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Most people have no idea how cheap it is to charge an electric car. This hit me this morning while unplugging my car, so I decided I should write an article about it. Ironically, a few hours after I had the idea to write the article, Jake Richardson submitted the following piece: “EV Owners: How Much Are You Saving?” It’s a good article and I am super curious to see how readers respond. Luckily, Jake didn’t discuss the key things I was planning to explain, so I will go into those here.
There are three factors that I think any normal person wouldn’t know. First of all, this initial point is not going to apply to everyone, but it is going to apply to most people. Utilities typically have different electricity rates at different times of day. (And utilities that don’t yet have such “time-of-use pricing” will probably get it in coming years.) When there’s very high demand for electricity relative to supply, it makes sense for a utility to charge more money for each Wh of electricity at that time, and many of them do so. On the flip side, when there’s relatively low electricity demand, those utilities charge less. That’s pretty much always in the middle of the night — since most people aren’t cooking, watching TV, or requiring much electricity for other purposes while sleeping. When is a car most likely to be parked at your house for several hours? That’s right — in the middle of the night! In my utility district, this is how electricity is priced:
