Reality check on electric cars

[Nordberg]

Well, the dealer was lying to you. A tier II Tesla charger, wholesale, runs nearly $500 on its own. Wiring for a minimum 50 amp circuit with breaker using 8/2 G NM cable runs about $2.00 a foot right now and the breaker is about $50.

DTE connects you with approved companies that install chargers quite cheaply. yeah. if you are living in a log cabin in the woods, you would require system upgrades.

 

[T. A. Gardner]

DTE connects you with approved companies that install chargers quite cheaply. yeah. if you are living in a log cabin in the woods, you would require system upgrades.

Installing a charger in someone's garage requires a minimum of a 50 amp circuit, two open slots in the breaker panel, running 8/2 G or 6/2 G NM cable to the charger from the panel. If it has to be wired on the surface of the wall of the garage, that requires running 1" EMT to the charger where the cable is exposed.

The wire right now is about $2 + a foot to purchase wholesale. The charger is about $500. Conduit, the breaker, fittings, etc., will run about another $100. That's before tacking on labor.

Unless the company doing the install wants to lose money on the job, it's going to be as I stated earlier. There is no way around that.

I can tell you right now, that most of the ones I've done found the panel lacked the necessary slots for installing the breaker. That meant buying additional thin breakers to double up existing circuits to get room for the new breaker.

If a permit and inspection are required tack on $100 to $300 for that.

 

[Lionfish]

 

[T. A. Gardner]

Here's a site that champions EV's saying that the market is done in the US and will remain nothing but a niche one.

End Of EV Tax Credit May Cripple Sales Permanently

EV sales remain down by double digits. What might cause that? EV range hasn't changed much over the past year. The numer of public charging stations have not ch

climatecrisis247.com

They are calling for massive, never ending, government subsidies and regulation to force EV's on the public and lamenting that without them people won't switch to EV's.

 

[Nordberg]

Here's a site that champions EV's saying that the market is done in the US and will remain nothing but a niche one.

End Of EV Tax Credit May Cripple Sales Permanently

EV sales remain down by double digits. What might cause that? EV range hasn't changed much over the past year. The numer of public charging stations have not ch

climatecrisis247.com

They are calling for massive, never ending, government subsidies and regulation to force EV's on the public and lamenting that without them people won't switch to EV's.

You mean massive never ending subsidies for fossil fuel companies. You are at peace with paying the polluters.

 

[Nordberg]

Here's a site that champions EV's saying that the market is done in the US and will remain nothing but a niche one.

End Of EV Tax Credit May Cripple Sales Permanently

EV sales remain down by double digits. What might cause that? EV range hasn't changed much over the past year. The numer of public charging stations have not ch

climatecrisis247.com

They are calling for massive, never ending, government subsidies and regulation to force EV's on the public and lamenting that without them people won't switch to EV's.

I do not hear that talk, Who is they?

 

[T. A. Gardner]

You mean massive never ending subsidies for fossil fuel companies. You are at peace with paying the polluters.

We've been over that. Those supposed "never ending subsidies for fossil fuel" are a canard. Those promoting that line of evidence include everything they can but the kitchen sink so-to-speak in an effort to build that case. But it's a bullshit case.

 

[T. A. Gardner]

I do not hear that talk, Who is they?

Then do put your counter sources up and make that argument.

 

[Into the Night]

Installing a charger in someone's garage requires a minimum of a 50 amp circuit, two open slots in the breaker panel, running 8/2 G or 6/2 G NM cable to the charger from the panel. If it has to be wired on the surface of the wall of the garage, that requires running 1" EMT to the charger where the cable is exposed.

...and the damn thing is required by code now for new construction.
Or, you could just use it as a welder connection.

The wire right now is about $2 + a foot to purchase wholesale. The charger is about $500. Conduit, the breaker, fittings, etc., will run about another $100. That's before tacking on labor.

Oh, the joys of retrofitting a thing like that!

Unless the company doing the install wants to lose money on the job, it's going to be as I stated earlier. There is no way around that.

Very true. The trouble with idiots like this is that they figure electricity to charge their car just comes out of the air somehow.

I can tell you right now, that most of the ones I've done found the panel lacked the necessary slots for installing the breaker. That meant buying additional thin breakers to double up existing circuits to get room for the new breaker.

Or possibly requiring a new panel as well!

If a permit and inspection are required tack on $100 to $300 for that.

And they will be required.

 

[Into the Night]

You mean massive never ending subsidies for fossil fuel companies. You are at peace with paying the polluters.

Fossils aren't used as fuel. Fossils don't burn. They are not subsidized as fuel.
What 'polluters'? What 'pollution'?

EVs use almost twice as much energy per mile as a similar sized gasoline car.

EVs get that energy from coal plants, natural gas plants, oil fired generating plants, etc. To get that energy to the EV, you require transformers, power lines, switching stations, generators, etc.; all of which generate waste heat.

Charging the battery generates a lot of waste heat. Using the battery generates a lot of waste heat. This is why EV batteries are liquid cooled. It is also why the motor is also liquid cooled. Yes...that means pumps and radiators.

It is simply far more efficient to just burn the gasoline in the car.

