Anyone use public charging stations for your Prius Prime?

Parking in a EV spot without charging? Most EV spots are close to the entrance of either a mall or a shop.

 

The good thing about the Prime is that you can allways use Charge mode if you haven't been able to plug it in !
Yes it maybe not as efficient as driving in pure HV-Mode,but I wouldn't care less .
I am quite sure it will be still way more efficient than the majority of cars out there !
Probably even including the new Volt in RE-Mode !

 

Yep .... hopefully freebe chargers will soon become a thing of the past, because phev's really don't need to charge anyway - but if fees are at least 25¢/kwh in urban areas, at least the owner won't be loosing money. (s)he'll have install costs, maintenance costs, liability insurance, in addition to just paying for the electricity. They'll break even ... and be able to keep the station open for folks that truly need it for more of an emergency (ev's for example, or a phev's that are nutty enough to run almost out of gas). As of Jan. 1st Tesla started a new program where they now have to pay 40¢ a MINUTE once they're full (+ 5 minute grace period) - because the self centered / self absorbed / inconsiderate owners that go down to a local movie or dinner out (maybe 5 or 10 miles away) will go to the supercharger just to pick up an extra 10 or 20 miles - even tho they still have 200 in the tank already! And they leave the car their for 2+ hours or so, to the detriment to the folks truly needing to get down the road a hundred miles or so. So yea, you gotta always plan for the handful of douche-bags who have absolutely no clue on how to act. Our HR director for example just told me our HR employees often have to tell their engineers they need to wear deodorant - or shower more, because yea - there is an element out their that are just clueless, even tho they may be very very smart in other areas.
.

 

When I started at one place we had an engineer with the last name Van de Graff. He was extremely smart but. I understand, he refused to comb hos hair because he did not want problems caused by static electricity harming his brain. He was related to the famous physicist, I am told.

 

Gas is expensive here in California so public charging stations are fine with me, especially since received 2 months of free public charging when I bought my Prime. The closest public charging stations are a shopping area that has great coffee shops so I can grab a coffee and work on my laptop while charging. It was only $1 for 2 hrs of charging today. This is my first hybrid / partly-electric vehicle and I'm loving it!

 

Great to hear new folks are getting on board!
.

 

Check out "PlugShare" which is an excellent online resource for finding charging stations. You can use it to find ones that are free, ones that are free to users of paid parking in a public lot or parking garage, and ones which charge a fee. Plug-in vehicle owners even post "reviews" and photos of some of these charging stations so that you know how to find them and what to expect.

For example, I was hanging out a the Big Bear Cafe in Dedham, MA and parked across the street in the municipal parking lot which is free and has two free charging stations provided by the town. Because I usually don't run the Prius Prime's EV battery lower that 45% or so, I was able to bring it up to full charge in a little over an hour while having a sandwich and some good coffee.

Of course, the frustration of public charging stations is that there is no predictability of their being available and not in use by another plug-in owner (or blocked by a non-plug-in.)

 

this mayvbe a ½yr old zombie thread, but 1 more thing to add;
Already there's tech available where via internet a car can inform drivers if a charger is occupied, whether location gas multiple stalls, whether it's broken, or some or all are reduced power, etc. It's only when users it make known, that things change. Same challenge exist where manufacturers for the most part don't want to have anything to do with setting up a nationwide infrastructure. They'd rather leave that up to the different charger manufacturer's responsibility.
Part of THAT issue of course is when a manufacturer only makes plugin hybrids, they can rationalize, "hey, finish the journey on gasoline."
(imo)
.

 

That's a good point. It's screaming for a charging station app on the Entune display that would let users know the location and status of nearby charging stations.

 

phone, i guess.

 

My advanced has this feature on the phone app and in the Entune Suite on the car. Both open to a charge station map and you can set these to show as POI's on the NAV map.

 

Oh cool. Bummer that's not part of the other models (but I get that it's a good selling point for the Advanced).

 

I'm not sure if this is just on the Prime Advanced, but I seem to have a useful charging station map within the Entune suite on my phone and, when connected, on the display in the car.

Charging-Station-Map by Old Bear posted Oct 16, 2017 at 5:26 PM

The map shows both Level 1 and Level 2 locations and provides addresses and basic info. I don't think it shows the status (in use / available / out-of-service), but it might if the station reports that info.

 

Or just do a search on the internet Chargepoint Dashboard, free for anyone, it'll let you search to see where there may be stations in the area regardless if whether or not they are actual Chargepoint stations.

 

Guess I'm kinda late to the original post, but I recently did a test to compare the costs for my personal situation: 240VAC public charger (rate of $1/hr) to 120VAC with a 50 foot extension cord to simply running on gas (based on what I get for mpg in hybrid and current gas prices in my area). Like the OP, I don't have a garage and am limited to 120VAC at home. I have flat-rate $18.64 per kWh.

 

Keep in mind that public-charger pricing varies dramatically. The ones just a few blocks down the road from me are free. The ones further off at the park have a flat per-use fee along with a per-hour rate. The ones at the mall are per-kWh. The ones at work are for an 8-hour span with a single price, but there's a fee if you exceed the time..

As far as I know of, the public-chargers are all 2-phase, so charging tops out at 3.1 kW. At home, my 240-volt charger delivers 3.6 kW, since the line feeding it is a 3-phase. So, there will be a timing difference... and time can be money.

Speaking of home, electricity rates will vary dramatically too. I pay 0.0710 per kWh (tax included) for overnight charging. During the day (non-peak, tax included) the price is 0.1204 per kWh. For the after dinner hours (peak, tax included), the rate jumps to 0.4180 per kWh.

If you want to take advantage of pre-conditioning, rather than getting into a cold car, that electricity must be accounted for. However, that is a luxury feature many would be willing to pay a premium for. Running MAX-HEAT on the 10-minute remote climate cycle will consume 0.37 kWh.

 

thinking you perhaps might have meant 18.64¢
??

 

Yeah lol - thanks for the catch.

 

So, after 6 months, I've averaged using a free ChargePoint public charger about once every two weeks, mostly ranging from 10 minutes to 30 minutes on charge. I used 2kWh in June, and 6kWh in each of the last 3 months.