The Vehicle that comes closet to your high estimate of EV cost is the Tesla 3 around $74,000 on the road all the other models mentioned are 10 to 20 thousand dollars less. Just on Petrol alone if you spend from $50 to $100 a week thats $2,600.00 to $5,200.00 per year less your spending, the cost of services are almost nil so in 10 years or less you would have saved enough to buy another $50,000 EV. Yes the batteries can last that long and with small SUV’s like the MG (from China) and Volkswagen I.D. becoming available EV’s are only getting cheaper. Watch out next year with the possible release of many Robust large SUV’s from Tesla,Ford,Rivian,BMW,Audi etc. So EV owners in some states have a choice of Electric providers that only supply Renewable Energy and this can only grow in number. As are the numbers of people who have Solar that can charge their car and if they are fortunate can be 100% clean with Battery backup. The solutions have been around for a decade but with relentless Large SUV’s Ads showing them blasting through outback areas and Cities with no Traffic and a PM that claims your weekends will be stolen by Electric Vehicles the Spin is favouring consuming more Oil not less…
If using domestic solar, one has to consider the capacity of the vehicles battery, the mileage driven between charges and also the required capacity of a domestic solar system when residential use is also included in the equation.
As some vehicles have large battery capacities (90kW and up to about 400km), it is unlikely that an existing domestic solar PV system will have the necessary capacity to allow regular EV charging…without a significant upgrade.
With an average house using about 20kW per day, an additional 13kW would need to be generated if a 90kW EV needed to be fully charged weekly (or total over a weeks use). This corresponds to about 33kW/day or a minimum domestic 8kW PV system with sufficient battery storage to cover daily use including EV charging (possibly minimum 30kW battery storage assuming every day the battery was fully charged).
Importing of electricity from the grid to charge EV will be still required in most circumstances, unless the household is a low user of electricity and significantly less weekly mileage is done.
Really? I thought it was about 18 in Oz? Various gov web sites have a family of 4 with all mod cons including a pool using 41, while other smaller families with more limited use are down as low as 8.
Whoops, the figure is about 20kW from the AER. It varies State to State.
Have amended the above post…
The Hyundai EV Ioniq has a 28 kWh battery so almost most people’s daily generation (if not more than this generation) to fully charge one, but if used for small runs and charged daily perhaps not such a big hit. Still a substantial hit even if only 10 kWh of energy needed. I agree most will need outside supplementation of their energy supply to keep the cars charged, why we need to see much more offering of roadside charging stations eg in current Service Stations, Shopping Centres. We also need to develop much more robust battery tech to support Fast Charging so that battery life is not reduced (@Fred123 and others have posted info about developments in these areas).
My partner and I and adult daughter use 6.2 kWh average per day as stated by our bill. I have 5.2 kw Solar Panels that provide between 6.4 and 4.5 kWh per day depending on Season. Yes I would need probably another 2Kw of Solar Panel to charge an Electric Car but selling some of it back to the grid would partially subsidise the low night rate to charge so little need for a battery but I would get one once the cost came down. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDmOwnc4A38 This is an extreme example but points to a future where you can run a household with two Teslas and a decent house completely off the grid even in snowy weather.
Only 6.4 kWh or less of power from a 5 kW system? Something wrong with placement and/or the system. 5 kW should produce about 4 kw X at least 6 hours of generation a day if well installed so at around 24 kWh per day. You might need to get it checked. Even 1.5 kW of panels in a good placement would produce 6 or maybe more kWhs of energy per day unless you have a lot of cloud cover.
Perhaps for some people that level of use may be the norm. For some more typical statistics.
Choose your vehicle, from a small modern hatch which may average honestly 8-9l/100km in the city to the 11.5l/100km of our larger SUV with a more rural environment.
We purchase around 1,500l/yr of fuel, of just under $2,000 at current local averages, ($20,000 over ten years). Well short of the suggested
@r333r does present a compelling example for replacement of any high use vehicle. For anyone prepared to make the long term investment, over ten years replacing a family hack that does 30-40,000km annually does have a pay back? Of course who are those owners who could contemplate keeping a vehicle for 400,000km, and have a spare $80,000 to invest?
This sort of use resembles a Taxi or Uber or company shared fleet car. If there is going to be a revolution in EVs in Australia should we be asking why these sectors have not charged in to be the leaders in EV ownership? And don’t forget the tax savings?
P.s.
I do appreciate
Great points.
Our spend on fuel atm is a more moderate $25 or so a fortnight so about $625 a year. 10 years to account for extra trips maybe $7,000. Services that cost about $300 3 times a year so $900 and over 10 years $9,000. I won’t add tyres or other similar consumables as EVs still need them so a total around $16,000 in 10 years. Not a saving for us to buy an EV over a smaller compact type car plus fuel and servicing (mind you EVs still need servicing just not sure of their costs) as it would cost us perhaps $36,000 or a little more to get and use a fossil fuel vehicle over that 10 years. kWhs still cost money to produce and this is just hard to put a figure on by me (I just don’t know the cost) but an EV user still will have to account this cost as well as the car purchase.
