One of the more amusing things I heard this week was from Anders Bell, the current head of engineering and technology at Volvo and former Tesla engineer, who described one of the new fast charging issues as “Hot Dog Anxiety.” This is a peculiar and also very European way to describe a very real phenomenon. Does Bojangles offer a solution?
I couldn’t possibly lead with Stellantis today because we had a lot of it yesterday, and it’s worth talking about why and what actually happened in this Morning Dump. There’s also some weirdness between North Carolina and Vietnamese automaker VinFast, which doesn’t seem to be particularly expedient in building a plant there.
And, finally, motorsports says goodbye to an absolute legend.
Charging Is Getting Faster, But Not Necessarily Cheaper
Shout out to TheSpaceCadet in our Discord for pointing out that fried chicken and breakfast joint Bojangles is joining other food purveyors in offering fast charging. The first one will be in my ancestral home of Savannah, Georgia. That’s fun. I like that. It did remind me of something that Volvo’s Anders Bell said when we chatted about the new Volvo EX60 earlier this week.
He said that people at the company were “continuously” having a debate over battery technology. After the failure of European battery startup Northvolt, he says they’ve become “cell omnivores” and will have a vertically integrated approach to battery manufacturing, but that the contents of the cell will just come from wherever makes the most sense. This is a strange quirk of the rollback of the Inflation Reduction Act. There’s less of a penalty for having a pack with Chinese-provided materials because there’s no tax credit to be excluded from (although it sounds like American EVs will be getting South Korean cells).
One penalty that isn’t going away, though, is what Bell called “Hog Dog Anxiety.”
“Hot Dog Anxiety is: You go in and buy your hot dog, and you’ve just been charged $25 [for fast charging] and it’s become an expensive hot dog,” Bell explained.
It’s a well understood fact that home charging is dramatically cheaper and more efficient than fast charging. There are many reasons for this, including the equipment cost of a Level 3 charging cabinet versus a Level 2 home plug. There’s also a lot of supply and demand here, as you’re probably charging your car at home overnight, when electricity is cheaper, versus in the middle of the day for fast charging on a road trip, when it tends to be more expensive.
Electricity costs have risen rapidly as demand on the grid has increased (and is projected to increase because of data centers), and the current administration has both increased the cost of energy through stoking a conflict in the Middle East and by actively discouraging sustainable sources. Right now the average electricity cost in kWh is about $0.194 per kWh, way up from $0.134 in 2020.
If you used a standard home charger on a 2022 Tesla Model Y Standard Range AWD to go from 20-80%, that’s roughly $8.18 for 159 miles of range. Not bad. That’s much cheaper than the average cost of 159 miles of range for a 30 MPG vehicle ($4.56 *5.3 gallons = $24.17). Even with gas prices at terrible highs, fast charging is expensive. At the Supercharger near me, in the middle of the day, it’s about $0.50 per kWh (cheaper at night). That same 153 miles takes about 19 minutes on a V2 Supercharger, which is pretty good, and it cost me about $21.53.
Right now, that’s a little cheaper than gas! But if/when gas prices come down, the math gets a little harder. There’s been so much talk about super fast charging–and it’s cool that even the cheapest P6 Electric EX60 can go from 10-90% in 16 minutes on a 350 kWh chager–I think the price gets overlooked.
This still means that buying an electric car isn’t necessarily cheaper if you can’t charge at home or work. When I’m on road trips in EVs I don’t know if I feel super worried about this, but if I normally charged at home it would suck to plug in for a top off, linger at the Sheetz as I decide whether I want a wrapz or a meltz, and then pay an extra $20 to charge.
[Ed Note: Charging big EVs on Superchargers can indeed be more expensive than driving even gas guzzlers. -DT].
Stellantis, Wow, Ok
Here’s what happened yesterday. I saw that Stellantis was doing its Investor Day and I was writing TMD and watching the live stream when I saw the above graphic. We were not invited to the event, presumably for reasons… and I just sort of assumed what they showed was all anyone would know.
