The hidden costs behind charging an electric vehicle
While gas prices are easing as we head into the winter months, the United States continues to see a boom in electric vehicle sales.What you may not realize while shopping is the start-up cost to make sure you can charge your electric car quickly at home.Richard Bazzy is the owner of Shults Ford. He’s seen the EV boom firsthand. The demand is great — and patience is really your only choice.“We have reservations that are unbelievable. Hundreds, thousands of reservations for the F-150 Lightning and Mach-E,” Bazzy said.According to the Greater Pittsburgh Automobile Dealers Association, the number of electric and hybrid cars on the road in our area is growing.Nearly 2% of the cars here are either fully electric or plug-in hybrid. But since the start of 2019, there are nearly four times as many hybrid cars on the road in and around Pittsburgh, with the biggest spike coming since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.“The public is really waiting for this. They really want it,” Bazzy said.But how exactly do you charge that battery?Bazzy explained that consumers would need to buy a charge station, which costs “about 800 bucks.” The next step: “Then you’ll call an electrician.”Jason Hufnagel and his father, David Hufnagel, own Hufnagel Electric. Jason described the standard charging system in a house and how an adapter from the vehicle’s cord could plug into a normal wall outlet. “That’s a level-one charging system,” he said, “which is 120 volts, which charges much slower.”They say while a lot of people will try to charge their cars themselves, they soon realize it’s not realistic.“Once they get the vehicle home and plug it into a 120-volt receptacle, and they go back down the next morning, and it’s moved on the scale maybe a third of the way, if that much, they realize this is going to take forever to charge,” David Hufnagel said. “And that’s when they decide to go with the 240 volts.”And for 240 volts, you need a professional.On top of the price of the charger itself, the Hugnagels say installation starts around $725.“The hard part is that we are scheduling so far out,” David Hufnagel said. “The worst mistake that you can make is if you are going to buy an EV, please call and get the charger put in before the vehicle arrives.”Pittsburgh’s Action News 4 also stopped by CW Electrical Services, a company that provides the same service.Christopher Walton, owner of CW Electrical Services, said that “We do a lot of them. We probably do four or five a week.“It can vary anywhere between $700 to maybe $1500 for a set-up similar to this,” he said. “And that is just going to depend on how far we need to run that wire from your panel to the location that you want it installed.”Walton says they get a lot of questions from the consumer, and he doesn’t expect that to go away anytime soon.“The awareness of EV vehicles is top of mind, and people are purchasing them. So we field a lot of questions and do a lot of estimates and installs,” he said.Bazzy says that EV sales are “not going to slow down anytime soon. The administration won’t allow it. No matter whether it’s red, blue, doesn’t matter. It is the future. We want to be zero carbon. That’s the goal.”
ALLEGHENY COUNTY, Pa. —
While gas prices are easing as we head into the winter months, the United States continues to see a boom in electric vehicle sales.
What you may not realize while shopping is the start-up cost to make sure you can charge your electric car quickly at home.
Richard Bazzy is the owner of Shults Ford. He’s seen the EV boom firsthand. The demand is great — and patience is really your only choice.
“We have reservations that are unbelievable. Hundreds, thousands of reservations for the F-150 Lightning and Mach-E,” Bazzy said.
According to the Greater Pittsburgh Automobile Dealers Association, the number of electric and hybrid cars on the road in our area is growing.
Nearly 2% of the cars here are either fully electric or plug-in hybrid. But since the start of 2019, there are nearly four times as many hybrid cars on the road in and around Pittsburgh, with the biggest spike coming since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The public is really waiting for this. They really want it,” Bazzy said.
But how exactly do you charge that battery?
Bazzy explained that consumers would need to buy a charge station, which costs “about 800 bucks.” The next step: “Then you’ll call an electrician.”
Jason Hufnagel and his father, David Hufnagel, own Hufnagel Electric. Jason described the standard charging system in a house and how an adapter from the vehicle’s cord could plug into a normal wall outlet. “That’s a level-one charging system,” he said, “which is 120 volts, which charges much slower.”
They say while a lot of people will try to charge their cars themselves, they soon realize it’s not realistic.
“Once they get the vehicle home and plug it into a 120-volt receptacle, and they go back down the next morning, and it’s moved on the scale maybe a third of the way, if that much, they realize this is going to take forever to charge,” David Hufnagel said. “And that’s when they decide to go with the 240 volts.”
And for 240 volts, you need a professional.
On top of the price of the charger itself, the Hugnagels say installation starts around $725.
“The hard part is that we are scheduling so far out,” David Hufnagel said. “The worst mistake that you can make is if you are going to buy an EV, please call and get the charger put in before the vehicle arrives.”
Pittsburgh’s Action News 4 also stopped by CW Electrical Services, a company that provides the same service.
Christopher Walton, owner of CW Electrical Services, said that “We do a lot of them. We probably do four or five a week.
“It can vary anywhere between $700 to maybe $1500 for a set-up similar to this,” he said. “And that is just going to depend on how far we need to run that wire from your panel to the location that you want it installed.”
Walton says they get a lot of questions from the consumer, and he doesn’t expect that to go away anytime soon.
“The awareness of EV vehicles is top of mind, and people are purchasing them. So we field a lot of questions and do a lot of estimates and installs,” he said.
Bazzy says that EV sales are “not going to slow down anytime soon. The administration won’t allow it. No matter whether it’s red, blue, doesn’t matter. It is the future. We want to be zero carbon. That’s the goal.”
https://www.wtae.com/article/electric-vehicle-charging-costs/41957844
