How to Activate your Complimentary ChargePoint Card (P.S. it has a limited life span)

Just activated my card today and used it at a L2 Chargepoint charger. The RFID worked fine and the charger started right up.

My question is - when does Chargepoint update the usage on your account? I still show the original $100 in my account and I finished charging over 6 hours ago.

 

i have my account setup with texting alerts, i usually get a text message indicating the charge within 5 min of unplugging, using at my workplace. Also, if you have the app, it shows you status of charging, typically with a few min delay.

 

I think it updates right away. At least I always assumed it did. Any chance you charged at a free charger?

 

It said I would be charged $6 - got back to the charger a little late and I guess they charge you for every minute you are connected, charging or not?

Just checked and it still says I have $100 in my account. Will try charging again tomorrow and see if I get billed or not. Would be nice if it's a "free" charger that just says its going to charge you

 

$6 for ~27 miles of electric driving? Ouch! That's like the equivalent of paying $12 a gallon if you simply used the hybrid system.

 

When you are actually using your own money, rather than the $100 bonus, one needs to actually compute whether it would be cheaper just to use gasoline. That is an option we plug-in hybrid users have that the pure battery EV users don't. Figure a full charge of about 6.1KWH gets you around 30 miles, or 1/2 gallon of gas equivalent. So if the cost to charge is more than half of the price of a gallon of gasoline in your area, then, from a purely $$ point of view, it is better to just use gasoline. One may still want to charge even if the costs don't work out, if environmental or similar issues are important to you.

 

We are on the same page. I will charge my car at home where it costs me about 50 cents, but I have to balk when it is 2, 3 or even 5 times the cost of the equivalent amount of gasoline. That doesn't make fiscal sense.

Yes, I am concerned about the environmental impact, which is why I am on my 4th Toyota hybrid. Choosing to run in hybrid mode is not like I am going to suddenly convert my Prius into a Hummer. If I choose to go those 26 miles using my hybrid system, there's nothing saying that some of those miles might be in hybrid EV mode either.

 

Yes, I would definitely NOT pay $6 (or even $4) for 26 miles of driving. I might as well be driving my V6 Camry if that is the case

Since it's the card and I have to use up all $100 in 100 days (I think?) not a huge deal.

I'll soon have access to 28 free L2 chargers in my structure anyway, so I figure I should get started on using the card now before I forget to even activate it.

 

I wonder if I can give my VIN to my friend and have him use it on his Chargepoint account (Sell it to him at a discount). He has a full EV, and he'll definitely be able to take better advantage of it than I can within 100-days.
As it is, he's only using about 15-25/month through Chargepoint himself.

 

Three questions for a brand new Prime owner please, when using Chargepoint (just picked up the car this week, haven't charged it myself yet anywhere, or registered with Chargepoint yet):

(1) Do I have to take my own charging cord to a Chargepoint location, or can I use the one there?
(2) What level of charging is the Prime? Is it Level 2?
(3) There's actually one location nearby that's listed as "free" on Chargepoint's website. How do the "free" locations work? Do you have to still pay some sort of monthly or yearly or per-use fee to stay registered with Chargepoint?

It's about 2 miles away, and waiting around for 2 hours doesn't make sense, but would still be good to know.
Thanks so much!

 

(1) Use the cord there.

(2) Level 2 for Prime, which is an industry standard (SAE J1772)

(3) Free means no money required, but you still need to use your card to unlock the charger. No on-going fee of any sort.

 

Right. Chargepoint fees are purely usage based. I cannot speak for other charging station networks. With Chargepoint, you can also use a smartphone app to unlock a charging station, or you can call a human operator who can unlock the station. Other networks will work just fine with the Prime, but they have their own billing policies.

The Prime can also operate at Level 1 (120V).

 

Will this ChargePoint card credit work only on their stations, or do other stations honor it?

 

It will only work on ChargePoint stations


iPhone ?

 

Thanks!

 

The question about "other" stations brings up another point.

Is it worth it to sign up for other charging station cards to take advantage of free charging units in their network? If there are other sign-ups that don't require an upfront fee I would be very interested in knowing about them.

 

There are other networks, but the other big one is Blink, and it has no free chargers. The fee on a Blink charger is determined by the user account level you sign up for. This is different than Chargepoint, where there are no user account fees, and the owner of each charging station determines usage fees for that station, which may be "free". The idea with Chargepoint is that a merchant may want to eat the cost of providing charging in order to attract business. Another business, like a hotel, may want to soak their customers with every nickle-and-dime fee they can think of.

 

Most ChargePoint stations have only L2 chargers.
But some of them (probably mostly older ones) have both L1 and L2. I know because the first few at my work are like this.
All the newer ones have two L2 cords per station.

In these older ones it looks like just one person can charge since you see just one cord. However there is a flap below the cord that unlocks when you tap your card. You lift the flap and you see a 110v outlet where you plug in your own cord, then close the flap which locks and prevents anyone from stealing your cord.

So, if you see an L1 listed on ChargePoint's web site...you must bring you own cable and it is likely always available.

Mike

 

Just be aware that if the particular station bills by time, that you billed at the same rate if you use the L1 or L2 port, even though you will get less than half the charge at the L1 port for a given charging time.

 

@CharlesH - Good point. The Chargepoint unit I plugged into will bill you for the time the car is plugged in, even if the car is fully charged and the charger isn't running.