Things I would change if I were King....

As a society, sometimes we do a great job helping those in need and other times we make their lives worse with good intentions.  One of the most important tools we can give people is an education.  Regrettably, our system is a failure.

Electricity is just one place where we do some very funny things to “help” people.  My recent acquisition of an electric car highlights the problem.   In order to encourage people who have an electric car to use electricity right, my local utility has a plan where the night rates of electricity are 25% of the day rates.  If I charge at night, I can get 40 miles out of my car for about 64 cents.

Lets put that into gas price terms.  My record is 60 miles per gallon and I have averaged 40 miles per gallon, and 40 miles per electric charge.  I can pay 64 cents for electricity by charging at night or $4.10 cents for premium gas.  I have a Chevy Volt which can use electricity or gas.

Very quickly I have learned how to program everything in my house that uses electricity from 6pm to 6am when my rates are dirt cheap.  The the day rates are three or four times higher than the night rates so I adjusted everything.  My home is 100% CFL and LED lighting, all of our appliances are the newer energy star and we can program them to run between 6 pm and 6 am.

Out of curiosity I did a little research and found that my rates more closely resemble the way utilities pay for electricity.   So my question is, why doesn’t everyone pay for electricity this way?  If we want to train people to use electricity smarter, we should charge them in accordance with costs and educate them to use electricity smarter.

Why don’t we?  My guess is the people who work less have more time to argue with the politicians.  The politicians make the rules to appease the “vocal minority” and stay in office, nothing more.  

The people who really want to use electricity more in the day time can add solar panels that can create power during the high cost hours.   I work from home so I would still benefit from solar panels, and I am planning to add them next with my new roof.

At the end of the day, I would set electric rates based on the costs to the utilities.   Instead of taking the easy way out and subsidizing day time use with higher night rates, the rules should encourage smarter use and to reduce day time generation costs by increasing the number of commercial buildings that have solar power.  Looking down across the country I see acres of flat roofs that look like great candidates for solar panles.

When the demand is highest for Air Conditioning it is also the best time for solar panels to generate power.  If I were king, I would start by aligning the costs of using electricity with the real costs of generating it.  This alone should be a major influence to getting commercial interests to support solar and create an overall greater benefit to everyone.

What would you do?

Have You Ordered Your Free Car?

Well Have You?  Did you know you could get a free car?  I did.

Would you like to know how?

Like many things, the answer is simple, but not easy.  

Currently auto companies are under legal mandates to sell a number of zero emissions cars.  Electric and Natural Gas are the two energy sources that fit this bill in California.  There is also a mandate on Electric car sales.

Tesla, as a 100% electric car manufacturer, isn't making money selling cars, rather they are about to announce a profit because they sell electric car credits to manufacturers who don't yet make electric cars or who don't sell enough on their own.  

So how does this help you get a free car?

Chevy needs to sell Volts.  Honda needs to sell electric Fits, and Nissan needs to sell the Leaf.  For whatever reason people aren't buying so rebates are flowing.

With the rebates you can lease a base model of any of these cars for $0 down and $299 a month for 36 months.  That is a total of $10,764 to drive the car for three years.  If you have the income, Uncle Sam will give you a $7500 tax credit.  That leaves $3264 out of your pocket over 36 months.  The state of California will rebate $1500, and you can get another $1500 to add a charger to your house.  Now you are down to $264 plus the charger.  

Honda is now including the charger, and the dealer kicked back the $264 to make the deal work when I picked up my Volt.  

There you have it, a car for three years that doesn't cost me anything.

It gets better.  Charging at home the Volt runs about $2.00 for 40 miles, half the price of gasoline if you get the 38-40 mpg most are getting when they run gas.  My record is 60 mpg on gas, and my monthly savings on "energy", that is my new combined gas and electric bill are $300 a month less than they were before I got the Volt.

My Volt is money in my pocket.  What are you driving?

Follow up note: You have to be careful when you lease a Volt, the dealer can take the $7500 Federal Tax credit and build it into the lease without telling you.  When you lease a car, the leasing agency is the first owner and normally gets the tax credit.  Electric Cars can have the Tax credit assigned in certain circumstances.  So watch your paperwork and talk to your tax advisor.

The Real Cost of A Chevy Volt - 1000 Miles Completed

A month ago almost to the day I brought home my Chevy Volt.  I have a bit of an issue because I look at electric cars as an economic issue, and my friend Randy Jackson of sunpoweredevs.com looks at them as a strategy and freedom issue.  I really want us both to be right.  I find it ironic that it took a GM car to get me to drive an electric car when it was Cadillac that killed the electric car in the late 1920's.

Up until the 1920's you had to hand crank your gasoline car to start it.  Then Cadillac invented the electric starter and the gasoline powered car quickly surpassed the electric car in sales.  People go for cheap and easy.  Batteries back then weren't cheap and they weren't easy because of the limited range.

I believe that most consumers are going to go for the solution that provides the most bang for the buck as we say.  Wal-Mart proves it every day.  We want more for less, environment, made in China, it really doesn't matter and the sales of cheap imported products at Wal-Mart and Target prove it.

