Running out of Energy

[Anthony Poli]

On 9/26/2022 at 10:20 PM, Cyker said:

Yeah, that's why I'm now in the lead vs my Model 3 owning mate - Currently at 78-ish mpg and found a Shell selling petrol for 153.9/L!  

I was already getting close with the decline of petrol prices, but when his Supercharging fees got hiked to 60p/kWh that pushed it well over the edge. Will be interesting to see which one of us gets hit harder for the winter drop tho'!

Now, there are ways to do it cheaper with an EV - Lucking out on a cheap rate is good, although I feel out of reach of most people now, but an even more extreme example is if you had a big enough stationary battery and lots of solar panels, but I feel these sort of things are edge cases and not really representative of what a normal person has easy access to. If we were allowing edge-cases in the comparison, that'd be like me saying I could run my old Mk1 D4D for free on my mate's home-made biodiesel - When I was having a heated argument with an EV person many years ago over running costs, he tried to use home and solar charging against my diesel, so I tried to trump it with my mate's home-made bio-diesel, which was deemed unfair... we eventually agreed that comparisons had to be made with stuff that's common and publicly accessible otherwise you can make up any old horse**** to try and win the argument.

I tend to discount the cheap rates as, to my knowledge, nobody is offering cheap off-peak rates to new customers any more; I'm told Octopus will sometimes let new people on their EV tariff if you know who to ask, but their cheap-rate period is still only for a very short period at night time (Like, 4 hours IIRC), and not enough to fully charge any EV with range to compete with my Mk4.

It's likely night-time cheap rates will go away anyway - As EVs increase in popularity, they will soon exceed the night-time base-load, which is only provided by nuclear and gas turbines, and randomly by wind. With the increase in solar generation, which only works during the day, I reckon the cheap rates (if they continue to exist) will start to shift to the day-time instead.

At my local Tesco the locals leave their cars plugged into the free chargers and go back home.

Still at supercharger prices I'm still doing better than the hybrid that I used to drive. Hopefully they won't dilute the petrol any further, so much for them saying it won't have any major impact on economy.

[Cyker]

Out of curiosity, how much do you get charged for supercharging?

I thought it was a flat rate but it seems some people are getting charged different amounts depending on location??

 

[Anthony Poli]

5 minutes ago, Cyker said:

Out of curiosity, how much do you get charged for supercharging?

I thought it was a flat rate but it seems some people are getting charged different amounts depending on location??

 

The price varies between locations, plus there is talk of off peak rate being introduced. Normally I use pod point (the cheapest/free chargers near me), only use superchargers if I'm short of time and already on the motorway.