I am not sure about you, I am an addict of traveling. I love to drive, fly, see new places and revisit them. I take meetings in the car just like the main character in Lincoln lawyer.

Gas price is my sensitive spot as a result. I saw prices of between $2 and $3 a gallon, when I moved to British Columbia in 2008. I have seen prices between $6 and $7 during the pandemic. Shocking.

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Copyright© Miklos Szegedi, 2023.

One solution is to find an investor in Saudi Arabia, buy a tanker ship and start importing refined gas from there. I would probably trip and fall on California licensing. We are only allowed to buy new electric vehicles by 2035. Ouch.

I made a calculation as a result. I upgraded my home fuse with additional 10 amps to have a 220V outlet in the garage for $7000. Will it pay off? Let’s check.

My Fiesta drives 282 miles on a full tank of 7.97 gallons with my own driving habit of half city half highway. That is about 36 miles per gallon. I see the extraordinary prices in the Bay Area of $5.5 miles per gallon. A dollar will bring me about 6.55 miles away, quarter of a regular daily commute from San Jose to Palo Alto, Cupertino, or Mountain View.

What if I switch to solar and an electric vehicle? If I go to Amazon Business a full-featured solar package will give me 1 kW for a sum between $500 and $2000 depending on the vendor. If I go and find a professional company, they may be able to build me an entire farm closer to $500 for a kW value, but it is a stretch with government support, etc.

The retail cost of electricity for me is $0.5 for a kWh in Silicon Valley with a usage of about 300 kWh per month. A full charge electric vehicle is usually between 50 kWh and 100 kWh. A full charge will cost between $25 and $50.

Personal electric vehicles run on a full charge about 200-300 miles. This gives me an approximate result of 6 miles for the dollar. It is about the same cost as a result.

Guess what? Electric vehicles follow the second bidder pricing of gas. We need hydrogen cars.

Some may make this better. Hydrogen electrolyzer companies like Bloom Energy can give you off-peak and generated electricity for $0.1 per kWh making 30 miles for the dollar. It is not bad.

You may build your own solar station. A 1 kW solar will give you 5 kWh energy in 24 hours as the sun goes. California used to fare better than places like Denmark. We have one of the highest densities of solar radiation. A 1 kW solar will require about 200 square feet of area, so you need to be careful. You probably want to install 10-20 kW, so your roof will probably not be enough. This is why I was calculating with a separate solar station.

So a 10 kW solar station can charge 40 kWh in a day, it may recharge your vehicle every two days. This is especially good for commercial usage. It will cost you a few thousand dollars a year on financing for ten years. If you do some calculations you will end up with the grid price or a little higher.

Some manufacturers in China are already capable of going under $0.5 per kWh with cheap solar panels. However, many have regulatory challenges. You may find domestic vendors for cheaper solar, but all the financing and subsidies that went into high-priced panels will push against lowering the panel prices in a region. Who wants a lower priced competition that makes you go bust?

This means that the best practice will give me 6 miles for the dollar on both gas and grid electricity. Fancy construction and smart solutions may make my electric vehicle operation a magnitude cheaper still. It is good compared to gas, which is quite inelastic.

Cheaper solar panels may be the path forward in places where existing investment does not prevent you getting financing and construction.

In any case electric vehicles will get rid of the smog. Just step on the gas and enjoy the wind.

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