I’m going to quote directly from half way down this page;
https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/supercharger
This is the UK specific official Tesla website., unedited quoted text below in red
Charging costs are approximate. Charging cost estimate assumes Supercharger cost of £0.20 per kilowatt hour. Fuel cost assumes 32.7 MPG at £1.14 per litre. Cost may vary depending on the vehicle location, configuration, battery age and condition, driving style and operation, and environmental and climate conditions.
So…
£0.20 per kWh, well, it’s not an unreasonable sum for a company buying in bulk.
If a gallon of gasoline is 34 kWh equivalent (the exact number depends on the specific blend) then the cost per kWh is also easily reached.
We’ll take Tesla’s numbers of £1.14 per litre, 4.54 litres per gallon, equals £5.18 per gallon, divide by 34 kWh = £0.15 per kWh
32.7 mpg? well I just completed a 550 mile run at a mean speed (checks gps logs) of 72 mph, not a “auto makers max economy” speed, in a 15 year old diesel car, and my actual miles per gallon over that journey was 52.02 mpg
But wait, back to the tesla web page and graphic, what’s this £90 supercharger (small print AFTER a credit) cost v £238 fuel cost, and whats this, based on 1,500 miles driven.
Well based on my real world trip yesterday 1650 miles will cost me £180 in diesel, not £238, and given the 3:8 claimed ratio (after credits and rebates) tesla supercharger v pump gas, AFTER a credit / rebate the tesla supercharger would have cost me around £100
I didn’t have to sit around for 30 minutes a time either, I left at 5 am and I was back home just after 2 pm, not bad for a real world 550 mile trip on real roads in the UK, adding 2 x 1 hour breaks (supercharger 30 minute charge is only a partial charge) would kill that.
I didn’t have to pay £45,000 for a car to do it in either.
Implicit in all these calculations is the notion that 99.9% of the time you are going to charge your tesla at home, for free, just plug it into the wall, move on quickly and don’t look at the bills.
What is certain is YOU won’t be buying electricity any cheaper than tesla, and YOU won’t be getting any rebate from yourself either, so the claimed / calculated £100 tesla cost excluded the full charge you had to do at home to commence the journey, and the full charge you had to do at home after the journey to “refuel” the car ready for the next day.
However all of this is neatly glossed over, after all, the sole purpose of the tesla supercharger network is to persuade people that an all electric car can roam further afield than say 25% of claimed max range…
Buy a Toyota (or any other brand) vehicle and things are easier, right there in the specs is the fuel tank capacity in litres, and various number for litres/100 km equivalent for urban/city/motorway economies, the Mercedes has a much bigger fuel tank than the micra, but it drinks it faster too.
No IC vehicle manufacturer lists “range”, not even bloody motorcycle manufacturers, who perhaps should, the 2017 triumph bobber, a 1200 cc motorcycle with a 9.1 litre fuel tank and a visordown test where the tank went from F to E in 74 miles, and the dash claimed 41.6 mpg.
I’m not stupid, I have a 1700 cc harley but at least it has a 19 litre gas tank.
But with electric cars it’s not battery bank kwh capacity and kwh per km in various use cycles, oh no, it’s “range”
I absofuckinglutely guarantee that all the sophisticated electronics in any modern EV can give you three decimal place accurate numbers for kwh per km, but, I have *NEVER* seen this mentioned anywhere.
But, we’ll go back to the triumph bobber, 9.1 litres @ 7.48 kwh/litre = 68 kwh
41 mpg = 9 miles per litre, so 9 miles = 7.48 kwh so 0.83 kwh per mile, and this is for a naked motorcycle.
Interestingly this figure is for energy consumed, there is zero breakdown of any kind for things like mechanical efficiency, pumping losses, road resistance, wind resistance, so we don’t know exactly where the energy is going, but we know how much is going to do a specific job.
Do the same numbers for my 15 year old diesel volvo and we have mean speed of 72 mph over 550 miles and 50 litres of fuel, diesel is 11 kwh per litre so 550 miles @ 72 mph for (50 x 11) =550 kwh, so 1 kwh per mile as opposed to the motorcycle getting 0.83 kwh per mile.
All perfectly reasonable numbers to any mechanical engineer.
