Maverick cheaper to drive than Mach E?

[Gullzway]

We replaced about 90% of the the grid with solar on our farm which we use for charging the EV, it's the cheapest energy we can get by far, it's not even close any more. The cost per kWh delivered up here has jumped up to ~.12/kWh off-peak - .18/kWh on peak and self-installed, self-generating costs about .025/kWh amortized all in. They are raising the delivery and fixed charge portion of electric bills in many places to try to prevent people jumping off the grid, so more and more of your electric bill becomes a fixed price and the energy use portion a smaller fraction of the total at low use rates to sour people on cheaper self generating. If it gets bad enough we'll have to disconnect the grid altogether and cancel the service, many places in towns/cities have regs that prevent you from utility disconnection though.

Sounds like our natural gas company here.

Last month my bill had a $45 service charge and I used $7.90 of natural gas. Seems absurd.

That doesn't include the $9 winter event recovery charge. So a $62 bill for using less than $8 of natural gas!

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[Escapologist]

so many of these things are very different for me, in the middle of Kansas. the 3 things I bolded:

1. there is a LOT more variation in my local peak, off-peak and super off-peak energy cost per hour.
summer peak is 4PM to 8PM: $0.2379 per kWh
summer off-peak is 8PM to 12AM, 6AM to 4PM, and 8PM to 12:00AM: $0.06797 per kWh
summer super off-peak is 12AM to 6AM: $0.03399 per kWh

it means my peak is 7x more expensive than super off-peak, and peak is 3.5x more than off-peak. I don't have a PHEV or BEV but if I did, charging super off-peak is a massive difference.

2. I believe you about paid chargers not being worth the cost, and free ones not being worth the time. but that's just because you have a PHEV. you can charge at home, or you can just put gasoline in the vehicle. BEV don't have this choice and if you don't have the range to do everything you need to do on a given day, then you have to use public charging infrastructure. and it has major gaps in rural Kansas - I live in a big city, but I travel rurally for work now and then.

3. solar is not worth it in my area unless your roof faces south and is clear of tree cover. mine does neither. however, there are also a lot of new companies that have sprung up promising the world and undelivering. a friend that I would have considered a smart person signed up for solar that is over $500 a month for 15 years and his electricity bill was never higher than $400 to begin with. (my bill last month was $88, but we use window mount AC units and keep it warm during the day and very warm overnight -- it's essentially off; set to 83F and doesn't run).

Yeah my gas prices are like $4 USD per gallon and overnight off peak is 7-7am @ ~10c with transmission charges in, and full on peak is ~20c and mid peak ~15c where 11-5pm is full peak and betweentimes is mid peak.

I hope that friend is getting feed in rates for his surplus or that makes no sense whatsoever, it's unfortunate that there's a lot of scammy companies in the solar install market. That deal sounds so "20 years ago" to me really. 90k ever 15 years, assuming half interest 45k system, I am hoping that's at least 20kW or he got really rolled.

Panel pointing, sounds like you wouldn't necessarily want to point South. For fixed panels it has been shown that East or West is pretty much as good, with appropriate angle. i.e. steeper than south facing. It sounds also that you would want to displace as much use at peaky peak as possible so you'd want to point more West. Maybe SW to where the sun is at 4PM.... Myself I'd aim for 2pm. Shading from the East need not be a biggie. Most people don't actually need a lot from the East for immediate use, unless it's for heating in winter, or they bake bread at sunup.

ETA: Oh yeah we've got a low low "EV" price plan alternative, it's very cheap 12-6AM but they gouge you full peak the other 18 hours so it's worthless for anything other than filling a few hundred miles of large EV nightly and never being home otherwise.

Edit again: This pisses me off actually because frequently I see market rates switching to negative for feed in between midnight and 6ish because there's too much electric and they can't get rid of it. So I think they should be offering EVERYBODY an ultra cheap or practically free 12-6 with no penalty.

 

[RebellaE]

We have one of each. The Mach-E wins for around town driving, between the electricity costs of charging at our home vs. fuel for the Maverick. But also, EVs don't require oil changes, transmission fluid changes, and need significantly less brake maintenance work than and ICE or even hybrid. But... we still take the Maverick on road trips because of the charging infrastructure in our state. Over the life of our ownership of the 2 cars, they will likely come out close or the Mach-E will win, even with its higher initial sales price.
And we have a 2014 BMW i3, electric only that still shows at 97% of battery health, so I am not worried about the battery life of the Mach-E.