Did we go a little crazy? We went a little crazy. [Ed Note: We reported the information we had, which was the chart above. Nothing crazy about that; just doing our jobs! -DT]. It was looking to be a slow day and I thought it would be fun to just write up what’s there, and the more we looked the more interesting stuff we found. No one told me that at lleast a handful of outlets would be there, in person, and that the company would show them models and full-sized styling bucks of a lot of the vehicles.
It sort of sucks, but it didn’t impact the coverage too much. One of the three guesses that David made about the Jeep Wrangler Scrambler was correct. Thomas had the Rampage and Dakota roughly correct. The company was fairly straightforward with the Chrysler Airflow and I think the Ramchager. By the time we wrote up the Dodge GLH we’d figured out what was going on and our reporting was pretty much the same. Poor Mercedes, I really set her up for failure, and the SRT Copperhead post is basically three posts as we quickly updated it.
For all of the talk about what’s there, I’m kind of interested in what isn’t. There wasn’t much discussion of Alfa Romeo and Fiat in the United States, even though both are technically still sold in the US. The Jeep Wagoneer S is skipping the 2026 MY, but I don’t see it here at all? I could definitely see the company abandoning the Wagoneer S in a couple of years.
North Carolina Is Maaaaaad At VinFast
Bojangles is very much a Carolina-based operation, as VinFast will be once it finishes building its plant there. Last I checked, the Vietnamese automaker was sstill intent on building a plant in Chatham County, North Carolina.
Per Bloomberg, maybe not…
North Carolina sued Vietnamese electric vehicle maker VinFast Auto Ltd., alleging the company breached agreements tied to a planned electric vehicle and battery manufacturing facility, and seeking to reclaim the project site.
The US state was exercising its contractual right to acquire the property to protect taxpayer investments after VinFast failed to meet key obligations tied to the project, Attorney General Jeff Jackson said in a statement.
“VinFast agreed to build a factory and create jobs for North Carolinians – it didn’t do either,” Jackson said. “When North Carolina makes a deal, we build in protection for taxpayers. VinFast broke the deal, so we’re using that protection to find a project for this site that will create jobs.”
VinFast is looking into it, according to the article.
RIP Kyle Busch
Kyle Busch, age 41, won his last race in the Craftsman Truck Series this weekend at Dover Motor Speedway. He gave an incredible interview with Amanda Busick, from FS1. She asked him “Why do these moments never get old” and he replied: “Because you never know when the last one is.”
Busch was hospitalized soon after and died, unexpectedly, as was announced by NASCAR yesterday:
Our entire NASCAR family is heartbroken by the loss of Kyle Busch. A future Hall of Famer, Kyle was a rare talent, one who comes along once in a generation. He was fierce, he was passionate, he was immensely skilled and he cared deeply about the sport and fans. Throughout a career that spanned more than two decades, Kyle set records in national series wins, won championships at NASCAR’s highest level and fostered the next generation of drivers as an owner in the Truck Series. His sharp wit and competitive spirit sparked a deep emotional connection with race fans of every age, creating the proud and loyal ‘Rowdy Nation.’ Our thoughts are with Samantha, Brexton and Lennix, Kyle and Samantha’s parents, Kurt and all of Kyle’s family, Richard and Judy Childress, everyone at Richard Childress Racing, his teammates, friends and fans. NASCAR lost a giant of the sport today, far too soon.
Our thoughts are with his friends and family.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
It’s Skin Cancer Awareness Month and our friends at XPEL are celebrating with National Don’t Fry Day, so I’m going to do a week of beach songs. We end the week with Karol G’s “Si Antes Te Hubiera Conocido.”
Observed annually on the Friday before Memorial Day, National Don’t Fry Day raises awareness about the dangers of ultraviolet (UV) radiation and promotes sun-safe habits as Americans head into summer. In recognition of the occasion, XPEL is offering 15% off automotive window tint installations at participating authorized dealers and company-owned stores across the U.S. on May 22 only.
