Electric Vehicles & Solar Energy
Brian Shuck

Here I will present some information on EVs (Electric Vehicles) and why people may want to drive EVs instead of ICEVs (Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles). I hope this will help people gain a better understanding of the topic after decades of disinformation..

It may require much short-term financial sacrifice to get off fossils fuels. But it's cheaper in the long run. That is not even counting the benefit to 8 billion people, their food supply, and wildlife by the reduction in carbon emissions. Who can afford not to drive an EV?

How long is the payback time? That all depends on several details such as the price you pay for electricity to charge a vehicle. NBC news this week said 2-3 years. It could be about 15 years if you include EVs solar & batteries. You will need to do your own math. That timeline may be shorter with higher gas prices, etc. The more you drive, the quicker the payback time assuming that you can get decent prices for electricity (which is where solar & batteries come in). For a police department, that timeline to savings is 3 years or less, depending on gas prices: https://electrek.co/2022/02/24/tesla-model-y-convinces-police-department-save-maintenance-alone/ The more you drive, the more you save with an EV. For example, a gas car may be cheaper if you just park it. But if you drive as much as police cars, then you save a lot of money in a short time.

With current gas prices, if you compare a $30k ICE car to a $40k Tesla Model 3, that difference could be paid back in 3 years if your electricity was EV-TOU-5 (currently 11 cents/kW-hr), or 5 years if you paid 20 cents/kW-hr. (TOU is Time of Use where the prices vary by the time of day; 3 different prices each day). The assumptions here are 12k miles/year, and $8/gallon of gas. On EV-TOU-5, to get cheap car charging at night, means you pay way too much for electricity (66 cents/kW-hr) for air conditioning between 4-9 pm for 6 months of the year, which is why batteries are needed for that kind of savings. This is assuming that you use air conditioning, which becomes more likely with each year of warming. Batteries need to be charged by solar to get the 26% federal tax credit which is available in 2022 (22% next year). They are typically programmed to be used 4-9 pm each day to avoid the high On-Peak rates. In part, because San Diegans must pay the ~$1 billion in “earnings” of the corporate monopoly, SDG&E, it may be wise to harvest one's own sunshine. That enables one to get a fixed price for several years. Batteries also provide energy availability when the grid goes down as well as enabling the use of one's solar system if you have one, during grid outages. They can also replace emergency generators which are noisy, polluting, and require maintenance; they are obsolete.
Note that even on an EV rate plan, the prices go up at >10% per year on average; they have doubled in the past 10 years.
Some useful pages from SDG&E:
https://www.sdge.com/residential/electric-vehicles/faq
https://www.sdge.com/residential/pricing-plans/about-our-pricing-plans/electric-vehicle-plans

Each year will become hotter on average, and people will be needing more air conditioning for the heat, and air filtration for the wildfires which will become more frequent as time goes on. I found that smoke from fires can block much of one's solar energy. This may be a commonly overlooked consideration for solar system sizing and especially home batteries. When smoke is all around you, is when you need to use air conditioning and air filtration the most, if you have not evacuated. In 2020, San Diego even had smoke from Oregon and Northern California.
A car typically uses more energy than air conditioning does. An EV which is capable of road trips and fully replacing ICE vehicles will often have a battery size (capacity) of 75 kW-hr or more.
Recommendations for the best air filtration:
https://www.iqair.com/us/whole-house-air-purifiers/perfect16 or room filtration for those wanting more filtration of the most harmful tiny particles (including corona viruses): https://www.iqair.com/us/room-air-purifiers/healthpro-series

I have invested in solar, 2 EVs, & batteries so that I don't have to pay for energy or gas now or in retirement, since staying hooked on fossil fuels would clearly not be affordable. EVs have 1% as many moving parts as gas cars, so require much less maintenance and last longer (if they are built well). It was hard to do, as it took most all of my income for several years, but it's better than what we see happening to those addicted to oil. All oil money goes to bad people who are harming all life on this planet.

If you can get solar and batteries, then you can likely lock in your energy prices in today's dollars. This may be essential for retirement, otherwise one would be buying energy in inflated dollars of the future but only have dollars of the past. In other words, it may be wise to invest in, and buy energy now for retirement so that one doesn't have to buy any in the future. Plus lock in the prices now, before they go higher since SDGE prices go up (~12%/yr) as energy costs go down (solar and battery costs get cheaper over time. Large scale wind and solar and are already the cheapest energy in human history at 3-4 cents/Kwhr). One should also account for each year getting warmer on average, and more air conditioning use, plus air filtration for the wildfires. There are also less quantifiable costs, such as health savings from not inhaling your own toxins from exhaust or even getting gasoline at a station, which are known to harm health within seconds.

Batteries may have some rebates and a few people may qualify for nearly free ones if meeting two of the following three conditions: (1) on medical baseline, (2) live in a high wildfire hazard area, and/or (3) use well water. Otherwise, some EVs coming out some time in the next few years can be set up for V2G (Vehicle-to-Grid) which can help for grid down situations and possibly daily use. Tesla vehicles currently do not do that, possibly due to extra wear on expensive car batteries.

Right now, those burning fossil fuels are paying for dying oil infrastructure. When you switch to an EV, you start paying for the growing electrical infrastructure instead. Big oil will only die when people stop voting for it with their dollars. Electrical infrastructure is much cheaper than oil infrastructure; electricity moves a billion times faster than oil and is way lighter, so is much cheaper to transport. By moving money from oil to electricity, that has a double effect of killing off oil while ideally building up electrical infrastructure. Currently, keeping people hooked on Fossil Fuels may be the biggest scam going, as it no longer makes any sense. The true cost of a gallon of gasoline has been estimated to be ~$20 when externalized costs paid by everyone is accounted for. The actual cost may be infinite. Burning fossil fuels takes from everyone and speeds the Holocene extinction.

