I bought a used C-MAX plug-in hybrid and was told that with the EV plan offered by PG&E, I'd save money versus gas. Only after I purchased did I learn that the EV plan gives you cheaper charging at night only if you're willing to stomach very high rates during the day. Since I work from home a lot and have a toddler, this is a non-starter for my family.

So we pay roughly the same amount per mile with electricity as for gas — and I'm in CA, where gas is expensive. We do save a tiny bit when we get to charge for free or at a subsidized rate somewhere. But I think most of the savings comes from not wearing down our brake pads on the hills in our neighborhood, and not having so many moving parts to wear out. These savings are not huge when amortized over the number of miles driven.

>in CA, where gas is expensive

That actually made me laugh. It might cost more than in other US states, but is almost free comparing to most of Europe [1]. Average size of cars and engines, larger car with larger engine use more gas, also tell a lot of price compared to income, and it you compare traffic in Europe and America you will also see that Americans pay way to little for gas

[1]https://www.statista.com/statistics/221368/gas-prices-around...

I'm in MA (home of $0.20/kWh electricity) and my LEAF gets about 21 miles per dollar of energy. A comparable gas car would get ~13 miles per dollar of gasoline.

I think you're likely still saving money on the electric portion of your driving, as CA rates seem to be slightly lower than MA rates from a cursory Google search.

We pay a bit more than this for electricity, on the margin (they give you low rates on the first chunk but then it goes up from there).

But most of the difference is that our vehicle is nowhere near as efficient as yours. The 9kW/h battery only goes about 18-20 miles on a charge, and it costs more than the $1 that you pay to get that many miles.

C-MAX only gets 2 miles per kWh? They should call it C-MIN. Most electric cars get around 4 miles per kWh.

I don't understand this calculation. Does your toddler use a excessive amount of electricity? Do you work at home running an aluminum smelter?

Snark aside, when we got our Chevy Spark EV in 2013, we switched to the EV rate plan and it has saved us a lot. I work at home too, and but the peak hour use on the EV plan is quite small, so the higher rate is balanced out by having the car automatically charge during off-peak.

It means I have to run the AC in summer and heat in winter for much of the day. The age of my child is relevant because older kids are in school during the day.

I'm in the East Bay, so don't really need AC and have gas heat so the EV plan works for me. What part of PG&E service area do you live in?

I'm on the peninsula. This summer has been very mild so we've gotten off easy, but I certainly can't count on that most years. Since you can't switch plans frequently, I didn't want to take the risk of switching.

How much use do you get out of the pure electric range on the C-MAX? I have a Chevy Spark EV and can make almost all trips I need. My longest is Oakland to San Jose and back. It has only 18kWh battery, but in warm weather we see 4.8 avg miles per kWh.

Perhaps solar would help solve your daytime rate problem? Or a car with more battery?

Wife's commute is 15 miles roundtrip, so we get good use out of it. Just wish it took less kWh in to get the same number of miles out.

It would in all likelihood still be cheaper than gas, but even if it weren't, electric cars are just that much better all around. After you've driven one for a while, you realize what a smelly complicated Rube Goldberg mess the internal combustion engine is.

To each their own, but I work for a service provider tangential to the auto industry, so I've had the chance to drive a lot of different cars, and I'm pretty ambivalent about electric vs ICE cars. None of the engineering complexity of an ICE (and associated components) is particularly relevant to me as a car owner, and we've been building them for long enough that despite their complexity, they're extremely reliable.

Yes, to each his own. Even with reliability, I find several aspects of ICE undesirable: Slower start time, vibration, noise, inconsistent acceleration, the smell of gas at the pump and exhaust from the tailpipe, the pollution, the maintenance schedule, less cargo space, and the greater decrease in reliability with time.

Why? If they care about the environment. If they don't like wasting time at the gas station every week or more. If they don't like to deal with the horrible maintenance schedule of traditional engines vs having an oil change every 2 years.

They're quieter and safer and as Tesla has shown can have much better acceleration.

The batteries are likely to survive 500k miles and there's a lot less moving parts so less things to go wrong.