What fee at a charging stations makes it worth the cost (vs gas)?

$1.15 a what? Some charge per hour, some charge per minute. Some charge per kilowatt delivered. Some charge just for parking there.

If you get charged per hour, and you have a vehicle that can take a 220vac fast charge, then maybe it is worth it. If you plug in with a slow charge 115vac charger you pay essentially double right off the bat. If it is done by KW, then it doesn't matter if it takes you 1 hour or 1 day to charge, it would be the same price.

And of course it depends on how much gas is in your area, and how much electricity is at home.

And then all of that only matters if your goal is to save money. And if your only goal was to save money, then you bought the wrong vehicle. If your goal is to reduce your emissions, then charge everywhere with clean grid energy and don't use gas.

Way to many variables for a one size fits all equation. But the numbers are really not hard, it is just a bunch of single variable algebraic expressions with all the factors for your area and your personal choices included.

 

I've been thinking about this myself, and thought about it this way:

• I get about 60mpg
• Gas cost is around $3.90/gallon for me right now
• Comes out to about $0.065 per mile
• I can usually drive around 12mi on EV
• 12mi EV comes out to $0.78 based on my daily charge at home + gas
• My office has a charging station that cost $0.50

In my case, I'm ahead of the cost curve already. The final analysis would be to adjust the costs involved when I recharge at work, thus using 24mi on EV a day, compared to the average 12mi EV I do right now. Hope this helps. I'm still trying to sort it all out.

 

Too many moving parts to get an truly accurate stare and compare....and besides.
If you have that much skin in the game, it's not supposed to be about the cost.

Gas is 3 bucks a gallon and I get 50 MPG.
Easy math.
About 6 centavos per mile measuring just the fuel cost.
If you have a Pip...that buck fifteen will net you 10 miles...or fifteen centavos a mile. Not bad considering the convenience factor.
Anything more detailed than this very simple glimpse will quickly turn into the AGW argument.
Numbers and emotion with wildly different but arithmetically "correct" arguments.

It's like using land prices to justify parking meter rates. You can "justify" just about anything that YOU are willing to spend.

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for a L1 or L2 charging period?

 

Even at L2, $1.10 per hour isnt worth it.

For the sake of simplicity, if we call a full charge 3.3 kW and we assume L2 charging takes 1.5 hours, then 1 hour of charge would get you about 2.2 kW.. even at 220 watts/mile (which would be 15 miles of EV on a 3,3 kW charge), you'd be getting 10 miles of EV with $1.10 worth of charge. Assuming you can get 50MPG on gas, using the charging station would be the equivalent of paying $5.50 per gallon for gas.

Disclaimer: Sorry if I screwed up the kW vs kWh.. I always get confused, but you get the idea

 

I also consider the fact that in some cases it's like free Valet parking with the cost of a charge. At some malls and such the charge stations are literally right at the front door. If it costs a 1.50 then yeah it's not really worth it for the cost of gas alone but if you look at it as 50 cents for gas and 1$ to not have to hoof my 18 month old and wife through a parking structure then atleast to me at that point it becomes worth it.

 

depending on the source of the electricity, and your viewpoint of foreign oil, etc., and love of electric driving, it may be worth it to pay more than the equal value of gas.

 

L2, 1 1/2 hours or less.

 

It basically translate to $2.00 a full charge including taxes. In my opinion not worth it for every day recharge expenses. It's more economic to paid for gasoline...

 

The cost for a full charge is different based on measured time interval for payment:

1. By the minute: ~$1.61 for a full charge.
2. By the hour: $2.30
3. By the length of time plugged: varies depending on how long you leave it plugged in

Also, to get the most energy at the least cost, you can unplug before the last 10 minutes of charging where it is charging at half power. This gives you about 93% charge for 87.5% of the cost of a full charge (if measured by the minute). If measured by the hour, unplugging before the hour is up will give you a 75% charge for the cost of an hour. The charger may also have a few minutes grace (Blink has a 5 minute grace before they charge you for the next hour) to squeeze out a little more charge.

 

Not worth it unless free.

 

62 minutes of Level 2 charging last night got me about 90% of a charge at a Blink charger. Cost was $1. I find that it rarely takes more than 75 minutes to get a full charge at Level 2. I'll have more data points after Monday, when my Leviton Level 2 gets installed at home. Gas is close to $4 per gallon here, and I average 50MPG on gas alone, so it's close enough to break even for me, especially since it prolongs the amount of time before I have to go gas up.
Compared to charging at home, it's not economical at all, since a full charge costs me $.18-$.21 at the residential rate.

 

Everyone is doing slightly different math. As already said, there are a lot of variables at play here. I try to simplify it as much as possible using round numbers. 50 miles using gas. 10 miles using kWh. A full charge gets me 1/5 the distance a gallon of gas would go. Gas is $4 right now. So 1/5 of $4 is 80 cents per charge.

And for your situation just multiply by 5. $1.15 per charge is like $5.75 a gallon for gas.

 

I look at it this way.

If gas costs $3.60/ga. and you get 50mpg then you pay $0.072 cents per mile.

If you can get 12 miles on a full charge then you would need to pay less than $0.864 cents for that charge to do better than gasoline.

The math:

Price of gas / mpg = cost per mile

EV miles * cost per mile = maximum $ per charge to equal using gasoline

 

Too bad folks don't think that about gasoline. But - it's not worth it unless free? People say there's no such thing as a free lung ... but there is such a thing as free charging ? Iow ... someone always pays. If you 'only' pay $4 gas ... it's because your trillion dollar war machine (bankrupting your country) is continually protecting 'your' interest to drive on nearly free gas ... substantially less than much of the rest of the world pays for the same gas. If it's free, it just means it's on somebody else's back. We all SAY that we want a level playing field ... but in reality, not so. We really like subsidies ... but only when the subsidy is for ME. Don't get me wrong ... I like free. I like the cost of outdoor EVSE's being eaten by someone else ... and their install cost ... and its maintenance cost ... and its insurance cost ... and the 'free' electricity they suck off the 'free' grid.

But yea, if gasoline fill-up costs were more than double ... and actually covering all of gasoline's 'real' costs ... then all those $2/hour EVSE's would be nicely priced. I know that's a bit too much of a reality dose for lots of people. Every 3 seconds, a child dies of starvation somewhere in the world . . . and the gasoline to free electrify ratio bothers me more. That just show how F'd up I am. Oh well.
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I guess I'll find out whenever they put charging stations up around here, maybe in ten years or so. In the meantime, I charge up for free at work.

 

I think the charging stations jack up prices since BEVs have no gas backup.

With such an efficient gas mode, I'm not willing to pay 5x to 10x more to chg at a station compared to PGE which has pretty clean generation. Now if only my work would give us access to at least a standard outlet...