Comment on Fear Mongering About Range Anxiety Has To Stop — CT Governor Calls Out EV Opponents
Shdwdrgn@mander.xyz 10 months agoBecause I got the current SUV from a dealership with all the attached mark-ups and fees, at a time when similar models were selling used for about half that cost. However because I had the money available I was willing to splurge on getting exactly the one I was looking for. Also, an EV is not an SUV, and certainly not 4WD with the stronger frame to support off-road use, so it shouldn’t cost as much. I actually bought my wife’s car, a 2006 Murano with 4WD, for $6000 from a dealership, so even that has more capability and probably more cargo space that a typical EV. My baseline is how much vehicle I can get for that price range.
puppy@lemmy.world 10 months ago
You have not considered some aspects. You have concluded that solar is only used for charging the EV and that it doesn’t power your house. Realistically nobody does that. Your solar beakeven should be converted to calculate how much time it takes to save 15k from both your electricity bill + gas savings. Then the whole equation becomes,
battery replacement cost + solar cost = (annual electricity bill + fuel cost) * x number of years
Only then can you know if the breakeven period is a save or a loss.
Ignoring solar, what’s the breakeven like when you charge the vehicle from grid? (With night time prices if you have such a tarrif/discount)
Shdwdrgn@mander.xyz 10 months ago
And to answer your last question… I can’t find any info on whether the city offers discount for at-home charging, but they do provide several level 2 chargers around the city at a rate of $1/hour, which seems fairly reasonable? Hard to say as I have no idea how long an EV take to recharge or how far you can drive on a 1-hour charge so I don’t have enough info to make a reasonable comparison there.
Shdwdrgn@mander.xyz 10 months ago
Actually solar powering my house was my first consideration. I’m already dealing with an electric company that didn’t think it was odd when they turned off the power to my house and the meter kept running (my typical monthly usage is around 4000kWh which breaks down to over 5000 watts of solar panels and roughly 300 square feet of roof space that isn’t blocked by trees) so I’m trying to find an electrician to replace the wires between the meter and the house. The assumption here is that the wiring has a ground leak – the more power I pull, the faster the leak, which ramps up my bill quickly. Meanwhile I’ve been considering installing solar panels on my house to offset some of that usage. Even if I’m really only using half that amount of power, that’s still a LOT of required solar panels and as I said there’s not a lot of exposed roof space available. My calculations weren’t including trying to recharge an EV because I don’t have any numbers on how much power that would pull.
Basically where I’m sitting, about 2/3 of my roof is blocked from sunlight by trees on the East and South which is great for keeping the house cool, but not so great for solar panels. If I was trying to supply half of my current electrical usage I would need roughly 12 square feet of good sun throughout the day, but my Southern roof only has that much exposed for 4-6 hours in the middle of Summer. In the Winter one of the trees to the South of me will lose its leaves, but the other tree to the South and all the trees on the East side are massive evergreens that block the sun all year. I’m having a hard time getting the numbers to add up just to supply my house with power, I just don’t see any way to also recharge a vehicle (let alone two). It’s still a project on my radar though and something I really want to get in place since I do use quite a bit of power here.
Oh, and that $15,000 installation price was for more typical homes that use less than 250kWh/month. Obviously I am nowhere near that.