Consider that wind and solar installations are accelerating (and that wind is so cheap in parts of Texas, its free at night!) and I can assure you, there is no electrical grid burden.
EDIT: Citation
http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/non-power-n...
"The UK Department of Transport and teh Royal Academy of Engineering (2010) have both estimated that if the UK switched to battery electric vehicles, electricity demand (kWh) would rise about 16%. The US Electric Power Research Institute modeled 60% of US vehicle use being electric and found a 9% increase in electricity demand. As can be seen from the graphs above, this need not increase the system's peak capacity if most charging is off-peak, thereby greatly increasing the proportion of total generating capacity supplied by base-load plant – see below. A study conducted by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory for the US Department of Energy in 2006 found that the idle off-peak grid capacity in the USA would be sufficient to power 84% of all vehicles in the USA if they all were immediately replaced with electric vehicles. Areva has calculated that if 10% of cars in France were electric it would increase base-load demand by more than 6000 MWe ("four EPRs", or 10% of nuclear capacity). In the above diagrams, assuming significant move to electric cars mostly charged off-peak, the base-load demand is increased by about 35%."
I won't use the word 'extraordinary', but that's at least a strong claim, so needs strong evidence to back it. Why wouldn't 77% of vehicles mean 77% of the load?
Cars that are 5 years old can have anywhere from 20K to 300K km on them. It all depends on the usage.
Lots of good data here:
http://www.solarjourneyusa.com/EVdistanceAnalysis7.php
People using their cars for 50K to 70K km per year are not exceptional (professional use), private individuals using their cars for < 5K km per year are not exceptional either.
Recharging a drained car battery would use as much power as running a large AC unit for 15 hours, but if the car has driven only a small distance it will use much less power. It all depends on the distance the car needs to drive (logically...).
I guess that doesn't compare favorably to $600 (~200*$3) per year for fuel, but it isn't real far out either.
http://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-oil-price-history-char...
How do I collect?
There's an implicit requirement for a useful prediction of the price in the GP comment.
But yes who knows...coming regulations may change that number significantly.
www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/01/12/crude-oil-price-still-crashing-toward-25-breakeven/
I would certainly factor the different cost structures in if I was doing the calculation for real (gas could be $4 in a couple years, who knows).
I still think the bigger bottleneck will be the installation of chargers, though, even though it shouldn't be because they aren't that expensive. But Tesla is just one small car maker installing its own, and the other manufacturers don't seem all that interested in building them for the same reason they've been rather slow in pushing EVs on the market, too. I think governments should have a bigger role in building EV infrastructure.
"A Texas Utility Offers a Nighttime Special: Free Electricity"
"The women are just three of the thousands of TXU Energy customers who are at the vanguard of a bold attempt by the utility to change how people consume energy. TXU’s free overnight plan, which is coupled with slightly higher daytime rates, is one of dozens that have been offered by more than 50 retail electricity companies in Texas over the last three years with a simple goal: for customers to turn down the dials when wholesale prices are highest and turn them back up when prices are lowest.
It is possible because Texas has more wind power than any other state, accounting for roughly 10 percent of the state’s generation. Alone among the 48 contiguous states, Texas runs its own electricity grid that barely connects to the rest of the country, so the abundance of nightly wind power generated here must be consumed here."