carcostthrow
Joined 5 years ago
Joined 5 years ago
...although yes I am lying about being on death row. Canada doesn't practical capital punishment. Certainly not for parking violations.
I await on death row now. The chosen method of execution is to be killed by old age 60 or 70 years from now, being withered and worn by the ravages of time. Most cruelly in the interim, I am expected to work a 37 hour work for 48 weeks out of the year in grueling conditions. A climate controlled office with an ergonomic chair in front of a computer with Visual Studio Code open.
Sometimes it seems like if it would not have been kinder to simply kill me there and then. Those days I ask myself why they keep me here. Just to suffer?
tl;dr
No accidents, no claims, no criminal activity on record except the one parking ticket. I don't pretend to comprehend why the quotes are that way for me.
In comparison my current SUV is $1100 a year same level of coverage as that quote. Just for fun I got a quote for an 2022 Acura NSX a while ago and it was $1500 a year, and the NSX is quite a bit more expensive then a Model 3.
As he said, different circumstances can shift the solution point. What you have someone that doesn't have a data plan on their phone, or doesn't carry a smartphone and thus doesn't have access to a mapping app? Or the charge point requires a smartphone app that I don't connectivity to use with?
For me as well an EV is questionable. My gas burning SUV is $1100 a year to insure, tax included. A Tesla Model 3 at the same level insurance would could me $6014 a year before taxes. I don't drive enough to save $5000 in gas and maintenance a year.
Then there's my garage. Long story short, the best it can do right now is 120V 6A charge speed. To properly upgrade my garage to support a full EV would cost an additional $2500. Assuming if I also have to upgrade the electrical mains from 100A to 200A, it's $15,000 to $25,000. And my electricity costs 20 cents a kilowatt hour.
Does buying an EV it still make sense after all that if you were in my circumstances?
For a lot of people that calculation is true, but there's also going to be people like me where the TCO statement is hilariously untrue.
I don't drive enough to make up a difference of $5000+ a year in gas and maintenance.
For you it makes sense. Our residential rate just hit $0.20/kWh, excluding rider and admin fees. Plus higher purchase cost plus several thousand dollars more insurance rates compared to an ICE.
100A service is fairly normal here for smaller homes. As heating here is primarily done by natural gas furnaces rather then electrical heating. Which make sense; gas is way cheaper to heat with here then electricity. And it saves a dollar for the developer.
I don't know about larger homes though; I'd imagine that they'd have 200A circuits but it wouldn't surprise me if they didn't unless the builder specifically requested it.
So I took quick look into what it would actually take to upgrade the main circuit breaker in the house assuming a 100A to 200A upgrade is needed to accommodate both an EV and a heat pump. I thought it was $5000 or so.
As it turns out, $5000 is for pole mounted service. It's range is actually around $15,000 to $25,000 for underground service, as it requires digging the line from the street to the house. Unknown how much cost there if too many houses here need to upgrade as well which would necessitate upgrading transformers feeding this area (most houses here are 100A AFAIK).
The garage is detached one fed by a single 120V circuit buried in PVC conduit, and it is enough for everything in there at the moment. But if a car's charging at the same time say someone open's the garage door, it's going to trip the breaker.
So at least I'd have to pull a second circuit dedicated for charging. To do that, the old conduit needs to come out and be replaced with one that is up to code for handling either more then one circuit, or can handle a 240V circuit. The cost of digging the old one out and installing a new one is a very substantial portion of that quote.
Now granted this was a quote for a full 240V circuit with a subpanel; the quote last year was around $2000 ish. Inflation rate, increasing labor costs, and continuing supply chain issues caused the jump. I didn't get a chance to ask what the quote was for just a second 120V circuit though.
The mains upgrade cost is just what I've heard second hand from others upgrading their 100A service to 200A. I haven't gotten a quote for myself but it doesn't sound wrong to me. Just filing the paper work for the permit from the is a $160 fee. The permit itself IIRC is an additional $200 or $300. I suspect the electrician would have to get the utility involved as well to disconnect and upgrade the main lines coming from the street to the house to accommodate the increased possible amperage.