Author Topic: ??? What's a common sense viewpoint: Petrol-based charging grid for electric car  (Read 7739 times)

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Offline Monkeh

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_miles_traveled_tax
Which can be applied to all vehicles and replace the fuel excise. Weight/risk/environmental incentives are possible to capture quite easily. Such a scheme has different characteristics to a fuel tax so some people would be better off, some others worse off. Politics is generally shy about major changes, so it'll be interesting to see what solution is finally implemented.

Seems like that would be really difficult to implement. None of my cars are new enough to have OBDII so there's nowhere to plug in a device that would interface to the car directly, and anything else I could easily leave at home or switch off. I don't see how they're going to come up with something that people won't easily game.

Well, electric cars do have OBD2.. that you drive ancient, inefficient, and unsafe vehicles is unusual.
 

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_miles_traveled_tax
Which can be applied to all vehicles and replace the fuel excise. Weight/risk/environmental incentives are possible to capture quite easily. Such a scheme has different characteristics to a fuel tax so some people would be better off, some others worse off. Politics is generally shy about major changes, so it'll be interesting to see what solution is finally implemented.
Seems like that would be really difficult to implement. None of my cars are new enough to have OBDII so there's nowhere to plug in a device that would interface to the car directly, and anything else I could easily leave at home or switch off. I don't see how they're going to come up with something that people won't easily game.
The simplest case is user reporting of the odometer (which is legally required to be accurate and tamperproof in most jurisdictions) and you pay that with your registration. Or like fuel cards you might report the odometer reading when you take on energy at a filling station.

Well, electric cars do have OBD2.. that you drive ancient, inefficient, and unsafe vehicles is unusual.
A possible option, but unpopular with the privacy conscious. Instead despite all the possible technical ways to count road use, its back to the odometer:
https://www.vicroads.vic.gov.au/registration/registration-fees/zlev-road-user-charge
 

Offline David Hess

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The simplest case is user reporting of the odometer (which is legally required to be accurate and tamperproof in most jurisdictions) and you pay that with your registration. Or like fuel cards you might report the odometer reading when you take on energy at a filling station.

Even simpler is to tax tires, which can also roughly take into account weight which damages the roads, but why do something simple when more complexity can facilitate more rent seeking.

But neither allow different road taxes for different jurisdictions.  For that you need location tracking which is a privacy nightmare, but perhaps not significant with license plate readers and personal cell phones which already continuously report your location anyway.
 

Offline SilverSolder

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The simplest case is user reporting of the odometer (which is legally required to be accurate and tamperproof in most jurisdictions) and you pay that with your registration. Or like fuel cards you might report the odometer reading when you take on energy at a filling station.

Even simpler is to tax tires, which can also roughly take into account weight which damages the roads, but why do something simple when more complexity can facilitate more rent seeking.

But neither allow different road taxes for different jurisdictions.  For that you need location tracking which is a privacy nightmare, but perhaps not significant with license plate readers and personal cell phones which already continuously report your location anyway.

There are all those e-z pass "gates" you pass through if you drive in some areas of the USA, that act like automated toll collection and seems to be a pretty flexible way of doing it.
 

Offline james_s

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The simplest case is user reporting of the odometer (which is legally required to be accurate and tamperproof in most jurisdictions) and you pay that with your registration. Or like fuel cards you might report the odometer reading when you take on energy at a filling station.

Here at least after a certain age cars become odometer exempt and you no longer have to report the mileage, I think it's only around 100,000 miles when they stop tracking it, I don't even know, I dislike modern cars and have never owned anything that wasn't already exempt when I bought it. It's still illegal to deliberately roll back an odometer but it's very common for older mechanical odometers to stop and most people just keep driving the car. One of mine has a broken gear and stopped turning a while back, it's a very rarely driven classic so it hasn't been a priority but at some point I'll replace the gear and roll it forward to something near the correct mileage. The point being it's trivial to open up the speedometer and spin the little wheels to whatever value I want, or in newer cars, flash the EEPROM.

A tire tax might work pretty well, although I'm not sure how well that correlates to wear on the roads. Very soft sport tires tend to wear quickly while heavy duty tires on something like a big pickup truck can last a long time. I think any kind of tax per mile driven will be easily gamed though, there will be $20 gadgets from from China that will defeat any kind of built in mileage tracking unless it's very tightly integrated into the electronics of the car.
 

Offline james_s

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There are all those e-z pass "gates" you pass through if you drive in some areas of the USA, that act like automated toll collection and seems to be a pretty flexible way of doing it.