Gasoline and diesel vehicles have effectively unlimited range, since it only requires a few minutes to refuel, not the hours to recharge an EV (plus the hours you have to wait for your turn on the charger!).

The faster you charge the batter, the quicker you destroy it. All batteries have a maximum charging rate. Exceeding that rate destroys the battery.

 

[Into the Night]

I do not hear that talk, Who is they?

RQAA

 

[T. A. Gardner]

...and the damn thing is required by code now for new construction.
Or, you could just use it as a welder connection.

Not that I know of. It is included in the latest electrical code and you put it in residential load calculations where one is installed because it is no different electrically in that sense than a stove, water heater, or dryer. It is just a large load electrical appliance.

Oh, the joys of retrofitting a thing like that!

I just cross my fingers that the helper in the attic doesn't fall through the ceiling and I have to fix the guy's ceiling too.

Very true. The trouble with idiots like this is that they figure electricity to charge their car just comes out of the air somehow.

More to the point, those that want EV's the most fight any new mining for stuff like copper, lithium, and the like that is needed to make them and the chargers they use. That drives the cost of materials sky high through scarcity.

Or possibly requiring a new panel as well!

It can, and if a new panel is needed, that's about $3000 to $4000 from me and as much as $8000 from a full-time contractor.

And they will be required.

Only for a new panel. I'll ask and most people turn down going that route to save a couple hundred dollars. I can do an install in an existing panel no problem without a permit. Also, given what the inspector does, it isn't worth the cost of getting a permit to begin with.

 

[Into the Night]

Not that I know of. It is included in the latest electrical code and you put it in residential load calculations where one is installed because it is no different electrically in that sense than a stove, water heater, or dryer. It is just a large load electrical appliance.

Some States are adopting that requirement now. I guess Arizona hasn't yet.
Quite right. It's just another large load resistive electrical appliance.

I just cross my fingers that the helper in the attic doesn't fall through the ceiling and I have to fix the guy's ceiling too.

Heh. Sucks when that happens!

More to the point, those that want EV's the most fight any new mining for stuff like copper, lithium, and the like that is needed to make them and the chargers they use. That drives the cost of materials sky high through scarcity.

Add to that the AI center demand, which is also driving the price of copper up a lot.
So copper wiring for houses and buildings is just more expensive (a lot more expensive!). Metal conduit (if needed) is climbing in price as well.

It can, and if a new panel is needed, that's about $3000 to $4000 from me and as much as $8000 from a full-time contractor.

A pretty fair bid on the price for upgrading a panel in many cases.
In city houses, you might have to replace the old knob and tube wiring. Then it gets REALLY expensive!

Only for a new panel. I'll ask and most people turn down going that route to save a couple hundred dollars. I can do an install in an existing panel no problem without a permit. Also, given what the inspector does, it isn't worth the cost of getting a permit to begin with.

Heh. I know what you mean!

At least it sounds like most of the buildings you work in for this work are reasonably modern.

For older buildings in other areas, typically in cities, there isn't a prayer to install one of these chargers until you upgrade the entire wiring for the house! You basically are forced to rip it all out and rewire it from scratch, including of course a new panel and quite possibly an upgraded service entrance. That old wiring should've been ripped out anyway, but this rather forces the issue.

These same houses didn't use drywall either. It's lathe and plaster on the wall. VERY messy!


And EV drivers tend to be city dwellers.

 

[Lionfish]

 

[Lionfish]

 

[Nordberg]

Not that I know of. It is included in the latest electrical code and you put it in residential load calculations where one is installed because it is no different electrically in that sense than a stove, water heater, or dryer. It is just a large load electrical appliance.



I just cross my fingers that the helper in the attic doesn't fall through the ceiling and I have to fix the guy's ceiling too.


More to the point, those that want EV's the most fight any new mining for stuff like copper, lithium, and the like that is needed to make them and the chargers they use. That drives the cost of materials sky high through scarcity.


It can, and if a new panel is needed, that's about $3000 to $4000 from me and as much as $8000 from a full-time contractor.


Only for a new panel. I'll ask and most people turn down going that route to save a couple hundred dollars. I can do an install in an existing panel no problem without a permit. Also, given what the inspector does, it isn't worth the cost of getting a permit to begin with.

You do not need a new panel. Everyone I know with electric got a Series 2 installed with little or \no trouble. I bet if you lived in Ted Kazynski's cabin in the woods, you would have real problems getting hooked up. You should use thaty as an example.

 

[QP!]

We've been over that. Those supposed "never ending subsidies for fossil fuel" are a canard. Those promoting that line of evidence include everything they can but the kitchen sink so-to-speak in an effort to build that case. But it's a bullshit case.

LIE.

The canard is you parroting the view that Oil and Gas gets no subsidies and NEVER has despite them being one of the most subsidized industries in US history.

And your view is is NOT shared by academics, not think tanks from the left or right, and not even the Oil and Gas industry who have spoken openly about various subsidies they get and while they LOBBY for even more.

When i have cited clear and undeniable subsidies they get via tax code you just say something like 'the law allows it and thus not a subsidy' as if you think subsidies have to be illegal and cannot be lobbied for legal changes.

