Unhappy Tesla Owner in Canada!; A Must Read
This letter to the editor was printed in the Inverness Oran in Feb 2024. (Given the detail, I have no reason to believe it is not genuine):
February 28, 2024
Dear Editor,
I am writing in response to a letter in the February 14th publication entitled, “Benefits of Electric Vehicles.” My husband and I drive a 2021 Long Range Tesla Model 3. My hope is to shed some light on what it is like living in Inverness County with an electric vehicle.
For a bit of context, I am not your run-of-the-mill naysayer. We’ve been driving an EV for the last three years, we are organic farmers, we lived in a fully off-grid, solar-powered home for eight years, and we attended that big Greta Thunberg inspired climate change march in Halifax back in 2019.
I feel slightly embarrassed about sharing this so publicly, because I truly feel, we got duped by clever and persuasive EV/doomsday marketing.
After reading Paul Strome’s letter, featuring all those key marketing points, I felt compelled to write in. Here is our electric car experience:
2021 – Rosy new car: Wow! This is great!
– The car was more expensive up front, but it only costs about $14 to “fill the tank” and we can conveniently charge with our Level 2 charger at home whenever we want. That will more than make up for the initial cost over time, considering the price of gas!
– No pesky oil changes and Tesla’s titanium shield under the car means no repairs due to rust! Great – more savings!
– When going to Halifax, we need to recharge at the Enfield Supercharger. Recharging takes 18 minutes, but no big deal: bathroom break, stretch your legs, get a coffee; just minor adjustments to how we drove with a gas car.
Not-so-nice realizations from year one:
– The undulating, electric hum while the car charges for seven hours permeates our entire home and yard. Is that healthy?
– Needing to exit the vehicle for 20 minutes at the Supercharger because it feels very unhealthy to be in such a high voltage environment while it’s charging. Rain, shine, snow or sleet – Everybody out!
– Learning that every time you recharge the battery, the battery life decreases. It actually can damage the battery to charge to 100 per cent and Tesla advised that you don’t charge more than 80 per cent and not discharge to less than 20 percent, for day-to-day use. That means less than 60 percent of the battery will be available. Gee, I wish they would have told me when I bought the car.
2022 – One-year-old car:
– Can still make it to Sydney and back, but we shouldn’t make many detours if we want to make it home again. Having to stop in Baddeck for two hours to “juice up” just to make the 40-minute journey home doesn’t make much sense…
– Can still make it to the Enfield Supercharger when going to Halifax, but no detours. Stick to the highway or else.
Christmas 2023 – 2.5-year-old car:
Heading to the Valley Christmas Eve (outside temperature is -5 C.
– “I don’t think we’re going to make it to the Supercharger…” “What the heck! We’re definitely not going to make it!” The whole family, plus two dogs, wandered around Truro for 1.5 hours, in the cold twilight while charging just enough to make it to the Enfield Supercharger.
– With everyone’s spirits low, we wander around the Enfield Big Stop parking lot in the cold while the car charges for 35 minutes. Can’t bring the dogs into Timmy’s and staying in the car while it’s charging feels like every hair on your body is getting charged up too.
– Charge up again at the New Minas Supercharger, just in case, because the wall plug at Grandma’s takes days to charge the car and we can’t believe how poorly the car is performing.
Coming home after Christmas:
– Leave Middleton. Stop at the Supercharger in New Minas for 10 minutes to add some charge. Everyone out into the cold!
– Leave New Minas. Stop in Enfield to fully recharge for 35 minutes. Everybody out into the cold: Kids, dogs; everyone. It’s windy and half raining/half snowing. How wonderfully modern and convenient it is to drive an EV!
– Make it back home with six per cent. Phew!
January 2024 – 2.5-year-old car:
– Temperature 10 C, but dropping, so range is dropping too.
– Husband arrives at Enfield Supercharger. Relief!
– Enfield supercharger is down. Neither the car nor Telsa phone app notified him; 9:00 p.m. on a Sunday.
