“Top Seventeen Surprises From The First Year Of Driving A Tesla EV” (Forbes):
I was amazed when my electricity bill went down after I got the car, rather than up. This is because in California, EV owners get access to a special electricity pricing plan that is much cheaper at night and more expensive in the afternoons. Charging the car at night is of course a win, but I also moved things like pumping the pool to the night, and so the overall bill dropped. And of course my gasoline bill went to zero for this car.
In other words, Californians who struggle to pay rising rents and afford a 10-year-old Ford Focus pay the rich guy’s electric bill, at least for his Tesla and also for part of the pool pump. What better way to fight inequality?
(In Massachusetts, no similar deal is available and thus it costs about the same to buy “fuel” for Tesla, per mile, as it does to fuel an efficient gasoline-powered car of the same size.)
Time of use rate plans aren’t limited to EV owners. TOU plans are attempting to level electricity use throughout the day with supply and demand pricing. How is this a subsidy?
Looks like PG&E has rate plans that are available only to EV owners: https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/rate-plans/how-rates-work/find-my-best-rate-plan.page
If being on these rates does not involve getting a subsidy from those not rich enough to buy an electric vehicle, why do they demand proof of EV ownership before you can get on?
I did find an $800 one time subsidy from the state which goes towards electricity or charger installation. As for the rate plans, it’s hard to say since they don’t list the rates for the non EV TOU plans. The only difference I can see is that the EV TOU plans have more pricing time segments designed to make it most attractive to charge in the middle of the night, while the plain TOU plans segment out only two time slices and prices in a day. One of the EV plans requires installation of a separate meter, so perhaps they want verification for that.
No Tesla owner actually still charges at home, after the initial excitement. They all go sit at the supercharger because they already spend hours in their parking spaces avoiding their wives. Another hour waiting for a supercharger is not very time consuming & it’s cheaper.
lion2: The author of the Forbes article is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brad_Templeton and I am not aware of him ever having been married, so maybe that is consistent with your theory (since he says he charges at home).
What is the petro subsidy everyone is paying for the US Military again?