The Big Question
Are you driving or going anywhere for Memorial Day weekend? How are you getting there?
Top graphic hot dog and car elements: DepositPhotos.com
I was complaining the other day that I still have a $100/month electric bill even after I installed a 10kw solar system. My daughter’s boyfriend reminded me that I’m charging four EVs (one with an hour commute) and my house, while his gasoline bill for one car is $500 this month. Oh, right. Phew.
Yeah, public chargers are still just way too expensive. In my Kia Niro PHEV. I can comfortably get 50 MPG in hybrid mode, and the 8.9 kwh battery is good for about 25 miles. With those numbers it’s almost always cheaper to just buy gas than to use a public charger on a dollars-per-mile basis. At local gas prices, electricity has to be less than 35 cents/kWh to make sense.
We’re bringing back the airflow as a crossover SUV! And the RamCharger as a crossover SUV, and the rampage as a crossover SUV and the GLH as a crossover SUV and…
So hotdog anxiety has nothing to do with banana panic?
Wow. I didn’t know that US KWH is now up to $.19 per! I haven’t really been paying attention (that’s a national average figure, right? I know there’s a large delta between the cheaper and more costly electricity from state to state).
If I had an EV, I’d charge mostly at home given my driving habits. That’d be cheaper than charging at commerical chargers as you said (plus my house is solar, so it basically would cost me nothing). I still think about buying a used EV almost daily: for $20K or a bit under I could get a Hyundai Ionic 5 or a Chevy Equinox. Both would be decent for my needs. But my daily needs are modest, and what I’m currenly using (a ’04 Volvo XC90 that I bought at the start of the pandemic for $3,100. w/135Kmiles on it) still works fine and hasn’t needed any costly repairs (I did spend $1,200. on a set of 18″ Michelins for it, which is the most I’ve ever spent for tires on any car). So, it seems silly to pay $20K for a decent used EV, even with my basically free charging at home atm.
We’re retired. We’ll ride out Memorial Day weekend at home and go party Tuesday lunch.
What about the Fiat Topolino USA rollout?
I’m not anti-EV but charging is certainly a weird wild-west crapshoot (here in the USA, at least). I drive a PHEV and used to be able to drive to work on ~100% electric, charge at work, and then drive home on ~100% electric. These days I make the drive home on gas instead because the chargers near my office have added a connection fee on top of the charge per kWh used which makes the math unfavorable for me.
Overall, you still don’t quite know what to expect with EV charging unless it’s a big brand with a consistent experience (Tesla supercharger) or a charger you’ve used before … but even then chargers seem to act up more frequently than gas pumps. Hopefully we see improvement on this.
Wtf is a “connection fee?”
I believe they charge a fee/hour your car is connected to the charger and is not being charged. Basically, encouraging to move your car once fully charged vs hogging a charger all day when you only needed it for a couple of hours.
Some places do have that as well, that’s usually called an “inactivity fee”. But that’s not what I’m talking about; I always try to be prompt and move my car once it’s charged. This is a “start fee” – described as “a fixed charge applied per session when using a charging station”.
TBQ – Currently on vacation in Massachusetts with a rental EV6. So far, we have driven a little over 300 miles and have spent $30 on charging. The charging has been a combination of free, stupidly cheap, reasonably priced and stupidly expensive. To get that kind of range out of a gas car at $4.5/gallon we would have needed to find a 45mpg+ rental. Hopefully the trend of $0.10/mile continues for the rest of the weekend.
I’d love to hear a full report at the end of your vacation! These experiences are important, as it’s still an emerging technology that could help inform others about if/when it’s worth taking the plunge. I know folks over in the Autopian’s Discord would be curious too!
The trip is over! I ended up at $.11/mile for EV charging. Plug Share was my friend to find charging where we planned activities. I didn’t need to make any special trips just to charge. Although, we did make sure to hit a restaurant cluster near a DC fast charger twice when the battery was getting low. We spent most of the time in far Western Massachusetts where charging options are limited, but available. It was a lot easier to keep charged in Albany, NY and Springfield, MA though.