No indication of when/if the charger will turn on again. Car is at three per cent. Not enough power to keep the heat on, let alone drive to a motel. Other EV drivers there are all cursing their cars and their decisions…
– After an hour of being stranded, the chargers come online again.
– 60 minutes to recharge after going so low and it being so cold out. Two hours, stuck at the Enfield Big Stop!
February 2024 (last week) – 2.5-year-old car
– We are driving home from the airport. I’m driving my 2012 Toyota Matrix (680 km/tank). I have to go pick up the dogs from the boarder, just outside Antigonish. It’s too big of a detour for the “Long Range” Tesla to handle.
– Even with that detour, I make it home first. The Tesla took 60 minutes to charge in Enfield. It takes longer to charge a cold battery, but surely they should be home by now…
– My husband finally made it home. He crawled home, with the heat turned off, because he was trying to conserve power. Made it home with six per cent.
We’ve looked into it: There is nothing wrong with our car. This is just the natural diminishing of an EV battery over time, combined with fairly mild NS winter driving.
This is what range anxiety looks like!
It is not, as Paul Strome so kindly put it, “for those drivers who have trouble paying attention to their fuel gauge.”
Range anxiety means constantly paying attention to your fuel gauge and crossing your fingers and toes, hoping you’re going to make it!
It’s leaving home with a “full tank” to go 290 km and worrying about not arriving!
The February 14th letter features all of the dealership, government, and activist talking points.
None of it is based on the real life experience of a rural EV owner.
The “official range” of EVs is not based in reality.
Only on the first day out of the factory (if it’s sunny, with no wind, temps between 15-20 C, on a straight stretch road with no hills) would our car ever live up to its range expectations.
Speaking as a former climate change activist and current EV driver, I can only see EVs working if you live in a big city and never plan on leaving that big city.
The last thing we should be pushing for is to phase out internal combustion engine vehicles by 2035 in Canada.
Yes, we absolutely have to take better care of our planet, but EVs make zero sense in the real world.
Hilary Mueller
Mabou
Views: 33
Comment
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Comment by Willem Post on March 26, 2024 at 9:25pm
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On snowy days, despite their huge installed capacity, MW, their generation, MWh, is way short of their “wished for” generation, due to “weather dependence”
That solar generation would normally have a big bulge at noon-time, which far exceeds demand.
Storing it in batteries and discharging 80% of it during the peak hours of late afternoon/early evening, is out of the question, as that would add at least
30 c/kWh, to the price of the solar electricity fed to the battery.Go woke, go big-time broke.
Now you know why the electricity rates in California are skyrocketing.
A bunch of climate screwballs are in charge, stealing from your pocket
They make the rules that enable their stealing.The only solution is to elect Trump by a landslide to far more than overcome any fraud, so he can undo all that dysfunctional wind/solar/battery BS
BATTERY SYSTEM CAPITAL COSTS, OPERATING COSTS, ENERGY LOSSES, AND AGING
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/battery-system-capital...