 

[Glen Baker LLC]

This 4th of July we put 1,040 MI on our Maverick touring around the back roads of Northern Nevada. A feat in an EV that would have been terribly anxiety ridden. It would have limited our touring areas and would have been frustrating, looking for chargers. Seeing the large amount of Trucks towing big RVs/ trailers 10,000lbs+ knowing that 100% EV pickup truck only gets between 125-150 miles on a full charge, less with the wind we had on the road. Making longer camping trips impossible.

The most I paid for gas was $3.60 that was for 88 octane.

 

[colinl]

Yeah my gas prices are like $4 USD per gallon and overnight off peak is 7-7am @ ~10c with transmission charges in

oh, while you mention that, my charges listed above exclude transmission and generation fees. those have separate line items and there has been times where these fees equal my rate-based charges.

 

[Snox801]

We replaced about 90% of the the grid with solar on our farm which we use for charging the EV, it's the cheapest energy we can get by far, it's not even close any more. The cost per kWh delivered up here has jumped up to ~.12/kWh off-peak - .18/kWh on peak and self-installed, self-generating costs about .025/kWh amortized all in. They are raising the delivery and fixed charge portion of electric bills in many places to try to prevent people jumping off the grid, so more and more of your electric bill becomes a fixed price and the energy use portion a smaller fraction of the total at low use rates to sour people on cheaper self generating. If it gets bad enough we'll have to disconnect the grid altogether and cancel the service, many places in towns/cities have regs that prevent you from utility disconnection though.

How much did that solar grid cost? Certainly more than you will ever recover for vehicle use.
Unless the government is paying you to put them up it’s a lost cause.
Now I know people who have gotten the leases to turn the farm into solar and wow although I hate the idea I wouldn’t turn down that money

 

[rtphokie]

EVs and plug-in hybrids are less expensive to operate if and only if you charge them at home where electricity is half the cost or less. (national average 13¢ per kWH) compared to Tesla superchargers or other charging stations (25¢ - 50¢ or more per kWH).

All EVs realistically get around 3-4 miles per kWh. At home charging rates that's 3-4¢/mi. Charging on the go can double, triple or more that cost per mile. The only EV owners that got a fantastic deal

A 38 mpg and today's national average of $3.14/gal per AAA, the Mav costs 8.3¢/mile to drive. The Ecoboost at 26 mpg runs 12¢/mile.

Another way to look at it is that gas needs to drop to around $1.50 per gallon for a hybrid and closer to $1 per gallon for the ecoboost Mav to reach that 4¢ per mile home charging rate, that ain't happening again ever.

All this depends on local electricity rates and of course fluctuating gas prices, but in general the crossing point for a 38 miles/gallon Hybrid vs a 4 miles/kWh EV is $3 per gallon.

Once gas goes below $3 per gallon, it's less expensive to drive a hybrid Maverick than charge a EV on the road.

 

[gbit3000]

The title should be ... On Highway...

 

[lm126027]

When I got rid of my Tesla I found that SC rates were getting to the point that on a road trip I would be averaging the equivalent of 30-35 eMPG which is WAY off the projected efficiency of the Model3.

obviously part of that is EVs aren’t nearly as efficient at highway speeds and the eMPG rating doesn’t account for crazy high SC prices.

In town charging at home I would average between 90-110 eMPG but that was 2 years ago and my electric prices have gone up significantly. I would likely be down in the 75-90 range for home charging. Still great but getting worse.

I don't have a vehicle to charge, but do charge, a lawn mower, blowers, weedwacker, etc... and it is not just SC that the charges have gone crazy. My last Elec bill (National Grid delivers and 3rd party town program for electricity) was 170 and some change. The electricity itself was only 65 and some change, the rest charges and fees from NatGrid..