The savings for us moving to an EV are not so much for us as they are for the environment and our descendants with the reduction in emissions from, and the use of, fossil fuel usage. I am sure as I noted above as more EV cars are manufactured many costs will come down in the purchasing area. Perhaps these should be the strongest arguments mounted by many as the reason for moving to renewables as fuel.
A nom 5kW PV system producing 8,000kWh annually produces electricity at 6.25c/kWh. $5,000 upfront cost, simplified over ten years for return on investment. There are losses in converting this to battery storage in an EV of around 10%. Tesla fuel use is oft quoted at around 5km/kWh. That’s 20kWh/100km, or $1.25! Three to five times higher if purchased off the grid.
The other missing cost or unknown will be the future road user tax on EVs. Currently the nations roads are part funded through petroleum and diesel fuel excise, which is not collected on EV use. It might add another $40/1,000km to the cost of EV ownership in the near future?
Thanks @mark_m for the costings. It matters to account for the cost even if it is less than fossil fuel cost. It isn’t a totally free resource.
A number or factors…
- high initial capital costs that either the owner or ride share/taxi needs to outlay.
- these cars will travel more than the average driver (taxis used to cover >100,000km per year. EV still take a long time to charge than ICE vehicles. It could be expected that a EV vehicle would need charging one or more times per day…and the down time will be dollars.
EDIT: The rideshare taxi companies are also bleeding money (are not making a profit and may never make a profit) and they would not want to take on anything which could potentially make the blood flow even faster. It would quickly kill the business.
Many people who are personally paying big money for EV’s, Solar Cells and Batteries are doing so for a Cleaner/Better Future the source of Energy the Sun is Free as is Wind. So as economies of scale happens (eg:Building Millions of EV’s and Batteries etc) and technology improves efficiencies the price of EV world will drop dramatically. In 1880 Cars were far more expensive (only the Rich could afford them) than horse ownership. Roads barely existed for them to travel very far on. Range Anxiety OMG almost no Petrol Station network. Luckily people 140 years ago saw a more advanced future and through Taxpayers building infrastructure and Oil companies building Petrol outlets and Cars being made on production lines 20 +years after the early cars they started to become affordable to the masses and the rest is history. Roads are already there, There is already an Electrical Grid in Place, the Leaf and Miev built in 2010 have become an affordable used car and new ones are coming down in price quickly. In the USA there are a few like GM Bolt, Tesla 3, Nissan Leaf at around $35,000 US. What price polluted Air, What price fighting Wars in the Middle East to keep Oil supplies going? The future is EV transportation and many countries embrace it. Australia can only think of the EV cost not the benefits.
I was talking about how much we use per day (included the night) off Grid and Solar the rest is sent back to the grid and we get paid about a third for our solar that we are charged from taking from the grid. This reduces our Bill down to about $170 a quarter.
I can only agree with much of your statements as can be seen from a previous post I made:
Many on this site also see the same things you do and support the move to renewables and their use in our lives in things like energy production, and transport and heating and cooling. I think a lot of Australians also see the benefits just sometimes those voices can get lost in a political wilderness. I think the current support Aus wide stands at about 70% (a significant proportion of the population).
I expect it has been done but I haven’t seen anything in mainstream news on evaluating hydrogen fueled vehicles and conversion of the many existing ICE vehicles.
Apparently the conversion has been done several times over the years. Many modern H2 vehicles seem to be going for fuel cells. A quick search did not reveal any comparison of either set-up costs or running costs of the two approaches. My guess is that fuel cells are more expensive to build but cheaper to run as they are more efficient. It looks to me that this issue has been somewhat overshadowed by questions of methods of generation, and safe storage and transport.
This may answer some questions in relation to why not…
The downsides look fairly straight forward, forgot about Nitrogen along for the ride through the combustion chamber.
The NOx pollution problem can be solved, but what is the cost? Or will fuel cells do it instead?
My prognostication is that the recharge and range problems will be solved for batteries before the distribution and efficiency problems will be for H2 vehicles so it doesn’t matter.
There are fortunes to be made and lost in times of change. The scenario where Oz makes H2 out of sun and wind power and exports it is a pretty idea imagined by those whose minds are stuck in a lucky country exporting mineral wealth mindset. All those coal and ore boats and gas boats, full of tangible wealth make them tumescent. Even better they want a future where shares in fossil fuel still have value making ‘clean’ Hydrogen. Expect to hear many attempts to spin the future in the direction of heart’s desire. The future will be what it will be though, stranger and different.