EXCERPT:
Annual Cost of Megapack Battery Systems; 2023 pricing
Assume a system rated 45.3 MW/181.9 MWh, and an all-in turnkey cost of $104.5 million, per Example 2
Amortize bank loan for 50% of $104.5 million at 6.5%/y for 15 years, $5.484 million/y
Pay Owner return of 50% of $104.5 million at 10%/y for 15 years, $6.765 million/y (10% due to high inflation)
Lifetime (Bank + Owner) payments 15 x (5.484 + 6.765) = $183.7 million
Assume battery daily usage for 15 years at 10%, and loss factor = 1/(0.9 *0.9)
Battery lifetime output = 15 y x 365 d/y x 181.9 MWh x 0.1, usage x 1000 kWh/MWh = 99,590,250 kWh to HV grid; 122,950,926 kWh from HV grid; 233,606,676 kWh loss
(Bank + Owner) payments, $183.7 million / 99,590,250 kWh = 184.5 c/kWh
Less 50% subsidies (ITC, depreciation in 5 years, deduction of interest on borrowed funds) is 92.3c/kWh
At 10% throughput, (Bank + Owner) cost, 92.3 c/kWh
At 40% throughput, (Bank + Owner) cost, 23.1 c/kWh
Excluded costs/kWh: 1) O&M; 2) system aging, 1.5%/y, 3) 20% HV grid-to-HV grid loss, 4) grid extension/reinforcement to connect battery systems, 5) downtime of parts of the system, 6) decommissioning in year 15, i.e., disassembly, reprocessing and storing at hazardous waste sites. Excluded costs would add at least 10 – 15 c/kWh
NOTE: The 40% throughput is close to Tesla’s recommendation of 60% maximum throughput, i.e., not charging above 80% full and not discharging below 20% full, to achieve a 15-y life, with normal aging
Tesla’s recommendation was not heeded by the Owners of the Hornsdale Power Reserve in Australia. They excessively charged/discharged the system. After a few years, they added Megapacks to offset rapid aging of the original system, and added more Megapacks to increase the rating of the expanded system.
http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/the-hornsdale-power-res...
COMMENTS ON CALCULATION:
Regarding any project, the bank and the owner have to be paid.
Therefore, I amortized the bank loan and the owner’s investment
If you divide the total of the payments over 15 years by the throughput during 15 years, you get the cost per kWh, as shown.
According to EIA annual reports, almost all battery systems have throughputs less than 10%. I chose 10% for calculations.
A few battery systems have higher throughputs, if they are used to absorb midday solar and discharge it the during peak hour periods of late-afternoon/early-evening. They may reach up to 40% throughput. I chose 40% for calculations.
Remember, you have to draw about 50 MWh from the HV grid to deliver about 40 MWh to the HV grid, because of A-to-Z system losses. That gets worse with aging.
A lot of people do not like these c/kWh numbers, because they have been repeatedly told by self-serving folks, low-cost battery Nirvana is just around the corner, which is a load of crap.
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I think the owner believed all the drivel and "misinformation" being dished out by the EV industry and "green" politicians. One good blizzard shutting down the highways and everyone driving an EV will be relying on fossil fueled drivers with big hearts to take them in from the cold.
Maine as Third World Country:
CMP Transmission Rate Skyrockets 19.6% Due to Wind Power
Click here to read how the Maine ratepayer has been sold down the river by the Angus King cabal.
Maine Center For Public Interest Reporting – Three Part Series: A CRITICAL LOOK AT MAINE’S WIND ACT
******** IF LINKS BELOW DON'T WORK, GOOGLE THEM*********
(excerpts) From Part 1 – On Maine’s Wind Law “Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine if the law’s goals were met." . – Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, August 2010 https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/From Part 2 – On Wind and Oil Yet using wind energy doesn’t lower dependence on imported foreign oil. That’s because the majority of imported oil in Maine is used for heating and transportation. And switching our dependence from foreign oil to Maine-produced electricity isn’t likely to happen very soon, says Bartlett. “Right now, people can’t switch to electric cars and heating – if they did, we’d be in trouble.” So was one of the fundamental premises of the task force false, or at least misleading?" https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-swept-task-force-set-the-rules/From Part 3 – On Wind-Required New Transmission Lines Finally, the building of enormous, high-voltage transmission lines that the regional electricity system operator says are required to move substantial amounts of wind power to markets south of Maine was never even discussed by the task force – an omission that Mills said will come to haunt the state.“If you try to put 2,500 or 3,000 megawatts in northern or eastern Maine – oh, my god, try to build the transmission!” said Mills. “It’s not just the towers, it’s the lines – that’s when I begin to think that the goal is a little farfetched.” https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/flaws-in-bill-like-skating-with-dull-skates/
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Hannah Pingree on the Maine expedited wind law
Hannah Pingree - Director of Maine's Office of Innovation and the Future
"Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine."
https://pinetreewatch.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/
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