Most of my driving was state highways and local roads between 35 and 60mph so the efficiency was over 4 miles/kWh.
To keep the same cost per mile, we would have needed a rental that got 41MPG. I know there are hybrids out there that could also fit three adults and two in car seats, but could we have rented one for the same price? I think our rental was $412 for eight days with two drivers and two car seats. We also managed to drop the car off at the same state of charge we picked up at so we didn’t get to fudge the numbers by picking it up at 100% and dropping it off at 50%.
Edit: I checked and we could have rented a Toyota Rav4 hybrid that likely would have gotten 41mpg for the driving we did. It would have cost triple the EV6.
Put aside your politics and ideology and anything else. At this point in human progression and history, a residential abode not having an EV charger is like not having indoor plumbing or a water heater. It’s just another standard, as equipped, appliance. Any property owners or managers of multi-tenant structures would do well to add charging stations, as a growing number of the population views them as a standard amenity. Not having them will increasingly make the property undesirable.
That’s why some state/local building codes now require new construction to be EV charger ready.
Companies like ConnectDER are making retrofits easier for existing buildings by selling a tap that installs between the meter and the socket in case there isn’t any room in the existing panel.
Obviously, that leaves out much of NYC and other urban areas.
I have seen a few charging cables dangling from trees, or snaking across the sidewalk in Park Slope, using those cable ramp things the movie crews use for their #00 cables, but I’m pretty sure landlords had nothing to do with it.
Lots of Manhattan buildings still get hot water from ConEd, and I still vividly remember a radio catching fire when I accidentally plugged it into a DC outlet in a girlfriend’s apartment.
Why would one assume this? Some building have underground parking. Excellent place for charging infrastructure for tenants, which requires building owners to step up with upgrades. . You just have street parking? Look to Europe. The utility companies and/or local municipalities are dropping charging ports at telephone poles, street lighting and even parking meters. These are ports, you bring your own cable. The more expensive bits are more remote and free from vandalism.
It’s not an assumption, just a historical fact that many neighborhoods in NYC don’t have buildings with parking, and they aren’t likely to get parking.
Distributing chargers like parking meters is a good idea, although the complications of how to bill the non EVs that also are parking, and the general pressure to have fewer parking spaces old combine for a political mess.
Anyway, it’s not an issue of adding charging to parking spaces, but one of the ad hoc nature of parking where there are no assigned spaces.
We live in a condo with a shared carport. Hopefully we’ll get chargers when they are upgraded in a few years, but that’s a big expense for some of our residents.
I’d love a level 2 charger in my house, but I’d have to add an additional breaker panel and that is just something I cannot afford to do at the moment. On new properties having that capability makes sense though. And for my family’s day to day mileage, a level 1 would likely cover it
Man, that Kyle Busch interview was a bit surreal to watch.
RIP.
My daughter recently moved into a newly constructed house (first occupants), which replaced a post WW2 bungalow, in the LA area. Besides being an all electric house, with heat pump HVAC and a a HP water heater, it was already outfitted with a 40 amp feed for a EV charger. That’s forward thinking.
A forward looking builder and owner.
Wiring for a charger is mandated by the building code in CA for new construction. Same here in Oregon.
I just got home from driving Florida to New England for a job/vacation.
For me, it would be spending too much money waiting for the vehicle to charge. I can do it in 4-5 stops in a gas car, an EV means 8-9 stops if you do the whole charge from 10-80%. My colon can’t handle that many hot dogs.
My problem is my electricity at home is $0.40/kwh. My wife’s GTI was cheaper before the recent price hike, now it’s a bit more expensive. Only makes more sense if you have solar, but the building costs here are insane and I haven’t been able to make sense of home solar.
Wow $0.40/kwh that’s really expensive, can you switch providers or are you stuck in an electric monopoly?