We do have the "Lexus lanes" here, which are electronically tolled HOV lanes on some of the freeways, they are unpopular and controversial though, they had a sham public commentary during which time they had already started the construction, everyone was against them but they got put in anyway and the result is that suburban areas along that stretch of highway have become clogged with drivers avoiding tolls and the jams on the remaining general purpose lanes. There was also an agreement that traffic flow had to remain above a certain speed a certain percentage of time or they had to come down. Well they didn't live up to those claims and the politicians still decided they're going to keep them anyway because they like the revenue. Like anything else of this nature it becomes embroiled in politics.

I probably shouldn't even really care, I work from home, I drive around 1,000 miles a year, closer to 2,000 prior to the pandemic, my cars are toys as much as they are tools. No matter how much they tax driving not much of it is coming out of my pocket.
 

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The simplest case is user reporting of the odometer (which is legally required to be accurate and tamperproof in most jurisdictions) and you pay that with your registration. Or like fuel cards you might report the odometer reading when you take on energy at a filling station.
Even simpler is to tax tires, which can also roughly take into account weight which damages the roads, but why do something simple when more complexity can facilitate more rent seeking.
Not a bad option but with a moral hazard of encouraging people to use tires beyond their safe/practical life.

But neither allow different road taxes for different jurisdictions.  For that you need location tracking which is a privacy nightmare, but perhaps not significant with license plate readers and personal cell phones which already continuously report your location anyway.
Like with many of the "arguments" this is equally applied to existing fuel taxation where people fill up in one region and drive in another. Change is hard to sell people, even when the status quo is manifestly stupid.
 

Offline james_s

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Not a bad option but with a moral hazard of encouraging people to use tires beyond their safe/practical life.

That's a good point, people would of course do that, they already do just to avoid spending money on tires. As with most things, people have a tendency to over-simplify and look for nice simple tidy solutions to a complex problem.

I kind of took things off on a tangent and then forgot the main point of that all, right now EVs have a substantial economic advantage due to the fact that there is no road tax on the fuel, and on top of that in many regions there are tax credits for those who drive them. If they are ever the majority then the government will find new ways to tax them and many of those advantages will go away. Best not to have all our eggs in one basket, it's better if we have cars using a variety of different energy sources rather than everyone having the same thing.
 

Offline SilverSolder

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There are all those e-z pass "gates" you pass through if you drive in some areas of the USA, that act like automated toll collection and seems to be a pretty flexible way of doing it.

We do have the "Lexus lanes" here, which are electronically tolled HOV lanes on some of the freeways, they are unpopular and controversial though, they had a sham public commentary during which time they had already started the construction, everyone was against them but they got put in anyway and the result is that suburban areas along that stretch of highway have become clogged with drivers avoiding tolls and the jams on the remaining general purpose lanes. There was also an agreement that traffic flow had to remain above a certain speed a certain percentage of time or they had to come down. Well they didn't live up to those claims and the politicians still decided they're going to keep them anyway because they like the revenue. Like anything else of this nature it becomes embroiled in politics.

I probably shouldn't even really care, I work from home, I drive around 1,000 miles a year, closer to 2,000 prior to the pandemic, my cars are toys as much as they are tools. No matter how much they tax driving not much of it is coming out of my pocket.

Just be grateful the modern digital economy guys aren't running the "Lexus Lanes"...  they would work by bidding for each mile of use, and the highest bidders would get the right to use it - so it becomes cheaper the less people want to use it!
 

Offline james_s

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Just be grateful the modern digital economy guys aren't running the "Lexus Lanes"...  they would work by bidding for each mile of use, and the highest bidders would get the right to use it - so it becomes cheaper the less people want to use it!

In a sense they already do. The toll varies based on how heavily used it is, from a low of I think 75 cents all the way up to $10 per segment. They keep traffic in the toll lanes flowing by excluding those who can't afford to use them.
 
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Offline SilverSolder

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Just be grateful the modern digital economy guys aren't running the "Lexus Lanes"...  they would work by bidding for each mile of use, and the highest bidders would get the right to use it - so it becomes cheaper the less people want to use it!

In a sense they already do. The toll varies based on how heavily used it is, from a low of I think 75 cents all the way up to $10 per segment. They keep traffic in the toll lanes flowing by excluding those who can't afford to use them.

There probably isn't any better solution (than auctioning the space off) since there will always be infinite demand for a free (to the user) resource...
 

