Any GTAM'ers own an electric vehicle?

[caboose56]

When someone says they are getting an average of 6.5km/kwh, it's worth exploring how they beat the average by almost 35%.

I’m not sure what my average would be over the whole year.

If it’s warm enough to keep the cabin heat off I’ll get around 6.5km/kWh on my commute, which is all city driving around 60-70kph and that’s where an EV shines.

Is it really worth exploring how someone who drives an EV under its most ideal conditions can beat the average? Someone who drives an ICE purely on the highway will get better fuel mileage than someone driving the same ICE car in the city. That wouldn’t raise any eyebrows... your skepticism doesn’t make any sense.

 

[caboose56]

I’m not making it up.

 

[Mad Mike]

You're using figures based on all Volts from 2012 up, as mentioned before I have a 2018.

No, the numbers I used were EPA.

If you want to look at real averages reported by 450 2018 Volt users, you would see they managed an average of 46Kwh/100miles. Those 450 owners reporting their 2018 Volt OnStar numbers averaged 3.5km/kwh. You have a lucky Volt -- it's now almost twice as efficient!

That's it for me, not sure why I'm wasting time debunking myths. We know you love your car, we know you want her to win all the ribbons. If I told you my VSTROM was getting 125MPG, or I was getting 3.5L/100KM in my Cruze, would you believe me?

 

[GagguP]

That's it for me, not sure why I'm wasting time debunking myths. We know you love your car, we know you want her to win all the ribbons. If I told you my VSTROM was getting 125MPG, or I was getting 3.5L/100KM in my Cruze, would you believe me?

Not unless you had the proof to back it up. I've provided all my stats, don't have a reason to lie about it either.

 

[Mad Mike]

Not unless you had the proof to back it up. I've provided all my stats, don't have a reason to lie about it either.

Not saying anyone is lying, just that they may not know how to represent their facts. I'm pulling facts from VoltStats, a user group that shares results on mileage. There are 450 cohorts in the 2018 group, the average mileage is about 1/2 what you get. Next, your initial stats forgot to include 2 things: charging loss costs (+10%) and the fact you increased the mileage by not including free energy --when my wife fills my car with her money will that boost the MPG on my Cruze?

I know EV riders love their cars and are fierce about their decision. At 24Km /year, you might be able to justify an environmental statement, but not the economics of the car -- that is nearly impossible for most drivers.

At least use realistic figures not your one off bests, and include all the costs. If you are able to get double the average, share how you do it -- that would be new and interesting and may compel others to try EVs.

 

[caboose56]

At least use realistic figures not your one off bests, and include all the costs. If you are able to get double the average, share how you do it -- that would be new and interesting and may compel others to try EVs.

If my wife drives my car (once in a blue moon) she makes no effort to conserve energy. Her EV range sucks.

It’s not hard to maximize the EV range.
- Good tires properly inflated
- Regen braking as much as possible
- Lower acceleration
- Drive 50-70kph

It’s mostly the same physics that apply to any vehicle. There are many use cases in which an EV or PHEV isn’t the right tool for the job (previous owners of my Volt as an example) But if the use case suits a PHEV very well, its pretty easy to beat those averages in certain conditions (ie warmer weather and in the city).

And like I already said, if that average is based on summer/winter/city/highway then it looks pretty accurate. So no argument there.

 

[nakkers]

I must express a great big thank you to all the people that have contributed to this thread thus far.

Many myths have been busted and experiences of what is involved from a owner’s perspective. Charging, preconditioning, mileage, costs and practical use, range etc.

I’m a high mileage driver for work as well as pleasure so, I do take a lot of interest in the contributions to this thread.

And maybe there will be a time where it makes sense for me to own one.


Cheers!


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[Evoex]

Tesla gets creative with its Model 3 pricing to qualify for federal electric vehicle rebates

 

[GreyGhost]

Tesla gets creative with its Model 3 pricing to qualify for federal electric vehicle rebates

This is funny. Lawmakers need to stop trying to make complicated arbitrary rules. They just make more room for loopholes. Not even considering OTA updates is hilarious. Tesla could use the same loophole for s and x

 

[GagguP]

Not saying anyone is lying, just that they may not know how to represent their facts. I'm pulling facts from VoltStats, a user group that shares results on mileage. There are 450 cohorts in the 2018 group, the average mileage is about 1/2 what you get. Next, your initial stats forgot to include 2 things: charging loss costs (+10%) and the fact you increased the mileage by not including free energy --when my wife fills my car with her money will that boost the MPG on my Cruze?

