Rules and Fees for using a charger at UCLA

My only comment is you have touched on a lot of reasons why it will be hard for public charging to take hold. It's expensive, there are stipulations, there won't be enough if even only 5% of cars are EVs or PHEVs.

Home charging, and maybe at work if it is free, are the only reliable ways right now

 

The chargers at SDSU are still free - but they are inside the parking structures. So if you don't have a Student or F/S permit, then it's $1/hr to park. Still, that's less than what you'd pay for a regular Blink Lvl2 pay station.

 

I don't understand this expectation that parking and/or charging should be free for PiP, Volt, or any other EV/PHV for that matter. We are past the early adoption stage. If you have a PiP or other EV/PHV, charge as often as you can and remove your car as soon as it is full, in order to reduce your gas consumption, and make room for other users. If you aren't willing to pay for charging, then guess what, no one is going to install chargers.

And why quibble over a $5 fee to set up a ChargePoint account?

 

My gripe is that these charger networks were subsidized to begin with. So WE are already paying some level of their business risk. So if they price themselves out of reality from the get-go, then they've done a disservice to the whole notion of using renewable energy.

 

The PiP is subsidized to the tune of at least $2500, on the presumption that it would be plugged in, thereby reducing our foreign oil dependence. And yet, some owners don't plug it in, not even at home, because all they wanted was a green HOV sticker. Talk about doing a disservice!

Over time, the market will sort things out, as far has having reasonable charging costs. But at this stage of the game, being unwilling to pay more than $0.50 per PiP charge is kind of silly. If you paid net $30K+ to get one, then why not pay a couple more bucks a day to get the best MPG?

 

A full charge on the PiP is worth close to a quart of gasoline (around 12 miles). So with a full L2 charge in 1.5 hours, and around $4/gal for gasoline, it really doesn't make economic sense to pay more than about $0.75/hr for a charge. It's a different matter if you have an EV and you need the charge or you aren't going anywhere. And as far as the environmental impact, depending on how the electricity is generated, the very efficient hybrid system in the PiP can generate less pollutants than the electric system.

 

It doesn't make economic sense to buy the car in the first place, unless it is to get a green sticker. If you buy a PiP, you are either serious about getting the highest possible MPG, or desperate to get a green sticker for the quickest possible commute. The former plugs in as often as possible virtually regardless of cost, while the latte may never plug in at all. Both have solid economic reasons, but from a financial standpoint, the car is not as good a deal as the non-plug-in Prii.

 

Well, those are not the ONLY two reasons....

 

It's expensive to install an EVSE, but guess what? It's expensive to build parking garages! And gas stations are really expensive, too!

The gas station marks up the gas a few percent, and that's all a parking lot should do. My car takes under 2 kWh of electricity -- less than 20 cents per hour. So charge me 25 cents an hour. But $2/hour for something that costs 20 cents? ChargePoint cannot stay in business if they need to operate on margins like that, because nobody will use them.

 

And therein lies the rub...if public EVSE companies are going to charge anything more than 10 or 20% more than what you pay at home, people won't use them unless desperate. Honestly, with their costs of installing the chargers, leasing the space from the property owner, maintaining them, insurance, wireless phone connections, etc....I don't see how they can charge less than triple or quadruple what the juice itself costs.

 

Anyone know what the financial arrangement is between businesses that install ChargePoint stations, and Coulomb? It's up to the business what they want to charge, if anything, and they control who is allowed to use the station, but Coulomb has to make money somewhere.

 

You mean like how we're past the early adoption stage of the oil industry? So sure ... let's stop free parking/cheep parking - free charging/cheep charging so we can do more and more and more subsidies for the oil industry. Oh ... and maybe a few subsidies to the health industry for our premature respitory problems brought on due to toxic fuel/exhaust. Great idea!