Tesla model 3, standard 50-55 kwh battery back, long range 70-75 kwh battery pack, standard range 220 miles, long range 310 miles, so standard is 220 / 50 = 4.4 amd 310 / 70 = 4.42 so tesla is claiming 0.25 kwh per mile.
If we say that an IC engine is a thermal engine with 33% efficiency at converting heat to motion is fairly normal then at a stroke the motorcycle becomes 0.83 / 3 = 0.276 kwh per mile and the old diesel volvo shed becomes 1.0 / 3 = 0.333 kwh per mile
Suddenly there are numbers that aren’t a million miles from the tesla, and, again, this is all extremely reasonable to any even remotely competent mechanical engineer.
The rolling efficiency of the tesla isn’t anything special, the ONE trick it has is no trick at all, electrical motors are more efficient than heat engines…
And then we are reminded *why* the early electric vehicles (and steam vehicles, my dad used to own and run one commercially as a young man) were killed stone dead by the IC engine, the efficiency of the motor unit is just one factor, just one of many that go to make the whole.
So in effect 100% of Tesla’s USP applies equally well to any other all EV vehicle out there, by eliminating the heat engine you eliminate inefficient processes.
Electricity at a purported £0.20 per kwh from a tesla supercharger isn’t a cheap energy source compared to gasoline at tesla’s reported £1.14 per litre, because a litre of gas is 7.48 kwh and 1.14 / 7.48 = £0.152 p per kwh (I have talked elsewhere extensively about how all energy when priced per kwh is more or less equal in cost)
Tesla supercharger £0.20 per kwh and tesla model 3 0.25 kwh/mile means a quid’s worth of “fuel” will get you 20 miles, presumably at 30 mph
A quid’s worth of “fuel” in my old diesel shed will get me 10 miles at 70 mph.
So cost per mile on “fuel” only is at best half of an old diesel car.
Got a fleet of 1000 cars each doing 20,000 miles a year, that’s a *lot* of money.
*if* that is the only significant factor at play, and it isn’t.
The average car forecourt fuel pump will transfer 1 litre in 1 second, so ballpark 10 kwh/second, so 5 seconds to fill a standard model 3 from E to F, and 7 seconds to fill a long range model 3 from E to F, well round both up to 10 seconds, so excluding customers walking around, paying, buying drinks, 1 gas pump can refuel 3600 / 10 = 360 “tesla battery quick top up charges” in the time it takes one tesla supercharger to top up quick charge one tesla battery. We’ll include the walking around and divide it by 10 for 36
So a 24 pump (with three fuel selections on each) forecourt will keep the same amount of vehicles on the road as 24 x 36 = 864 tesla superchargers.
Suddenly even with tesla supercharger advantages, you need literally the entire service station car park to be converted to tesla supercharger stations.
At 50 litres a refuel one 30,000 litre tanker carries fill ups for 600 cars like mine, so in effect the fuel tanks under the ground at the gas station are like massive energy supercapacitors.
at 600 kwh per minute or 36 megawatt/hours per hour, one single gas pump is a room temperature superconductor… one that routinely has an EEV (electric equivalent) rating of 36 megawatts, by definition a tesla supercharger is going to be 40 kilowatt, and the home stations are 11 and 22 kilowatt.
Even with “so cheap s to be effectively free” fusion power plants, which we will *never* have because profit, so best case scenario is £0.05 per kwh but how many terawatts do you want? We face massive problems without supercapacitors of energy density beyond anything we can even dream of today, and room temperature superconductors (and meters and switches) that can be made to be as utilitarian and safe and cheaply as the humble gas pump.
This then is the *TRUE* achilles heel of the EV revolution, Musk *claims* the plan was always to make a crazy EV, then make a high end EV, then make a consumer EV, which the model 3 claims to be, but ain’t, it’s at least 2.5 times the price it needs to be.
However, the EV itself is a thing that can only have any success at all as long as it is only used by a tiny minority.
This is equally true of the vociferous cycling cures all zealots that infect urban planning nowadays, it only works if only a tiny minority use it, as I said yesterday it falls flat on its face as soon as you attempt to make it mainstream.
I do not actually know how much a tesla 50 kwh battery costs, how much it weighs, how much volume it occupies, I do however know these numbers for 5 litres of diesel.