At least use realistic figures not your one off bests, and include all the costs.

I believe I'm using realistic figures from my experience with the car, let me know where you think I'm off.
Charging losses were included as they programmed into my calculations (8% as I use a level 2 charger, not level 1). The JuiceBox Pro allows you to enter a % for EVSE Efficiency, mine is set to 92%.
I didn't include free charging in my initial stats because it didn't cost me or my wife anything. Charging done that did cost us $$ was included. I did however include it later and showed it only made a difference (on the high end) of $75 over the year.
The averages for wh/km and km/kWh however were not based on electricity used (charged by us) but on what we see in day to day driving over a year of driving, winter and summer ranges.

If you are able to get double the average, share how you do it -- that would be new and interesting and may compel others to try EVs.

As for how to do it, exactly this but it doesn't have to be accelerated slowly either. My wife is the one driving it the most and she does not drive slow/accelerate slow.

It’s not hard to maximize the EV range.
- Good tires properly inflated
- Regen braking as much as possible
- Lower acceleration
- Drive 50-70kph

I did take some pictures of the in car stats this morning on my drive, 11km city followed by 20km hwy and another 3km city. Total of 34km and 4.1kWh used. Over that drive I averaged 8.29km/kWh. The car wasn't plugged in overnight so the battery was not kept warm/at optimal temperature. I wouldn't consider outside temperatures in the "Winter" (-20*C) or "Summer" (30*C) range right now, kind of in between when we're sitting around 6-8*C. Range left on the GOM (Guess-O-Meter) after this drive was 72km, remaining battery at 71%, which means 29% used of the total 14kWh available. This equates to 4.06kWh used and screen shows 4.1kWh used. Unfortunately I don't remember exactly when I started the commute but I'll guesstimate at about 8:18, ended at 8:51, 34km over 33minutes puts me at an average speed of around 62km/h (morning commute/rush hour traffic) with the max hwy speed being 115km/h.
Start of drive:
External temp: 8*C
Battery temp: 11*C
End of drive:
External temp: 6*C
Battery temp: 13*C

Pics:

 

[PrivatePilot]

OnStar is NOT a resource to base consumotion figures on reliably.

For the 2 years we had OnStar in our 2012 Volt I got an email every month like this:

I don’t think I need to tell you that 425L/100KM and 30kwh/100KM are batshit crazy numbers. And that’s the actual email it sent me - just took that screenshot.

OnStars telemetrics is a steaming pile of dog excrement. The only reason I kept it was for the remote start, remote unlock, and roadside assistance and automatic crash alert feature. The rest was hopelessly bad.

 

[PrivatePilot]

On the topic of actual consumption, I have an energy monitoring setup at home on both our EVSE’s that measures every watt that passes through it. Yes, that will include all losses obviously - nothing sneaks past this meter, not even the single watt the LED’s on its display consume when it’s sitting idle.

Over the period of a week perhaps starting Monday I’ll track the exact mileage our new Ioniq travels and exactly how many kilowatts it required to go that distance.

 

[Mad Mike]

I believe I'm using realistic figures from my experience with the car, let me know where you think I'm off.
Charging losses were included as they programmed into my calculations (8% as I use a level 2 charger, not level 1). The JuiceBox Pro allows you to enter a % for EVSE Efficiency, mine is set to 92%.
I didn't include free charging in my initial stats because it didn't cost me or my wife anything. Charging done that did cost us $$ was included. I did however include it later and showed it only made a difference (on the high end) of $75 over the year.
The averages for wh/km and km/kWh however were not based on electricity used (charged by us) but on what we see in day to day driving over a year of driving, winter and summer ranges.


As for how to do it, exactly this but it doesn't have to be accelerated slowly either. My wife is the one driving it the most and she does not drive slow/accelerate slow.