For me, acquiring the Chevy Volt was strictly economic.  I was looking for a new car and wanted the most bang for my buck period.  On paper, the Chevy Volt looked like a bargain.   After spending $1800 to put a new rear end in my F-150, and spending an average of $489 per month on fuel for it.  The first 1000 miles each month was costing me nearly $300 each month in gas.  The lease on the Volt is $399 per month.  With the tax credits and rebates, the Volt is essentially free, as would be a Nissan Leaf.

Admittedly, the Ford Fusion energi is a far better looking car and the sticker price is about the same as the Volt.  The problem is that the Ford only goes 16 miles on a charge before using gas.  The Volt can travel about 44 the way I drive it. My record is 48.

Since the Fusion Energi has smaller batteries than the Volt, the rebates and tax incentives are lower making the Fusion more expensive until those rebates and incentives expire.  For whatever reason, the Fusion lease programs carried a much lower residual value adding $150 or more to the lease rates with the same amount of money up front.

So I have a Volt.

As of yesterday, I have driven 1000 miles in the Volt.  Doing that I used $30 of electricity at home and $5.00 of electricity from Charging stations along with 5.3 gallons of gas according to the computer.  I also have learned about a big frustration with electric car charging.

The city of Seal Beach for charges $3.37 per kWh to charge your car. A Volt gains about 10 miles for each hour of charge, and according to the City of Seal Beach charger, I used 1 kWh in 20 minutes of charging.  That is $3.37 for 20 minutes of parking and 3.3 miles of range added to the car.  If it isn't obvious, that is crazy expensive.

Here is the rub.  The Volt gets about 10 miles for each hour of charging on a level two charger.  According to the best information I have it charges at a rate of 3 kWh on a 240V level two charger.  The simple math at home is .28 x 3 = .75 for 10 miles.  Gas at $4.00 per Gallon and 40 MPG that I am actually getting is $1.00 for 10 miles.  Easily 25% more cost effective to use electricity at home.   At a ChargePoint station charging .25 per kWh it is even cheaper.

South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa is the clear winner, I found a nice covered charging slot that allowed two hours of FREE charging.  Guess where I spent $1100 on a new Mac Mini?  Thank you South Coast Plaza for getting it.  Free parking and Free charging.  I don't think electric cars should get free electricity everywhere, but how nice is it to add a few solar panels and get customers to spend money in your center by giving away $1.50 in electricity?

To put this in perspective, assuming straight rates and Level two charging at 3 kWh, parking and charging in Seal Beach is $10.11 per hour.  The space right next to the charger is free.  Charging at home on Tier 3 rates is $.84 per hour.  The City of Seal Beach is asking for $9.37 in profit every hour!

The Grove in Los Angeles has some pretty pricey parking too, and charging there as a Blink member is $1.00 per hour.  With validation, I get two hours of charging and parking for $2.00.  In Seal Beach that would be $20.22 while my gasoline powered friends parked right next to me would be parking for free.  Maybe there should be a way to "validate" some electric charging when the people really spend money.

If the city of Seal Beach wants the sales tax from my business, they are not encouraging me to stay long at $10.11 per hour for charging are they?

At $4.00 per gallon and 40 miles per gallon, charging at $1.00 per hour is about the same cost economically speaking since I get about 10 miles of range per hour of charging.  At the normal retail level, electric and gas cost me about the same.  When you include the annual fee for Blink, it is actually more expensive slightly.  At some point electric rates have to go down because states are going to tax electric cars for the fuel tax they aren't paying.

It is all about balance, if electricity costs more, people will stop buying electric cars plain and simple.

This economic problem has created another issue.  Electric cars that plug in and don't actually charge.  I noticed that two of the there electric chargers in Seal Beach were occupied by other cars, and when I read the charger they were not actually charging.  I was the only guy dumb enough to pay $3.37 per kWh I guess.

I would think that cities, attempting to encourage use of clean electric vehicles would charge .20 or .30 per kWh, and $1.00 per hour of charging at most like the Grove and Carl's Jr. locations do.  Why is Seal Beach charging so much to plug in?  Don't they want my business and tax money?

Speaking of Carl's Jr., I stopped in for lunch, plugged in and walked over to the Citadel to get a pair of Jeans.  The Citidel hasn't installed any chargers yet, free or otherwise.  Fortunately, the Carl's Jr. Manager was very nice and just asked that I don't stay for more than 2 hours even though the other two cars in the Blink charger spaces were not electric at all.

So far I have found two Carl's Jr. locations on my way home that have Blink Chargers.

Economically speaking, I won't be plugging in at a City of Seal Beach location until they get reasonable with the rates.  Gasoline is way cheaper and parking isn't that big of a deal on weekdays.  If the City Council wants to say the chargers failed, they are doing the right things to make that happen.

South Coast Plaza on the other hand will keep getting my business as long as there are free electric spaces even if only for two hours at a time.  Talk about getting it.

