I just attempted to use a Blink Charger, and for the first time it told me that I would be charged, $1 per hour for using it. Up until this time all the Blink Chargers were free.
I don't understand their profit model. Maybe for pure EV's, they will pay the $1 an hour for a little bit of juice for a L2 charger, but not me in my PiP. That wont stop me from parking there and plugging in, but I won't be activating the charger again.
Yes, even worse are Chargepoint chargers -- Several have signs that say that they are a free charger, but you find out later that you are being charged anyway.
With ChargePoint, can't you just yank your credit card from your ChargePoint account, so you will be denied if you inadvertently try to use a non-free station?
I used a Blink charger in San Diego at Ikea and it was free. However, they charged my credit card $30 for their annual membership fee even though their website says it is waived in 2012. I sent them am email asking about the charge and never got a response so I will be disputing with my credit card company.
I've never used my Blink card and probably never will. The local chargers in this area are $2 per hour, about 10 dollars per gallon equivalent.
Blink had a bunch of posts on MNL about the beginning of the end of free charging in certain areas at My Nissan Leaf Forum • Information. It seems they rubbed the admins of MNL the wrong way or something though. I don't know the details other the friction between them and the posts about admins banning them...
What really is wrong with this model - for Prius PHEV anyway - is that you can't charge for less than an hour. So to get a full charge, at 1.5 hours, a Prius PHEV owner would pay $2 - for 1.5 hours worth of charge. At the going rate for electricity here, Blink makes $1.10 for the transaction. (In addition to the $30 they want to set up your account). Besides all the stupid Cars-2-Go, I hardly ever see a real car plugged in to one of them.
$1 certainly seems like a fair price for an hour of charging. If we are going to have charging infrastructure, someone needs to pay for the chargers and maintenance and electricity charges. The prius phv simply does not require any public charging structure. Charge them at home and at work and in normal outlets. If gas prices go up, and the gen IV phv gets a bigger battery and faster charger, then perhaps it will make sense. Let the cars with 6.6kw+ chargers determine what infrastructure is needed. I do happen to like the car2go experiment.
With respect to charging stations at retail stores, I guess it also depends on whether the merchant feels that the amenity of a charging station will bring in more business than it costs. Kind of like a children's play yard at a fast food establishment (which actually was quite relevant when my kids were that age).
You won't like it much at all when they take over all the charging stations like they've done in a few parts of San Diego.
We probably have a different experiment going on with car2go in austin. Here people take them for the free downtown parking, or people that don't own cars. Most of the car2go here are gasoline with only a fraction ev.
Isn't that more like $20/hour? My PIP without any electricity probably gets 50 MPG. I plugged in to a Blink/Ikea charger and I got the cheapest rate possible - $1/hour. I was charged $2 for 2 hours to get approximately 10 miles of electricity. That would equate to approximately $10 to get 50 miles or 1 gallon of gas. At the $2 per hour rate, that would be $20 to get 50 miles or 1 gallon of gas. I know this isn't exact math but pretty approximate, right?
Heather, your math is correct. There is no reason to plug a Prius in to a Blink charger that is not free until gas prices reach at least $10.00 plus per gallon.