Sorry ... but it cracks me up how so many focus on the 1/10 of 1% of EV/subsidies, while the elephant in the room goes unnoticed. Won't Mr. Wizzard please answer me as to why we allow that philosophy to go uncheckek?
.

 

Gas stations have very high costs, too, but they're profitable to operate. If you're refurbishing a parking lot, running a lot of 12-gauge cable isn't very expensive. The chargers are expensive, but that's hopefully a temporary condition. Once done, if there are enough EV's and PHEV's out there, you can charge an extra fifty cents an hour for electricity, depending on local rates, etc.

 

Cost is installation of electric lines, meter and the down stream equipment, maintenance of equipment. Hard to see who they can stay in business at $5 per charge. The six hours is costing them customers. Four customers a day at $20 is not going to pay for building charging stations.

It's all completely impractical. EV car will be limited to its round trip range until some fast charging technology comes along.

Best thing that could be done now would be a truck with a mobile fuel cell that could respond to emergencies by showing up for usual road service fee ($50-100) and charge the vehicle. But having some public charging stations is never going to work.

 

This thread is about the "high" cost of charging, and the PiP driver attitudes towards it. Looking at it one way, using a public charger may cost another $3 over what the equivalent amount of gas would cost, so from a purely financial standpoint, it doesn't make sense. From a personal utility standpoint, that extra $3 ought to be worth it to most people who want high MPG, if it makes the difference between having 100 MPG as opposed 75 MPG. Since the PiP costs several thousand more than than a GIII (no way that 48 vs. 58 MPG would pay the difference, even if that were true in the long run), it makes more sense that personal utility would trump pure finance, since having paid a premium to get the PiP for the purpose of better fuel economy, why not spend a couple more bucks a day to maximize your MPG?

 

If the whole point is to maximize MPG, then the ideal situation will be the following:

- Said owner have a 11 - 12 mile 1 way commute
- Said owner works near or at a FREE public charging stn, and will charge at home at late nights
- Said owner will also use the car dedicated for commute purpose

Then from that standpoint that will make the most economic sense. But to not plug in the car when that feature alone costs 4K (after Fed tax credit + CA rebate) just doesn't make sense to me. Certainly the fact that Chargepoint charges $2 per hr will mean the station will be best as a pissing pole for dogs.

 

Part of the problem is that these companies don't really know how much to charge. I've seen several of them asking questions like "how much would you pay for charging?" and "Would you pay $15 for am 80% charge in 20 minutes?"

There are people out there who would pay whatever the price is and there are those, and I list myself amoungst them, that will not pay exhorbitant fees just get get a few miles of extra EV range.

In the end the market will decide. The price will depend on the amount of chargers in a given location, the demand for those chargers, and the willingness of drivers to pay.

One example I sited in an article I wrote a while ago for EV World was the chargers in Temecula. There is a blink charger at Paula Casino listed as $4 an hour and one at the Town Hall in Temecula that is free. Now, would you charge at the free charger at the town hall and spend some time in Old Town, or would you spend $4 an hour at the casino and hit the slots.

Personally I think most people would top up at the free charger but those that are there to gamble might go straight to the casino. That means more business for Old Town less for the casino.

If I was driving the PIP there is no way I would top up at $4 a gallon (equivalent to about $20 a gallon of gas).

So, people are going to use the cheapest chargers and are going to do buiness with the stores, restraunts etc near those chargers. This will drive business away from those located near the more expensive chargers and encourage them to drop their price. In the end prices will drop down to get close to standard electric rates.

With the cost of charger infrastructure there is no way that a business can recoupe their costs from charging fees. The reason to have them is to attract EV drivers who tend to be more affluent than average so have more disposable income; in short the kind of person you want to bring into your store.

 

Just thinking about hotels/motels providing charging. On one hand, you would think that they would consider it an amenity to draw in customers, but on the other hand, the hospitality industry has seemed to really jump on making everything a revenue center, like phone calls, parking, WiFi, etc. So they would probably charge big $$ for chargers.