> A 60kwh car battery might cost $10k, and allow 2000 charge cycles. So each kwh cycled into and out of the battery costs 8 cents.
If you can really treat the whole cost of the battery as X cents per charge cycle, disregarding the lifetime of the car/battery, this won't work at grid scale. Someone else will build a storage facility that just charges and discharges batteries, and they will outcompete rational EV owners, because they will have economies of scale and battery banks designed for this use. It only makes sense if the EV owner can somehow get charge capacity "for free" - eg the car will be EOL after 1000 charges but the battery lasts 2000 - he should sell the extra 1000. Or alternatively if getting 8c now is better than getting 1 charge in several years time (plausible if interest rates, energy futures prices etc are right).
However, this could be wrong. The same logic says rooftop solar can't exist without special subsidies, and a lot of people disagree with me there.
If you can really treat the whole cost of the battery as X cents per charge cycle, disregarding the lifetime of the car/battery, this won't work at grid scale. Someone else will build a storage facility that just charges and discharges batteries, and they will outcompete rational EV owners, because they will have economies of scale and battery banks designed for this use. It only makes sense if the EV owner can somehow get charge capacity "for free" - eg the car will be EOL after 1000 charges but the battery lasts 2000 - he should sell the extra 1000. Or alternatively if getting 8c now is better than getting 1 charge in several years time (plausible if interest rates, energy futures prices etc are right).
However, this could be wrong. The same logic says rooftop solar can't exist without special subsidies, and a lot of people disagree with me there.