[Chris_V]

Alright, time to put some numbers on the oil subsidies since people are just making convenient assumptions.

The US uses about 140 billion gallons of gasoline a year. Federal subsidies amounted to about $4.6B in 2016. So from what I'm seeing the federal govt subsidizes gas to the tune of $0.03/gallon- about $20/year for the average vehicle. And that's under the generous and likely wrong assumption that of that subsidy is going to fossil fuels for transportation, and not other stuff like natural gas, coal and oils used for other stuff. So for all intents and purposes the oil subsidies are not relevant. Nobody is making car buying decisions on $0.03/gallon.

Do you count the lives lost in wars for oil in that subsidies cost? And the billions spent on said wars? How many lives have been lost giving tax breaks to EV buyers?

And we bring up oil subsides because you bring up EV subsidies.

The IMF says we subsidize it considerably more in both direct and indirect subsidies...

https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fa...-closer-look-at-tax-breaks-and-societal-costs

The United States has spent more subsidizing fossil fuel in recent years than it has on defense spending, according to a new report from the International Monetary Fund.
The IMF found that direct and indirect subsidies for coal, oil and gas in the U.S. reached $649 billion in 2015. Pentagon spending that same year was $599 billion.
The study defines “subsidy” very broadly, as many economists do. It accounts for the “differences between actual consumer fuel prices and how much consumers would pay if prices fully reflected supply costs plus the taxes needed to reflect environmental costs” and other damage, including premature deaths from air pollution.
These subsidies are largely invisible to the public, and don’t appear in national budgets. But according to the IMF, the world spent $4.7 trillion — or 6.3 percent of global GDP — in 2015 to subsidize fossil fuel use, a figure it estimated rose to $5.2 trillion in 2017. China, which is heavily reliant on coal and has major air-pollution problems, was the largest subsidizer by far, at $1.4 trillion in 2015. But the U.S. ranked second in the world.

Now we can debate the actual direct and indirect cost of oil, because statistics and math can seemingly be invented for anything. But the real cost of oil isn't just in the direct grants to oil companies, but in the tax breaks and fighting to get cheap oil. I'm leaving out the environmental costs and deaths due to the burning of fossil fuels (the International Monetary Fund does not).

As the Atlantic says: "Fossil fuels also produce an enormous amount of energy at a fairly low cost—that’s why we use them in the first place. We depend on them because rich countries, such as the United States, have failed to invest in any other arrangement. But the fossil-fuel companies that have plotted and lobbied and coddled to prevent that investment aren’t doing so to preserve their trillions in subsidies. They want to keep us using their product, without thinking too hard about the cost."

 

[Air and water do mix]

As serious as people bringing up oil subsidies in a thread about EVs.

If someone gripes about electric car subsidies and doesn't allow for oil subsidies in the equation they're being disingenuous at best.

 

[CTK]

If someone gripes about electric car subsidies and doesn't allow for oil subsidies in the equation they're being disingenuous at best.

Well I put some numbers on those oil subsidies so we could compare apples to apples. By my math a four figure subsidy to purchase is a lot bigger and more effective than $20/yr spread out across every fossil fuel used. Maybe your math is different.

 

[AZGolf]

A couple pages ago somebody asked about the math about the power grid supporting EVs for overnight charging already. There's a lot of studies on the topic with the quick answer being roughly 60 to 130 million EVs supported by the existing power grid thanks to off-hours charging. There's a lot of "it depends" but smart chargers could be throttled to a certain power level that isn't much different from running A/C and your oven at the same time. The difference being the grid is designed to handle both A/C and an oven, water heater, lighting, and more at 5pm on the hottest day of the year. Car charging should be concentrated overnight when A/C demand is very low and lighting, ovens and water heaters, and so on are at minimal load levels.

So here's the easiest way to think about it: just about every building has A/C these days so adding a car charger that runs overnight when A/C use is low will have net zero impact even in the hottest days of summer. In the other 3 seasons it's an absolute non-issue because electricity use is so much lower nationwide at all times of day than the hottest hour of the hottest day of summer. That's what power grids are designed for: to be robust enough to cope with the highest A/C demand on the hottest day of summer.

