks though,
but not nearly as bad as you claim either. I'm sure there is plenty
more real world data out there. It's not like these cars have not
been thoroughly reviewed, analyzed, tested....
================================================== =================
OK, that's fine.
But you are assuming THEY calc'd it correctly. Is that 11c REAL WORLD
electric rates, or some bull**** avg of what utilities CLAIM they charge?
And let me tell you sumpn about CR -- I luv'em, but they are often totally
in the clouds when it comes to basic math, science. Sometime back, they
made the claim that trampolining can burn as many calories as running.
Since their corp hq are right by me, I offered to take them running in a
local park, to see just how absurd that statement was.
Heh, they didn't call back.
But back to the point:
Even at 11c, which when all is said and done would be half of my calcs,
that is still a range of 5-10c per mile, and if it is indeed the 10c, that's
perilously close to the 13c of a (mere) 30 mpg gas car.
The fact that CR did not give a RANGE of costs per mile, AND are calculating
dat **** to the TENTH of a mile on top of it all, indicates that they do not
understand statistics or plain ole "significant figures" -- which is beyond
the likes of krw, but shouldn't be beyond CR. But then they think
trampolining burns boucou calories..... go figger.
And,. btw, my calcs are not "winging it".... they are (likely) a BEST CASE
SCENARIO for electrics. **** just gets worse in the real world.
As my calcs show, CR is WAAAY off, even accounting for cheaper electric
rates. kWhrs is kWhrs.... If you have a 50 kWhr battery, it's HS math to
figger out the *minimum* it will cost to charge it up.
Which dudn't mean I haven't made a mistake..... but show me the error in MY
calcs, before you go off lauditing CR....
--
EA
I wonder if ALL Li-Ion car batteries "brick" or greatly shorten lifespan
on
total discharge. I'm assuming virtually all car batts ARE Li-Ion??
Ackshooly, the Pruis may use nickel-hydride batts, but the same discharge
princ. may apply.
The problem is particular to the high performance batteries
Tesla uses,
AFAIK.