 

[Escapologist]

In Ontario we only pay transmission charges and loss factor on top if we buy direct from utility, plus your standing fees for meter and connection. BUT, if you go with independant electricity broker/reseller, and buy deluxe 100% green, or cheap as shit electricity, then you appear to get a low rate maybe 5c a kWh, plus all those charges plus a fudge factor called "global adjustment" which is apparently "difference between cost to supply and cost to generate" or some BS, which is whack because are you buying electricity or aren't you at your contract rate??? Anyway, this can actually go 2c negative once in a few blue moons, but it often bounces around 7-12c and can balloon to 30c some months. So not only do you never know what you're paying, you can have a variance of -50 to +600% . So yeah, that's not the way to buy your electricity up here. One or two enthusiasts of it, who maybe locked in a 3 or 4 cent "pretend" rate and only looked at their bill when the Global Adjustment was low, but on the whole they'll get boned sometime.

 

[dochawk]

Maybe manufacturers will build panels into PHEVs and EVs

Aptera claims 40 miles a day from the solar cells on it. Then again, I can count the number they've shipped on my tail . .

The title should be ... On Highway...

not even that, "when paying at roadside chargers"


I got as far as the charger rate a couple of paragraphs in, and didn't bother reading the rest.

 

[heady]

How much did that solar grid cost? Certainly more than you will ever recover for vehicle use.
Unless the government is paying you to put them up it’s a lost cause.
Now I know people who have gotten the leases to turn the farm into solar and wow although I hate the idea I wouldn’t turn down that money

I put in just over a $30,000 system, it's fully off grid, it paid for itself in just over 24 months and has been netting us hundreds/month since payoff. I installed it myself all ground mount, easy job really. The hardest part is once you have enough off grid for winter is making use of the huge surplus in summer since it's not grid tied. I power up a crypto mining farm and send all surplus to that in the summer months. Too good to pass up if you have land.

 

[Snox801]

I put in just over a $30,000 system, it's fully off grid, it paid for itself in just over 24 months and has been netting us hundreds/month since payoff. I installed it myself all ground mount, easy job really. The hardest part is once you have enough off grid for winter is making use of the huge surplus in summer since it's not grid tied. I power up a crypto mining farm and send all surplus to that in the summer months. Too good to pass up if you have land.

How on earth did it pay off in 24 months? Unless your company pays you a heck of a lot more for you to add it to the grid than here in Michigan. The math never quite works out every time I’ve ran it to see if it’s worth it for me. But being off grid you get nothing to sell it back?

You spent 15k a year in electric?

 

[heady]

It's not grid tied, no one pays me. It pays for itself in imputed energy costs

How on earth did it pay off in 24 months? Unless your company pays you a heck of a lot more for you to add it to the grid than here in Michigan. The math never quite works out every time I’ve ran it to see if it’s worth it for me. But being off grid you get nothing to sell it back?

You spent 15k a year in electric?

It makes just over 60,000kWh/year, it comes out to just around 12k/year imputed energy costs. I get a bonus ROI from crypto on top, and I was able to put in a lot larger collector for the money off grid than most people because I didn't buy a big battery since I still have the grid to fall back on. I put in a tiny battery enough to run my inverters at peak load, and the rest gets dumped into crypto mining or in winter excess gets stored in water as heat energy in my boiler system. The solar energy alone without bonus ROI given the average warranty 30 year lifespan will net me about $300k+ at current energy values, and I expect energy to get more expensive over the system lifespan. It's >10x return on investment.

*Before I added the solar, I used about 10,000 kWh/year in electric and about 28,000 kWh of propane (1000 gallons) Now I'm electric+some wood and I 6x'ed my electricity usage to turn the extra energy into heat and money.

 

[Snox801]

It's not grid tied, no one pays me. It pays for itself in imputed energy costs

It makes just over 60,000kWh/year, it comes out to just around 12k/year imputed energy costs. I get a bonus ROI from crypto on top, and I was able to put in a lot larger collector for the money off grid than most people because I didn't buy a big battery since I still have the grid to fall back on. I put in a tiny battery enough to run my inverters at peak load, and the rest gets dumped into crypto mining or in winter excess gets stored in water as heat energy in my boiler system. The solar energy alone without bonus ROI given the average warranty 30 year lifespan will net me about $300k+ at current energy values, and I expect energy to get more expensive over the system lifespan. It's >10x return on investment.

*Before I added the solar, I used about 10,000 kWh/year in electric and about 28,000 kWh of propane (1000 gallons) Now I'm electric+some wood and I 6x'ed my electricity usage to turn the extra energy into heat and money.

That’s pretty cold but keep in mind solar panels drop a significant amount of efficiency after only 15 years. That’s from Tesla so you think they would over sell it.
Either way that a cool setup.

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