Since the power grid already handles that, handling overnight car charging is easy in comparison. For specific numbers: a modest home A/C system will pull around 3kw. For drivers that do about 40 miles a day in a 3 kwh/mile car need to recover about 13.3 kwh of power. When charged over an 8-hour overnight time period that's 1.66 kw of power load. Repeating what's been said: it will take decades for EVs to even reach half of the total vehicles owned and it's those high-mileage road warriors who will be the very last ones to give up their ICE vehicles and switch to EVs anyway.

I think many people are mixing up power and energy. Sure, you might need 35% more energy but as long as the charging is overnight, you can draw 35% more energy per day while not drawing any more power. The grid is sized to a power level, not an energy level. To that extent, even the power plants are generally sized per power, not energy. They'll just need to use more fuel in order to draw more energy, which is a whole separate issue, and one that kind of fixes itself. Since ICE vehicles burn fossil fuels today already, using EVs means burning more fossil fuels in the grid, but generally a lot lower fossil fuel use in total since cars & trucks are usually only 20-35% thermally efficient even on a good day, and down in the 10% range on a bad day compared to electric generation plants which run around 50% efficiency.

Bottom line is that talking about the power grid is nonsense. Absolute nonsense. I can't imagine that when the refrigerator came out, people were running around demanding that nobody buy refrigerators because it will wreck the power grid. Then when the home light bulb came out, people were up in arms to stop anyone from buying lightbulbs. The electric oven? Forget it. Air conditioning? What a nightmare! Hair dryers? Designed to cook power lines, right? Except everything we've ever made that uses electricity we have simply sized power and energy to deal with. That's just how it works.

 

[Sporin]

US spends $81 billion a year to protect global oil supplies, report estimates

The United States military spends about $81 billion a year to protect oil supplies around the world and keep fossil fuels flowing into American gas stations, according to new analysis.

Securing America’s Future Energy, a think tank that advocates for reducing U.S. dependence on oil, released the study the same day President Donald Trump claimed that some Middle Eastern countries are pushing up crude prices while benefiting from U.S. military protection.

The $81 billion price tag is likely “very conservative” and doesn’t include the full cost of the 15-year war in Iraq, according to SAFE, whose CEO Robbie Diamond also leads the pro-electric car group the Electrification Coalition.

The estimate pencils out to 16-20 percent of the Defense Department’s annual base budget, showing the nation’s oil habit has a direct military cost, SAFE said. It also means the government subsidizes the cost of oil to the tune of $11.25 per barrel and the price of transportation fuels like gasoline and diesel by 28 cents a gallon.

Americans “spend somewhere around $3 per gallon, but we’re really paying a lot more because of all the operations in the Middle East,” said retired General Charles Wald, vice chairman and senior adviser at consulting firm Deloitte and a member of SAFE’s Energy Security Leadership Council.

Note the potential bias of the sources, but still.... hard to deny that a not-insignificant percentage of our military budget is directly related to securing and protecting the flow of oil.

A more in-depth breakdown and study of the numbers with the input of economists and such.

https://www.vox.com/energy-and-envi...l-subsidies-military-protection-supplies-safe


Energy and Geopolitical concerns are all directly related.

 

[CTK]

I don't think fridges ever drew the 6-7kW an L2 charger will.

I'm also pretty sure L2 chargers need 208V, which despite being single phase requires available 3 phase power which everyone doesn't have. That will be a pretty significant investment to make in the grid.

 

[Sporin]

And to add to my other post...

The US military uses more oil than any other institution in the world—but it’s also a leader in clean vehicle technology.

Published Jun 1, 2014

The US military is the largest institutional consumer of oil in the world. Every year, our armed forces consume more than 100 million barrels of oil to power ships, vehicles, aircraft, and ground operations—enough for over 4 million trips around the Earth, assuming 25 mpg.

[snip]

The military knows that using oil is a problem. That's why they’re pioneering innovative new ways to use less oil, without losing effectiveness.

Using hybrid-electric technology, the Navy’s USS Makin Island saved approximately one million gallons of fuel on her maiden voyage, and is expected to save more than $250 million annually. The Navy is also investing in advanced biofuels.

Meanwhile, a new hybrid-electric vehicle, developed by the Army in Michigan, offers the same payload, performance, and protection as a traditional HUMVEE, but with 90 percent better fuel efficiency and the capability to run silently.

 

[Unilateral Phase Detractor]

I'm also pretty sure L2 chargers need 208V, which despite being single phase requires available 3 phase power which everyone doesn't have. That will be a pretty significant investment to make in the grid.

L2 just uses one side of each leg in the circuit breaker box. Same as an oven or stove. 3 phase is possible but totally unnecessary and somewhat undesirable since it's slower than 240.

 

[Air and water do mix]

Well I put some numbers on those oil subsidies so we could compare apples to apples. By my math a four figure subsidy to purchase is a lot bigger and more effective than $20/yr spread out across every fossil fuel used. Maybe your math is different.

You might want to add the cost of the Gulf War and all subsequent actions in the Middle East to your totals, never mind the fact that you're cherry picking numbers and calling it complete.

Or you might not actually want to, because it doesn't work well for your side of the argument.

 

[Air and water do mix]

I don't think fridges ever drew the 6-7kW an L2 charger will.

Nobody's charging their cars with houses using knob and tube wiring, either, so his point is sound.

 

[Burnette]

No

So a couple things. First, let's consider what the best selling vehicles in Ohio are: (I think) Ford F-150, Honda CR-V, and Chevrolet Silverado. None of those vehicles has an EV competitor today, at any price. So it would be far more informative to compare BMW 3-series sales to the Model 3. Unfortunately I don't have those numbers.

Second, I'll point out locally, the Smart Columbus initiative made a goal to get 1.8% of car sales in the area to be EVs by the end of 2020. They already blew past it last year with 2%.

Third, many manufacturers *cough*HyundaiKia*cough* flat out refuse to sell EVs outside of clean air states even if you were willing to order one at full price (or higher!) and wait. This is purely the fault of those corporations, not a lack of demand. Keep in mind that a $47,000 Niro EV is almost guaranteed to break even if not make a tidy profit for the company. I know two people here who actually went to Maryland to buy one and drove it back (now possible thanks to Electrify America). But few average people are willing to travel out of state to buy a car.

No, you can't take the much smaller market of the Tesla and BMw ans equate that with your state at large, lol, that's not an accurate picture of what's selling the most in your state. BMW and Tesla don't represent the majority of buyers in your state nor do they have the volume to promote infrastructure investment.

First, your state, like most are buying trucks, CUV/SUVs. You're exactly right that there's no real EV competitor for these and again there's the bulk of your volume sales.

Second, you have to stop touting minuscule gains as huge gains. 2.8% to 3% isn't a huge gain and surely cannot be considered a trend. Normal market fluctuations can get you bigger differences than that.

Third, Hyundai, Kia, GM and all the rest wouldn't sell EVs at all if not for regulations nsking6thrm do so, they are money losers. There's no huge demand for EVs, they could only sale 1,170 of them in SC. And

And for consumers, even fewer people are willing to pay $47,000 Niro. We're saturated in vehicle choices, people who are driving serious mileage to attain EVs and pay that much for them are severe minority.

Again, you have to be honest, 4,700 EVs sold in my state, 4,509 EVs soldvon your state and 1.5% increase to either if those numbers isn't indicative of a trend of significance, it's barely a change and tells you the EV market is still locked in one state with one brand that doesn't generate volume for change outside of that state.

 

[Mike!]

A couple pages ago somebody asked about the math about the power grid supporting EVs for overnight charging already. There's a lot of studies on the topic with the quick answer being roughly 60 to 130 million EVs supported by the existing power grid thanks to off-hours charging. There's a lot of "it depends" but smart chargers could be throttled to a certain power level that isn't much different from running A/C and your oven at the same time. The difference being the grid is designed to handle both A/C and an oven, water heater, lighting, and more at 5pm on the hottest day of the year. Car charging should be concentrated overnight when A/C demand is very low and lighting, ovens and water heaters, and so on are at minimal load levels.

So here's the easiest way to think about it: just about every building has A/C these days so adding a car charger that runs overnight when A/C use is low will have net zero impact even in the hottest days of summer. In the other 3 seasons it's an absolute non-issue because electricity use is so much lower nationwide at all times of day than the hottest hour of the hottest day of summer. That's what power grids are designed for: to be robust enough to cope with the highest A/C demand on the hottest day of summer.