At the end of the day, after 1000 miles, I haven't filled the tank so I have to trust the computer in the Volt when it says I have used just over 5 gallons of gasoline, $5.00 in paid electric charging and two hours FREE at South Coast Plaza and my electric bill that went up $30.  Round up and call it $60 for 1000 miles v. $289 for 1000 miles in my F-150 and the Volt is clearly the economic winner.  Just in case you think the F-150 isn't a fair comparison, I also have a Mercedes SL that also gets 14 mpg in the real world.  I just don't drive it enough, And the Volt is saving a few miles off of that car too.

And yes, the Volt is fun to drive, has a great stereo, and navigation that is better than the SL or my wife's ML.  My favorite feature is sending an address from my phone to the car so I don't type it in at all.  The voice command part stinks.  Ford is the hands down winner here.

The real monthly cost of driving a Volt 1000 miles is $399 for the lease, and $60 for the gas.   The F-150 or the SL would be $289 for gas alone.  Is the Volt a winner?  Yes.  Is electricity the winner?  Yes, that is as long as you don't charge up in Seal Beach.

The Volt at the Airport - No Chargers!

Chevy, We Have a Problem - Retail Electricity is EXPENSIVE

Yesterday I wrote about my experience to date with my new Chevy Volt.  One of the reasons we selected a Volt was the ability to use gas when a charger wasn't around or we didn't have time to charge the car.  I argued that a Leaf could make 90% of our trips in one charge.  The Tesla is just a smidge out of our budget now since we need a new roof and want to add solar at the same time.

My wife won the argument with this simple rebuttal, she said "Ok, so I get finished at 11 pm at Fox Studios and then have to go find a charger because for some reason I am four miles short of the battery needed to make it home.  Do you want me to find a charger at midnight and stand next to the car for 45 minutes?"

We got a Volt.

In my post yesterday, I didn't really explain to much about the three gallons of gas I used so far.  The reality is I only needed to use one of them.  I could have charged up at Blink or chargepoint quite easily instead of using the other two gallons.  So why didn't I just plug in?

The answer is in my wallet and is simple economics.  At my house I pay .13 or .16 per kWh.  At A chargepoint station after paying $25 per year membership, I can charge for Free, $1.00 per hour or .25 kWh.  Each station is different and you have to look at an app to see which each station does.  Some chargepoint stations are only 120V 12A also.

The Blink stations I have seen are all $2.00 per hour for non members and $1.00 for members.

Since I used dollars per mile yesterday, I will use that method today.  Using gas, I am getting 10 miles per dollar and electricity at home I get 13.8 miles per dollar.  If I hit tier 4 at .32 per kWh, I might be at exactly break even.  For now the savings is well worth plugging in.  When I go solar my savings should be greater.

At a public Blink or Chargepoint station using the better 220V 30A plug, the Volt is limited in its charging capacity.  I got 8 Miles added after an hour, so how does that work out in miles per dollar?

8 miles for $2.00 for non members is only 4 miles per dollar, making gas 60% more cost effective.
8 miles for $1.00 for members is 8 miles per dollar, making gas 20% more cost effective
4 miles for $1.00 for members on a 120V 12A station makes gas 60% more cost effective.
4 kWh for $1.00 for members at Chargepoint was nearly 14 miles on my range meter,  making electricity almost 30% more cost effective than gas.  This is very close to the dollars spent at home. and the .25 per kWh chargers are the ones I look for.

So as a member for $1.00 you might get 4 miles, you might get 8 miles or you might get 14 miles with a Volt.  For the $30 per year at Blink and $25 per year for Chargepoint, it is more cost effective to drive on gas then it is to pay for electricity.

Now, that said, I did find several FREE Chargepoint Chargers for members and even a few at civic locations for anyone. WallyPark at LAX is offering FREE charging if you valet park. That is just enough to get me to Valet.  If WallyPark LAX starts charging for plugging in, then I'll go back to self park and use gasoline to get home.

Unless I find free Blink chargers anywhere, I am not sure I will pay the $30.00 for Blink next year.

Thankfully several studios my wife and I work at allow free charging as well.  For now Disneyland is looking the other way if you find a wall plug in the Mickey and Friends garage and plug in.  I only live 10 miles away so if I stay at least two hours, I can top off.  Looking at my credit card bill this arrangement is definitely in Disney's favor.

Like most electric car owners I have already met and talked too, I don't think I should get a free ride or free electricity.  Plugging in and charging up just needs to be cost effective to keep the trend growing.  Since a Leaf and a Tesla have faster charging capability, hourly rates might be more effective for them.  Volts tend to charge a little slower, making the free or .25 per kWh stations the only way to save money.

Popular Mechanics magazine stated that a Leaf at .38 per kWh was only .026 per mile in energy costs.  I don't know how that works out, but they claim it does.  This means a Leaf charges at a rate to get 38 miles of range added in an hour while the Volt is only getting 8?  Is the Volt charger that slow, or did I get bad charging stations?

Any Leaf or Tesla Owners want to pipe in on how much range you get with a 1 hour charge at a level 2 station.  For that matter any Volt drivers getting more than 8 miles per hour when plugged in at a public station?