The signals to switch to renewables and EVs will only become more clear from here on out. Luckily Tesla will be doubling their car production capacity shortly since people are abandoning fossil fuels in greater numbers every day. Ford has doubled their EV plans twice recently, but will still be far short of demand. The sooner one switches to EVs, the more money and time (on driving to gas stations, maintenance, repairs) one saves.

A gas car is closer to a steam engine than an EV. Although steam engines were better in many ways than gas engines, EVs are in another league of performance. Everyone should test drive one. It may take you a few minutes to get used to regenerative braking. With an old-fashioned car, one must push the brake and throw away energy and money by scraping pieces of metal together (whose dust is a source of ~20% of the toxic particles in traffic, harming the immune system). With regenerative braking in EVs one just lets off the accelerator and the electric motor becomes a generator and slows the car down by converting the momentum to electrical energy thus recharging the battery instead of dissipating the energy as heat and metallic dust. In stop and go traffic, this is very helpful. Likewise, after going up a big hill you recover most of your energy when going back down. A gas car's energy efficiency is about 20 %; ~80% of the energy is thrown away as heat. EVs may be 80% efficient, or more. Some of us anticipate the value of ICE vehicles going negative one day (you will have to pay to have it taken away).

Gas cars are much more expensive than EVs. Volatile oil prices, more maintenance, and more repairs. By my calculations, the cheapest car that one can buy in the long-term is a Tesla Model 3. Two years ago, a Prius was similar if one ignores the air pollution, climate, and if gasoline prices did not go up. Many people may eventually regret not accounting for those things. However, the MX & MS Tesla models come with a biohazard (HEPA) filter standard. This is useful for evacuating from wildfires or driving among FF cars. Cleaner air improves everyone's health who is breathing it. With each ICE replaced by an EV, the air gets cleaner also. San Diego has the 7th most polluted air in the US for ozone and related toxic gasses from ICE vehicles. Ozone harms all life including plants.

Many people in the future will choose not to own a car and instead call a Tesla robotaxi as they do Uber now. Elon Musk claims that people can generate income from their Teslas once FSD is fully working. The price of Full Self Driving (which is not fully working yet) has gone from $2k to $12k so far, and Elon says it should go up to $60k eventually. It is not transferable to other cars. As it gets closer to reality, the price goes up. Even with just the Tesla Autopilot (AP) feature which comes with every new Tesla, this saves much mental and physical work and makes driving much less stressful and safer.

Charging times: A wall outlet (1 kW) could take 3 days for a full charge. But it makes no sense to talk about charging from 0 to 100 %, as you do not go down to 0% in an EV any more than you would with an ICE vehicle. Level 2 (8 kW), several hours, which is what you would typically use when you sleep, but a Tesla supercharger (~250 kW) for road trips, typically takes minutes. Here is a tool in case anyone wants to see charging times on road trips before they get a car with this information built-in: https://www.evtripplanner.com/planner/2-8/?id=6sfjtn54

An EV home charging unit (EVSE electric vehicle service equipment) costs ~$500. Installation may cost ~$250-$1k depending on distances from your breaker panel to the charger location. Technically, the AC charger is built into the cars, but we typically call the wall unit a charger anyway.

With a home charger, you plug in each night, and unplug when you leave, so about 30 seconds; which is much faster than getting gas. But you do this every driving day because batteries last longest when kept near 50% charge. One should not charge to 100% once a week. One charges enough for the next day (when known) every day

When the grid is out, only those with solar and batteries will be able to keep charging locally. After climate disasters such as a hurricane, Superchargers have turned back on well before gasoline could be trucked in historically.

To extend the life of our car batteries, we charge to 60-80% every night and arrive home under 50%. We try to cross below 50% on each trip. You want to keep the battery near 50% on average if you want to extend its life (same with a mobile phone). For longer trips, you charge all the way just before leaving, but don't keep it very long above 80% or below 20%. This also means, the bigger the battery, the longer it will last. You store a Li-ion battery at 50% when not in use to maximize its life.

Since, unlike past car makers, Tesla improves their vehicles every week, as soon as you buy one, it's obsolete. Know this, and don't let this be a reason to wait to start saving money and the future of life on the planet.

To counter more disinformation that FF billionaires have convinced many of: Batteries are getting cheaper over time. Battery recycling has started, and is growing. Most of the chemical elements can be recovered with much less effort than digging them up initially. And unlike fossil fuels, the mining can stop once we have enough, even though that time is far away. Why buy something and then burn it? Harvesting local sunshine, wind, etc. is much cheaper.

Expect EVs to use tires fairly fast. That is one of the main expenses aside from electricity.

Range anxiety is felt by all new EV drivers as they do not know what to expect. Experienced EV drivers have no range anxiety. 2 Links that you may find handy to put your mind at ease as to charging availability:
Where the superchargers are (better than Tesla's website):
https://supercharge.info/map
And other public chargers:
https://www.plugshare.com/

Some essential physics: We generally buy energy, not power. Power is energy used per second (or minute, etc.), or how fast you are using the energy. Most energy losses in an EV are from air resistance at higher speeds, especially above 70 mph. So going faster uses more energy per second, thus, it takes more power and reduces range and uses more total energy. That does not mean that a long range Tesla needs to go slow, as they are among the most aerodynamic vehicles.