Since the power grid already handles that, handling overnight car charging is easy in comparison. For specific numbers: a modest home A/C system will pull around 3kw. For drivers that do about 40 miles a day in a 3 kwh/mile car need to recover about 13.3 kwh of power. When charged over an 8-hour overnight time period that's 1.66 kw of power load. Repeating what's been said: it will take decades for EVs to even reach half of the total vehicles owned and it's those high-mileage road warriors who will be the very last ones to give up their ICE vehicles and switch to EVs anyway.

I think many people are mixing up power and energy. Sure, you might need 35% more energy but as long as the charging is overnight, you can draw 35% more energy per day while not drawing any more power. The grid is sized to a power level, not an energy level. To that extent, even the power plants are generally sized per power, not energy. They'll just need to use more fuel in order to draw more energy, which is a whole separate issue, and one that kind of fixes itself. Since ICE vehicles burn fossil fuels today already, using EVs means burning more fossil fuels in the grid, but generally a lot lower fossil fuel use in total since cars & trucks are usually only 20-35% thermally efficient even on a good day, and down in the 10% range on a bad day compared to electric generation plants which run around 50% efficiency.

Bottom line is that talking about the power grid is nonsense. Absolute nonsense. I can't imagine that when the refrigerator came out, people were running around demanding that nobody buy refrigerators because it will wreck the power grid. Then when the home light bulb came out, people were up in arms to stop anyone from buying lightbulbs. The electric oven? Forget it. Air conditioning? What a nightmare! Hair dryers? Designed to cook power lines, right? Except everything we've ever made that uses electricity we have simply sized power and energy to deal with. That's just how it works.

Best post I've seen from you :beer:

I don't think fridges ever drew the 6-7kW an L2 charger will.

I'm also pretty sure L2 chargers need 208V, which despite being single phase requires available 3 phase power which everyone doesn't have. That will be a pretty significant investment to make in the grid.

You're demonstrating ignorance here. You don't need a business-style three-phase feed to install an L2 charger. The biggest hurdle on installs tends to be whether you only have 100A service instead of 200A... then you're limited in the breaker you can install (to code anyway) for the charger.

For people who only install a 220V 30A nominal circuit with a dryer plug for 24A charging, that's 5kW, which as it's a dryer plug is about the max a clothes dryer uses. It's not a crazy high draw overnight when surplus power abounds. And it's still enough for >15mi range per hour of charging.

 

[spockcat]

Perhaps a comparison like this is why Toyota feels they don't really need a BEV in their stable in the USA?

 

[tbvvw]

Regarding US government oil subsidies (and for coal & natural gas), I did some home work last night to learn more in terms of how much we spend, and what that means per capita, per gallon at the pump, etc. What I really came away with is that on a global scale, we, the US spends less than half of what China does and about the same as Russia and there isn't a single country in the world that uses gas, coal and or natural gas that doesn't subsidize it any more or less than the US does. The subsidies go fairly equally to both extraction and price control. Seems if the US stopped them, maybe a dollar per gallon at the pump more?...but the decades long contracts, formulas, and various intermingled deals make it impossible to figure out a true cost.

And...on a global scale in terms of reducing fossil fuel usage and improving emissions controls - cutting US oil subsidies probably wouldn't make a dent.

I'm fully aware that they are only there to continue our dependence to oil, coal and gas, but it's been that way since post WWII and every single one of the top carbons emissions countries have and use them the same way we do.

And if we removed all subsidies for all fossil fuels - none of us could afford to get out of bed in the morning - much less heat our homes, build infrastructure at current cost levels, afford any model of transportation, etc. For example, in 2016 there were over 400 electric plants in the US powered exclusively by coal, producing 30% of our country's electricity. In 2018 64% of all our electricity comes from fossil fuels, all those fossil fuels are subsidized.

So...let's stop all fossil fuel subsidies today, and see how that translates to how we power our houses, our businesses, our lives, and for the purpose of this topic, our EVs.