Online AVGresponding

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Just be grateful the modern digital economy guys aren't running the "Lexus Lanes"...  they would work by bidding for each mile of use, and the highest bidders would get the right to use it - so it becomes cheaper the less people want to use it!

In a sense they already do. The toll varies based on how heavily used it is, from a low of I think 75 cents all the way up to $10 per segment. They keep traffic in the toll lanes flowing by excluding those who can't afford to use them.

There probably isn't any better solution (than auctioning the space off) since there will always be infinite demand for a free (to the user) resource...

Free at the point of use might be a better description, since I dare say some of the funds come from general taxation. They do in the UK at any rate.
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Offline james_s

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They absolutely come from taxation, and the toll system is run by a private corporation that takes a substantial cut of the profits. Same with the speed cameras and red light cameras.
 
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Online SiliconWizard

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They absolutely come from taxation, and the toll system is run by a private corporation that takes a substantial cut of the profits. Same with the speed cameras and red light cameras.

Yup.
And always-connected EVs will be uber-easy to tax automatically wherever they drive.

How to get more tax money is the easiest problem to solve ever.
 

Offline Alti

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Making the big assumption that one could get as much as 33% efficiency pipe-to-plug, on the face of it there seems to be no reason why one shouldn't generate one's own electricity for about 10p per kWh, or half the grid price.
You need to understand that 20p is not the electricity price but the billed price of 1kWh that includes: tax, energy, bill delivery, grid maintenance, marble arches, energy loss, etc. So you could do that alone but in a scale of society it does not make any sense because electricity costs 8p and the remaining (mostly fixed cost) is 12p (values as examples).
 

Offline Ultrapurple

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You need to understand that 20p is not the electricity price but the billed price of 1kWh that includes: tax, energy, bill delivery, grid maintenance, marble arches, energy loss, etc. So you could do that alone but in a scale of society it does not make any sense because electricity costs 8p and the remaining (mostly fixed cost) is 12p (values as examples).

Yes, you're quite right (and I acknowledge that your figures are for illustration only).

But it seems I'm not alone with the idea...



(Source: Using diesel to charge EVs in the outback is greener than you think
« Last Edit: May 13, 2021, 11:30:20 am by Ultrapurple »
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Offline SilverSolder

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You need to understand that 20p is not the electricity price but the billed price of 1kWh that includes: tax, energy, bill delivery, grid maintenance, marble arches, energy loss, etc. So you could do that alone but in a scale of society it does not make any sense because electricity costs 8p and the remaining (mostly fixed cost) is 12p (values as examples).

Yes, you're quite right (and I acknowledge that your figures are for illustration only).

But it seems I'm not alone with the idea...



(Source: Using diesel to charge EVs in the outback is greener than you think

I guess that if this kind of thing is only done once in a blue moon where there are no other charging facilities, the environmental impact may not be too bad (as long as you are nuclear or hydro or solar or wind powered the rest of the time!).
 

Offline Ultrapurple

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I guess that if this kind of thing is only done once in a blue moon where there are no other charging facilities, the environmental impact may not be too bad (as long as you are nuclear or hydro or solar or wind powered the rest of the time!).

It's worth reading the details set out in the article.

Selectively quoting, and adding approximate MPGimp figures in red:

Using the lifetime average kWh per kilometre for each car (this depends on the car and the driving style and is recorded continually by the car) an individual litres diesel equivalent per kilometre for each car tested can be established

Running the charger for 9 hours and 15 minutes and consuming 108.6 litres of diesel to charge the 10 EVs, the results came in: a total energy consumption (as recorded by the EV power management systems) of 368.4kWh delivered at an average rate of 3.392 kWh/litre.

Converted to standard fuel consumption figures using the lifetime average kWh per kilometre, the BMW i3 came in as the most efficient, recording a fuel consumption rate of 4.392 litres/100km (64mpg) – about the same fuel efficiency as a diesel BMW 3 series.

The Tesla models, while scoring higher than the BMW i3 (between 5.011 to 6.014 L/100km (56 - 47mpg) for the Model S and 5.689 to 6.957 L/100km (50 - 41mpg) for the Model X) came significantly under similarly sized vehicles in their range (for example, a diesel Holden Commodore does 5.7 litres/100km (50mpg) while a VW Touareg diesel SUV does 7.2 litres/100km (39mpg)).


