A lot of people find their home electricity bills expensive. This leads them to believe that operating an electric vehicle might prove to be expensive too. This assumption is completely incorrect as charging is orders of magnitude less expensive than petroleum.
Today, we drove to find the branch of Bosa Foods on Victoria Drive. It's an Italian deli/grocery store in Vancouver that's pretty well known. However, we only knew them from their reusable shopping bags as Jay used to get them as donations at his place of work. We have travelled the world for a number of years with a few Bosa Food bags. They really hold up well but now that Jay hasn't worked in about five years, we needed replacements. We did buy some cheese and specialty olives. We got a bag for us and a few to bring back to give to Jay's sisters in Sri Lanka.
On the drive back, I noticed that my car battery was down to about 79% as we got into New Westminster. I had last plugged in the EV about 10 days ago and figured I would use the Level 2 charger at city hall. This is the type of 240-volt device that uses about the same amount of power as an electric hot water heater. Most people with their own homes put in this type for overnight charging. Fast DC charging would be expensive to install and unnecessary for a residence.
The city hall is a two-block walk from the apartment, so we parked, took our bags, and walked down the hill. I let the car change while we ate lunch.
After an hour and a half, I walked back up. In this amount of time, I knew the EV would be at about 90% charge. On this rather slow, home-type charger, Kimchi gets close to 50 km (31 miles) of an additional range per hour. So during this time, my estimated vehicle range went from about 375 KM to 450 KM. To travel an equivalent of 46 miles would take a couple of gallons of gas.
New Westminster doesn't charge for power at city hall but I calculated the total power consumed at BC Hydro residential rates. The power I put into the battery cost $CA 0.56 in power utility fees. Yet, in order to buy the equivalent 7.5 litres of gas in the outrageously expensive market here, one would have to pay over $CA 11.63.