I did take some pictures of the in car stats this morning on my drive, 11km city followed by 20km hwy and another 3km city. Total of 34km and 4.1kWh used. Over that drive I averaged 8.29km/kWh. The car wasn't plugged in overnight so the battery was not kept warm/at optimal temperature. I wouldn't consider outside temperatures in the "Winter" (-20*C) or "Summer" (30*C) range right now, kind of in between when we're sitting around 6-8*C. Range left on the GOM (Guess-O-Meter) after this drive was 72km, remaining battery at 71%, which means 29% used of the total 14kWh available. This equates to 4.06kWh used and screen shows 4.1kWh used. Unfortunately I don't remember exactly when I started the commute but I'll guesstimate at about 8:18, ended at 8:51, 34km over 33minutes puts me at an average speed of around 62km/h (morning commute/rush hour traffic) with the max hwy speed being 115km/h.
Start of drive:
External temp: 8*C
Battery temp: 11*C
End of drive:
External temp: 6*C
Battery temp: 13*C
....

That's a more informative post, you're explaining how you get great mileage. There is still a small error in the efficiency calculation -- you forgot to include charging costs. The actual mileage would be about 7.7km/kwh based on what the car is reporting.

A also noticed something else in your post "The car wasn't plugged in overnight so the battery was not kept warm/at optimal temperature." can you elaborate on how that works?

 

[GagguP]

A also noticed something else in your post "The car wasn't plugged in overnight so the battery was not kept warm/at optimal temperature." can you elaborate on how that works?

Usually when plugged in overnight, the car is set to charge the vehicle so it is ready to go by 7am (before peak prices kick in). Doing so lets the battery charge / warm up overnight in stages/intervals. See image below, the green peaks represent charging (time on X-axis, kWh on Y-axis).


When the car uses this method to charge the battery temperature is warmer due to charging and operates more efficiently. In this mornings case the car was not plugged in overnight and the battery was not warmer resulting in a little less efficiency compared to what could be achieved if it was charging overnight. In this case I didn't need to charge last night as the car was charged to 100% at a free charger before coming home.

Even including charging inefficiency and dropping from 8.29km/kWh to 7.7km/kWh, this is still higher than what I used in my initial post which was a high of 7.5km/kWh and low of 6km/kWh.

 

[SunnY S]

I must express a great big thank you to all the people that have contributed to this thread thus far.

.


You're welcome. Anything you really need to know about electrics, is found in Post number 2 of this thread. The rest is dribble.

/end thread

 

[PrivatePilot]

Yesterday we drove the Ioniq 208KM and the full recharge was 28.8kw overall, as measured going into the EVSE. So, to clarify, this includes losses and overhead.

And yes, we were in turtle mode when we got home, I ran it to the bottom for the purpose of getting this number.

This comes out to 13.3kwh/100KM.

This was using heat as desired for 90% of those 200KM.

In the summer months without heat demand and the battery in its happy place from a temperature perspective people report getting 250KM (or more) reasonably easy under the same conditions as yesterday, so some quick math shows at 250KM that would equate to 11.5kwh/100KM.

At 6.5c/kWh off peak for just north of 200KM thats $1.87 in electricity.

Yeah, I’m cool with that. Even an equivalent model year Prius would have have used around 9.3L of gas for the same driving (according to averages from fuelly.com) costing $12 with today’s average gas prices.

So hey, we saved $10 in one day.

 

[Mad Mike]

Where can you buy electricity without paying the +++ charges? Clarington has cheap electricity but it's not 6.5c/kwh - you are under estimating by about 1/3 as you forgot to include delivery, transmission loss, regulatory and HST in your fuel cost. You still did excellent, but you used $2.42 in juice.

 

[PrivatePilot]

Fair argument, but...it doesn't hold water.

We own a house with lots of other hungry electrical devices as well...IE, our hot tub in the backyard, pool pump in the summer (as well as the hot tub still), . In January (for example) the hot tub used 360kWh on it's own.

Looking back, using February as an example, my metering system shows that we used 1637kWh. My Volt used 22.7% of that, my wifes Volt used 20.7% of that, and the hot tub used 17.8% of that. The remainder were typical daily usage of the rest of the electrical loads in our house.

So, a not insignificant amount of our monthly use was, as would totally be expected for an EV owner (much less a multiple EV owner)...our EV's. But even the 2 of them together equalled less than 50% of our monthly usage.

56.6% of our monthly bill was electricity we would have used regardless if we owned EV's or not.

My argument comes into play in that many of the additional fees on your electricity bill are hard to exactly nail down (sliding scales, although that's being fixed in the coming years), and some you pay regardless WHAT you use that electricity for, and most importantly, regardless of how MUCH you use. In short, you're paying a lot of those fees even if you don't own an EV, so conflating those fees into the overall cost of the electricity used to power your EV is disingenuous.