Your view of what constitutes a subsidy is dumb.

The oil and gas industry is historically and currently one of the most heavily subsidized industries in the United States.

The industry receives anywhere from $10 billion to over $31 billion annually in explicit federal and state handouts. [1, 2, 3]
If you include "implicit subsidies"—such as the unpriced societal costs of air pollution, environmental cleanup, and climate change funded by taxpayers—the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that the actual economic cushion provided to U.S. fossil fuels is closer to $760 billion per year. [1, 2]

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The Biggest Oil & Gas Subsidies (Examples)
Unlike modern industries that receive direct grants or temporary stimulus packages, the majority of oil and gas subsidies are permanent, structural tax expenditures embedded deeply within the U.S. internal revenue code. Some of the largest include: [1, 2]

1. Intangible Drilling Costs (IDC) Tax Break: Companies are allowed to immediately deduct 100% of the cost of clearing land, building roads, and drilling exploratory wells in the first year rather than amortizing those costs over the lifetime of the well. This costs taxpayers roughly $2.4 billion to $3.5 billion annually. [1, 2, 4]
2. Excess of Percentage Over Cost Depletion: This unique tax rule allows fossil fuel companies to deduct a fixed, flat percentage of their gross revenues (usually 15%) from their taxable income to account for the "depletion" of oil reserves—even if the total deductions vastly exceed the amount the company actually invested in the well. This amounts to about $3.3 billion every year. [1]
3. Publicly Traded Partnership (PTP) Exceptions: Oil and gas corporations are granted exemptions that allow them to organize as "master limited partnerships". This grants them the liquidity and size of a public corporation but allows them to avoid paying corporate income taxes entirely, shifting tax liability to individual investors. This reduces federal tax revenue by roughly $2.7 billion annually. []
4. Foreign Resource Extraction Subsidies: The Tax Law Center notes that about half of all U.S. fossil tax incentives—amounting to tens of billions of dollars across five-year projections—specifically protect foreign oil and gas extraction income from baseline domestic corporate taxes. [1]

 

[QP!]

Here is a clear example of a lobbied for subsidy the oil and gas companies got that @T. A. Gardner denies is a subsidy.

Below is how many Oil and Gas companies build up assets, such as deep sea rigs, and then pull all the profits out and as the site reaches near the end of its useful life, they sell the well site to a company with no assets that continues the drilling, distributes all profits immediately and then just allows the site to shut down and go derelict without having to spend any money to decommission and remove the assets and restore the site, forcing that cost on to the tax payers as they declare bankruptcy and walk away.

With a simple law, the companies who initially build the site up and take the vast majority of profits could be REQUIRED to put aside a bond big enough to decommission and clean up the site at the end of its life.

But Terry reads the below and says 'not a subsidy as it is legal' not understanding subsidies are often lobbied for and legal.

The "Fossil Fuel Infrastructure Hot Potato."

Major energy corporations use corporate spinoffs, tiered asset sales, and bankruptcy loopholes to dodge the astronomical costs of plugging and removing old offshore oil platforms. [1, 2]

Globally, the backlog for offshore decommissioning is estimated at over $300 billion. Because plugging a single deep-sea well and dismantling its platform can cost between $1 million and $10 million+, oil giants have a massive financial incentive to offload these liabilities. [1, 2]

The cycle typically functions through a deliberate three-step pipeline:

1. The Passing of the "Hot Potato"
When a deep-sea oil rig reaches the end of its peak profitability, a major oil company (the "Major") does not want to keep it on its books because the upcoming cleanup liabilities outweigh the remaining oil value. [1, 2]

• Instead of decommissioning it, the Major sells the rig to a mid-tier operator.
• As the well dries out further, that mid-tier company sells it to an even smaller, low-capital operator or a specifically designed undercapitalized shell company.

2. Squeezing the Last Drops
The final shell company operates on razor-thin margins. They do not invest in long-term maintenance; they simply extract the final "stripper" barrels of oil to generate immediate cash flow for executives and investors. They possess almost no other corporate assets, meaning the company's entire value is tied to a dying rig. [1, 2]

3. Strategic Bankruptcy
The moment the well stops producing enough oil to cover daily operations—or the second a regulator demands the well be decommissioned—the shell company declares Chapter 11 or Chapter 7 bankruptcy. [, 2]

• During bankruptcy proceedings, the company claims it has no money left to fulfill its environmental obligations.
• It walks away, leaving behind what is known as an orphan well. [1, 2, 3, 4]

---

Who ultimately pays the bill?

1. **The Taxpayer Foot: ** The burden falls squarely on public funds to prevent catastrophic ecological disasters or massive methane leaks. [1, 2]

 

[T. A. Gardner]

You do not need a new panel. Everyone I know with electric got a Series 2 installed with little or \no trouble. I bet if you lived in Ted Kazynski's cabin in the woods, you would have real problems getting hooked up. You should use thaty as an example.

You do if yours is full and there are no available slots. You do if your panel is 100A or less in size, as found on older homes from about the 70's and back.

A load calculation says so by Code.

 

[Lionfish]