[Doug D]

We never had a TV remote until the mid-1990s, so we never had a 'clicker'. We didn't have color TV until 1978, and that was a 10-yr old hand-me-down from my grandmother.

I don't remember precisely when we got our first color TV, but it was in the late '60's or early '70's. Didn't have a "clicker" until the late '70's. Every TV we've had since the late '80's always had a remote.

Do you still "hang up" your phone? Dial your phone?

Yep. In addition to the cell phones, we still have a landline so on the very rare occasion we answer the landline phone we do "hang up" at the end of the call and if we use that phone we have to dial. Speaking of dialing, the last rotary dial phone we had was in upstate NY (left there in 1976). When we moved to VA, I think we had a digital phone.

 

[Dave Z]

I still do hang up the phone. Admittedly I don't dial. The Roku remote does click but I don't think it's supposed to.

My first remote was a wired unit for a VCR circa... 1990?

 

[habu987]

I have a Kia Sorento PHEV and plug it in whenever it's parked, so I charge at a mix of peak and off-peak pricing.

Depending on where I charge (work or home), I pay between $0.13-0.16/kwh. I get about 30-31 miles on a full charge, so that comes out to around $2 for a full charge from zero for the ~14kwh battery, give or take. When the car runs in hybrid mode, I get ~32mpg, so there's a pretty large delta between the ~$3.60 I'd pay for gas vs the ~$2 I pay to charge it up.

ETA: I just looked up my charging history. Looks like a full charge is a bit under 13kwh, so that improves the math a bit more. Also to note, the $0.13-0.16/kwh is the full charge with all the taxes and fees added in, taken from my monthly electric bill. The actual electricity part of it comes out to $0.08-0.10/kwh.

 

[tabutler]

Motor Trend - How Much Does it Cost to Charge an Electric Car by State?

 

[Dave Z]

The variable rate’s interesting.

Looking at my bill - holy moley, it's almost all gas!!

Electric's 19¢/kW including all service charges. Rather high! But let's see... if you put in 13 kW to get 30 miles, that's 0.43 kW per mile. I get around 31 mpg (mostly city) now, so I don't actually have to do the math, it's the same 13 kW you get per charge, or roughly $2.50 vs $3.30 for gasoline. (My actual cost for just the power is 13¢.)

My electric bill has $5/month service charge so really electricity is 17.8¢/kW... I guess $2.31 is the real number to compare. Assuming I'd get the same mileage in your Sorento which is a bigger vehicle than I drive.

Combined is tougher for my wife's car which has low city mileage (around 19-20 mpg).

 

[mentalicca]

The variable rate’s interesting.

Looking at my bill - holy moley, it's almost all gas!!

Electric's 19¢/kW including all service charges. Rather high! But let's see... if you put in 13 kW to get 30 miles, that's 0.43 kW per mile. I get around 31 mpg (mostly city) now, so I don't actually have to do the math, it's the same 13 kW you get per charge, or roughly $2.50 vs $3.30 for gasoline. (My actual cost for just the power is 13¢.)

My electric bill has $5/month service charge so really electricity is 17.8¢/kW... I guess $2.31 is the real number to compare. Assuming I'd get the same mileage in your Sorento which is a bigger vehicle than I drive.

Combined is tougher for my wife's car which has low city mileage (around 19-20 mpg).

Maybe we start using $/100 miles to compare? Similar to how gallons/100 miles is better than mpg for measuring fuel economy. In my area, the electric rate is ~$0.13/kwH (fixed price for the next 5 years allegedly). When I did the math, I came to $0.07/mile, so about $7/100 miles. My 2013 Charger SXT AWD gets about 20 mpg in my surburban driving (less if it's more stop and go). That's right around $17/100 miles at current gas prices around my area. My SRT Durango is about 15 mpg, and with premium that's ~$27.5/100 miles.

 

[Doug D]

It's definitely a apples-to-apples comparison.

My SRT Durango is about 15 mpg, and with premium that's ~$27.5/100 miles.

My '06 Ram 1500 get about the same fuel mileage with the local driving I do and using 87 octane the cost is $23.27/100 miles. $25.27 with 89 octane.

 

[Bob Lincoln]

I started planning ahead for eventual EV purchase and comparison several months ago.
I took a typical size battery pack, 75 kwh, into consideration, and my driving of 22,000 miles per year. I assumed 150 miles per charge, worst case, cold weather. That gave me 2 miles per kwh.

Using that, you can calculate the cost per mile. In my case, our electric went up after many years of no change, to 20 cents per kwh. So that gives me 10 cents per mile cost for 'fuel'.

Gasoline costs me $3.10 currently, and I average 29 mpg. So my cost per mile for gasoline is 10.6 cents per mile. PARITY.

Now when you consider the maintenance and repair that doesn't exist with EVs, I found that looking at what I had had to do over the years amounts to $4100 maintenance and $750 repairs for 160K miles. If I eliminate those items that don't exist/can't fail with electric, I cut away 1/3 of the cost of that $4850. So now I'm at 2 cents per mile for maintenance and repairs combined with EV.

When you consider that at this point I might have to replace the battery pack and then get another 150K miles out of it, the cost to amortize the battery pack at $10K replacement is 7 cents per mile.

ICE: Fuel, maintenance and repairs for my Chrysler 200 add up to 14.5 cents per mile, real-world data. That's mostly with my free labor. It would be more for those who don't do their own work.
EV: Calculated fuel, maintenance and repairs add up to 12 cents per mile.

WE'RE THERE.

 

[Dave Z]

Bob, you are also using worst case electrical use for the EV against standard fuel use. That works for a "worst case" but the numbers are better than they seem.
For other people... you have a rather high electric rate! Does that include the monthly distribution fee you have to pay anyway? I found $5/month there which accounted for around 2¢/kWh.

 

[valiant67]

I get to charge for a penny/kWh so 15 cents gives me 21-25 miles of driving in the Wrangler 4xe. Yes, I pay a set monthly base fee, but I’d be paying that even without the car charging.

 

[gforce2002]

Maybe we start using $/100 miles to compare? Similar to how gallons/100 miles is better than mpg for measuring fuel economy. In my area, the electric rate is ~$0.13/kwH (fixed price for the next 5 years allegedly). When I did the math, I came to $0.07/mile, so about $7/100 miles. My 2013 Charger SXT AWD gets about 20 mpg in my surburban driving (less if it's more stop and go). That's right around $17/100 miles at current gas prices around my area. My SRT Durango is about 15 mpg, and with premium that's ~$27.5/100 miles.

Pretty much everywhere else in the world save the US and UK use either Wh/km or KWh/100 kms. I'm always frustrated to hear US reviewers saying an EV gets XX Miles/KWh, as it's way too much work to convert, LOL. I think this eventually needs to replace range ratings as the measure of EV efficiency. ICE vehicles are seldom sold with range numbers because, like EVs, that will vary widely. What people call range anxiety is really charging anxiety - that they won't be able to find a charger when they need it. As that infrastructure builds out over time that should be less of a concern.

 

[Tomguy]

One other big part of this is a lot of manufacturers are also offering free EV charging.
Example:
IONIQ and KONA are offering 2 years of free 30m charging at Electrify Amercia.
Expect that to expand as more manufacturers are going to offer EVs.

As for rate, Tesla superchargers are about $0.25 per kWh. Tesla's supercharger network is the gold standard in reliability, cost, and locations; if I were to buy an EV today I'd probably still buy a Tesla just because of the Supercharger network.