(I can't get my head round litres/100km, if only because as vehicle economy improves you have to start specifying to more and more significant figures to capture the tiny numerical changes that would be ever-so-clear in MPG terms)
« Last Edit: May 13, 2021, 06:05:24 pm by Ultrapurple »
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Offline james_s

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I did some back of a napkin calculations recently after having the opportunity to drive a Tesla Y for a few days. When charging from a 120V receptacle it can pull 12A which is about 1.4kW and charges at a rate of 5 miles of range per hour. I have a Honda EU2000i inverter generator which will deliver that power for about 4 hours or possibly a bit more on its 0.95 gallon tank so a as a rough estimation we can call that 20 miles per US gallon. That's really not bad at all for such a big heavy car, and it's even more impressive when you consider all of the conversion stages taking place here. Gasoline> mechanical energy> 3 phase AC> DC> 120VAC> DC> stored energy in batteries> AC> mechanical energy. A conventional (non-inverter) generator sized precisely for charging the car while running at the highest efficiency loading would likely improve things a bit, a diesel generator doing the same thing would be a further improvement. Does it actually make sense to do that as a matter of routine? I'd say no, but I was rather surprised by the result of the calculations.
 

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It's worth reading the details set out in the article.

Selectively quoting, and adding approximate MPGimp figures in red:

Converted to standard fuel consumption figures using the lifetime average kWh per kilometre, the BMW i3 came in as the most efficient, recording a fuel consumption rate of 4.392 litres/100km (64mpg) – about the same fuel efficiency as a diesel BMW 3 series.

The Tesla models, while scoring higher than the BMW i3 (between 5.011 to 6.014 L/100km (56 - 47mpg) for the Model S and 5.689 to 6.957 L/100km (50 - 41mpg) for the Model X) came significantly under similarly sized vehicles in their range (for example, a diesel Holden Commodore does 5.7 litres/100km (50mpg) while a VW Touareg diesel SUV does 7.2 litres/100km (39mpg)).
Selective comparisons if ever there was one, Holdens being known for their complete disregard of fuel efficiency. Instead for the larger vehicles:
Mercedes-Benz A Class A200CDI 4.0l/100km
Peugeot 5008 GT 4.8l/100km
Audi Q5 40 TDI quattro 5.3l/100km

And smaller vehicles comparable to an i3:
Peugeot 308 GT 4.0l/100km
Audi A3 Sportback 1.6 TDI 4.1l/100km

Picking selectively for efficiency makes the picture entirely different. Noting that they still ignore the emissions restrictions on the cars, and claims the opposite:
Quote
But is it green? It’s better than putting diesel in a car, says Edwards, because the constant running rate of the gennie uses the fuel more efficiently than idling and accelerating in a car.
So it uses more fuel in an engine with looser environmental restrictions, and is somehow "greener". No, no it isn't.
 
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Offline SilverSolder

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So a diesel generator is not required to be as "clean" as a diesel car, basically?
 

Offline Alti

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So a diesel generator is not required to be as "clean" as a diesel car, basically?
Now, lets put that "not so clean diesel" on a trailer pulled by EV.  :popcorn:
 

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So a diesel generator is not required to be as "clean" as a diesel car, basically?
Mobile generator, stationary power station, aircraft, etc, they don't have emissions limits anywhere near as restrictive as motor vehicles so comparisons on fuel use are misleading/flakey. Trying to take the fuel use as some measure of environmental impact is then even more incorrect.
 
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Offline james_s

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Mobile generator, stationary power station, aircraft, etc, they don't have emissions limits anywhere near as restrictive as motor vehicles so comparisons on fuel use are misleading/flakey. Trying to take the fuel use as some measure of environmental impact is then even more incorrect.

That's only because there are not very many of them in spaces where people congregate. If there were millions of 737 jetliners rolling through the streets in every city and town around the country, or if every suburban house had a Diesel generator rumbling away all afternoon next to the driveway you can bet there would be much more restrictive emissions limits than there are. We'd be choking on fumes and smog from them the way people were prior to emissions regulations on cars. It's easy to forget how much cleaner cars are now or even 30 years ago than in the early 70s and before. There are vastly more cars on the road now yet the air is not nearly as polluted from them. Getting rid of the lead in gasoline was probably the biggest environmental improvement in my lifetime, tetra-ethyl lead is really nasty stuff and vast quantities of it were spewed out all over the world resulting in measurable lead contamination virtually everywhere on earth.
 
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Offline David Hess

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Mobile generator, stationary power station, aircraft, etc, they don't have emissions limits anywhere near as restrictive as motor vehicles so comparisons on fuel use are misleading/flakey. Trying to take the fuel use as some measure of environmental impact is then even more incorrect.

States like California have emission rules for portable generators.
 


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