I also know the “C” rate for a fuel tank… hey dude, don’t fill your vette so fast, you may overheat it and the whole thing will explode.
Basically NO battery technology (internal heat generation during *rapid* charge / discharge cycles) that will fit in a car can cope with multi megawatt flow rates, some future supercap *might*, but we do not have one today or anywhere on the horizon.
Basically no electrical technology (internal heat generation etc) that will fit in a car (safely, alongside passengers etc) can cope with multi megawatt flow rates, some future superconductor (and associated superinsulator) might, but again, there is nothing even remotely on the horizon.
If we had commercial fusion, splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen and bottling the hydrogen and shipping that around the country would still beat EV into the dirt as a power distro method
AT BEST electric vehicles can rid us of the 2/3rd power losses to heat of heat engines, that’s *with* hard future SF supercaps and superconductors… imagine a supercap 40 feet long and 10 foot in diameter that can store 300 megawatt hours of power…. because that’s what a 30,000 litre fuel tanker carries…. imagine a superconductor you handle with bare skin and so light a small child can wield it that can carry 36 megawatts.
Lacking this encouraging EV uptake is like encouraging cycling uptake, you better pray it never gets beyond a tiny minority uptake.
Lacking this EV’s are like bicycles, they are an extreme niche case.
What *should* scare the crap out of you is the *very* possible future where in 2020 *anyone* can buy a chinese mass made EV with 100 miles range for US$10,000.
“Second vehicles”… you’re old enough to remember or you arent, most households that had a vehicle had one that did everything or served the main purpose, the plumber who had a work truck, not a car, and him and the mrs would ride the work truck to a picnic on a saturday.
A 100 mile $10k EV would become the new second car, left to charge overnight at 3 kw, left to trickle the rest of the time, 0-60 of 12 seconds is fine, and then we’d see the impact that alone would have on electrical infrastructure and urban planning, and it would be nothing less than fucking catastrophic, because all of a sudden all those 5 mile shopping trips and commutes to work will come in at 0.25 kwh per mile, or at tesla’s £0.20 per kwh around 5 pence per mile, which blows fucking urban bus fares out of the water, and being brutally honest with you kills the cyclist model too, 90% of them will abandon cycling for the convenience of an enclosed EV k car that costs 5 pence per mile once you have bought it for $10k
And then overnight baseload for the grid (habitually a time for maintenance and so on) is ramped right up so grid and gen plant maintenance goes for a shit, and there is fuck all solar being generated at night, so only the few wind farms will be doing anything for it in the green sense.
And buddy, if half the world is walking around worrying about being affected by microwaves and emf and other shit, you’re in for a shitshow when 75% of the cars on the road in town are 100% manual drive $10k EV shitboxes, good luck when they all start sporting wifi hotspots and so on.
Legislation mandated that all modern cars have to have ODB interfaces, just imagine the fun you can have with that on an all electric EV that is basically a PC/CNC controlled machine, yes ossifer, my ev shitbox absolutely does not have arduino based hacks that increase motor current by 30% and remove the rpm limiter, no ossifer, that absolutely is not siphoning kit (shitbox to shitbox electric stealing cable) , no ossifer, that’s not wardriving the wireless firmware man in the middle device there to reverse the drive motor direction and invert steering wheel output so left is right, hey, here is a generic iron utility key (taper square shank) why pay for power when I can park next to a lamp post, and the thing I steal is both invisible and impossible to identify once stolen…. yeah man, I pass the charge through a bentonite filter to remove the red electrons so the state doesn’t know I’m running argi duty electric in my private vehicle.
And you think stolen cars scrapped for parts is an issue now?
So, for EV’s to be a raging sucess and the sucessor to IC, we need, absofuckinglutely need, three things.
1/ massively increase electric generating and distribution capacity, effectively doubling anything we have today as a minimum.
2/ supercapacitors, real sci fi ones, not the crap we get now
3/ superconductors, room temp ones.
and all of the above have to be commercially reliable and priced too.
Failing any of these, especially failing BOTH 2 and 3, means the EV isn’t anything more than a total fucking disaster waiting to happen.
Remember, the ONLY thing EV brings to the table over IC is efficiency, no thermal losses instead of 66% thermal losses, nothing else, so
Like this:
Like Loading...