 

[CTK]

I can already anticipate the response to that post- the Camry Hybrid is not a Model 3 competitor, compared to a 3 series or whatever the Model 3 is a screaming deal, A BaSe MoDeL 3 cOsTs tHe SaMe AfTeR rEbAtEs. Cool, all fair points. A base Camry hybrid still destroys all Model 3s on range, and is far from the cheapest hybrid available. It can be and probably always is an only car and actually beats most EVs in emissions across much of the country, at least right now:

Most people don't need 600+ miles of range but legitimately getting half of that for a $25Kish MSRP would be nice.

 

[dhdd]

Regarding US government oil subsidies (and for coal & natural gas), I did some home work last night to learn more in terms of how much we spend, and what that means per capita, per gallon at the pump, etc. What I really came away with is that on a global scale, we, the US spends less than half of what China does and about the same as Russia and there isn't a single country in the world that uses gas, coal and or natural gas that doesn't subsidize it any more or less than the US does. The subsidies go fairly equally to both extraction and price control. Seems if the US stopped them, maybe a dollar per gallon at the pump more?...but the decades long contracts, formulas, and various intermingled deals make it impossible to figure out a true cost.

And...on a global scale in terms of reducing fossil fuel usage and improving emissions controls - cutting US oil subsidies probably wouldn't make a dent.

I'm fully aware that they are only there to continue our dependence to oil, coal and gas, but it's been that way since post WWII and every single one of the top carbons emissions countries have and use them the same way we do.

And if we removed all subsidies for all fossil fuels - none of us could afford to get out of bed in the morning - much less heat our homes, build infrastructure at current cost levels, afford any model of transportation, etc. For example, in 2016 there were over 400 electric plants in the US powered exclusively by coal, producing 30% of our country's electricity. In 2018 64% of all our electricity comes from fossil fuels, all those fossil fuels are subsidized.

So...let's stop all fossil fuel subsidies today, and see how that translates to how we power our houses, our businesses, our lives, and for the purpose of this topic, our EVs.

You just made their point for them

 

[tbvvw]

You just made their point for them

What, that they can't afford any mode of transportation without subsidies? Not even EV? If that's the goal, enjoy that. :beer:

It's a massive catch-22 for the next 25+ years. People that want a non-subsidized fossil fuel world and/or a electricity sourced only from renewables won't like the costs of either.

 

[CTK]

$3-4 gas (especially at 40-50MPG) is much more palatable than $40K "economy" cars. And let's not forget that the federal incentives are currently temporary.

 

[AZGolf]

Perhaps a comparison like this is why Toyota feels they don't really need a BEV in their stable in the USA?

(Camry Hybrid versus Model 3)

The Camry Hybrid is a dog compared to the Model 3 though, only 200 horsepower in the Camry hybrid. If they can offer the RAV4 Prime's 300 horsepower powertrain in the Camry then there will be a much easier to justify comparison between the Camry and Tesla Model 3. In fact to be honest - I'd probably even consider buying/leasing a Camry at that point if the pricing was competitive enough.

 

[Mike!]

I can already anticipate the response to that post- the Camry Hybrid is not a Model 3 competitor, compared to a 3 series or whatever the Model 3 is a screaming deal, A BaSe MoDeL 3 cOsTs tHe SaMe AfTeR rEbAtEs. Cool, all fair points. A base Camry hybrid still destroys all Model 3s on range, and is far from the cheapest hybrid available. It can be and probably always is an only car and actually beats most EVs in emissions across much of the country, at least right now:

Most people don't need 600+ miles of range but legitimately getting half of that for a $25Kish MSRP would be nice.

This is TCL. You have to at least mention the fact that every sane person here would prefer driving a Model 3 over a Camry Hybrid.

Also, you posted a map based on 2009 grid carbon intensity. This is 2016, and the grid has been greening further since with the continued decline in coal and increase in renewables,

https://blog.ucsusa.org/dave-reichmuth/new-data-show-electric-vehicles-continue-to-get-cleaner

Seventy-five percent of people now live in places where driving on electricity is cleaner than a 50 MPG gasoline car. And based on where people have already bought EVs, electric vehicles now have greenhouse gas emissions equal to an 80 MPG car, much lower than any gasoline-only car available.