Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:We have had an EV for 5 years without a home charger. We plug into the wall.
You would save money with a charger. It knows when electricity prices are lowest - in the middle of the night, etc. and charges at those times.
This isn't necessarily the case -- I have an EV and pay the same rate for electricity 24 hours a day, because we have a third-party electricity provider with a flat rate (for 100 percent offset power). We also have solar panels, so I didn't want the EV rate plans Pepco offered because I didn't want to suddenly have to pay more for electricity during the day just because it was raining than I did before we got the car.
The total cost difference you're talking about here is pretty small, anyway, though -- I pay 18 cents per kilowatt hour, and my car's total battery capacity is 82 kWh, so to charge it from completely depleted to 100 percent full would only cost $15, and usually I'm charging more like from 30 percent to 80 percent, so it's more like $7 or $8. Unless the electricity costs 50 percent less in the middle of the night, the maximum savings per charge would be like $4.