A great example of that? If your electricity bills were (say, for example) $100/month before you bought an EV, and $120/month after you bought an EV and increased your actual electricity consumption by potentially 50% or more (but your bill by only 20%), is it a sound argument to say that simply dividing the total bill amount by kWh used is actually providing you an actual cost of those kWh's you're putting into your car?

Doing so suddenly has everything else in your house magically subsidizing your EV's electricity consumption, which again, is disingenuous to use as a calculation of actual costs.

So, yes, in the end, I like to go with the direct method view of calculating kWh consumed by the cost per kWh. This is the true actual cost of the electricity used.

 

[FullMotoJacket]

My argument comes into play in that many of the additional fees on your electricity bill are hard to exactly nail down (sliding scales, although that's being fixed in the coming years), and some you pay regardless WHAT you use that electricity for, and most importantly, regardless of how MUCH you use. In short, you're paying a lot of those fees even if you don't own an EV, so conflating those fees into the overall cost of the electricity used to power your EV is disingenuous.

A great example of that? If your electricity bills were (say, for example) $100/month before you bought an EV, and $120/month after you bought an EV and increased your actual electricity consumption by potentially 50% or more (but your bill by only 20%), is it a sound argument to say that simply dividing the total bill amount by kWh used is actually providing you an actual cost of those kWh's you're putting into your car?

Doing so suddenly has everything else in your house magically subsidizing your EV's electricity consumption, which again, is disingenuous to use as a calculation of actual costs.

Have you ever considered a side gig as an economist for the federal Liberals?

 

[Mad Mike]

Fair argument, but...it doesn't hold water.

???

We own a house with lots of other hungry electrical devices as well...IE, our hot tub in the backyard, pool pump in the summer (as well as the hot tub still), . In January (for example) the hot tub used 360kWh on it's own.

Looking back, using February as an example, my metering system shows that we used 1637kWh. My Volt used 22.7% of that, my wifes Volt used 20.7% of that, and the hot tub used 17.8% of that. The remainder were typical daily usage of the rest of the electrical loads in our house.

So, a not insignificant amount of our monthly use was, as would totally be expected for an EV owner (much less a multiple EV owner)...our EV's. But even the 2 of them together equalled less than 50% of our monthly usage.

56.6% of our monthly bill was electricity we would have used regardless if we owned EV's or not.

OK, so far so good.

My argument comes into play in that many of the additional fees on your electricity bill are hard to exactly nail down (sliding scales, although that's being fixed in the coming years), and some you pay regardless WHAT you use that electricity for, and most importantly, regardless of how MUCH you use. In short, you're paying a lot of those fees even if you don't own an EV, so conflating those fees into the overall cost of the electricity used to power your EV is disingenuous.

They are not hard to nail down. If you live in Clarington, look here: Residential Electricity Rates - Veridian Connections

A great example of that? If your electricity bills were (say, for example) $100/month before you bought an EV, and $120/month after you bought an EV and increased your actual electricity consumption by potentially 50% or more (but your bill by only 20%), is it a sound argument to say that simply dividing the total bill amount by kWh used is actually providing you an actual cost of those kWh's you're putting into your car?

Your logic is good however is would never be done this way as you're thinking depends on a constant monthly energy cost for every thing.

Doing so suddenly has everything else in your house magically subsidizing your EV's electricity consumption, which again, is disingenuous to use as a calculation of actual costs.

So, yes, in the end, I like to go with the direct method view of calculating kWh consumed by the cost per kWh. This is the true actual cost of the electricity used.

No -- there is where you are wrong. Your actual cost is the sum of all the metered parts + taxes. If I used your logic on my gasoline costs, I'd be using about 85cents per litre today.

There are some flat fees, since you're already paying those I agree they are not necessary to include in the cost of energy. You only counted one of the metered fees, your 6.5 cent electricity cost. Metered fees are added to the 6.5cents for every kwh used, together they make up your kwh cost. If you live in Clarington, here's what prime time looks like per kwh :

Electricity $0.06500
Loss Adjustment: 0.0482 $0.00313
Transmission $0.01120
Distribution $0.00030
Wholesale Service Charge $0.00340
Rural Rate Protection $0.00050
Subtotal $0.08353
----------
GST 5% $0.00418
Total $0.08771