Walgreen's ChargePoint stations no longer free

Expect that to become commonplace.

 

Yes, I was using Walgreen's for free also- and discovered they are not free anymore for the Charge Point Stations.

I am not positive, but I looked up a Walgreen's in Pleasanton, that has a Sema station, and that one is still listed as free on the Sema website.

The Charge Point Stations at Stoneridge Mall in Pleasanton that used to be free, now are listed as 2.00 per hour, which may have also begun on June 1st.

It's like a treasure hunt, trying to find stations that are free there are still some free ones out there

 

$2.00/hr for charging is a no-brainer for PiP owners to pass on, corresponding to about $12/gallon for gasoline ($3 for a complete charge, corresponding to about a quart of gasoline), unless one has very strong feelings about cutting our petroleum usage at any cost.

I would think that charging at that price would limit customers to pure EV vehicles like the Leaf, who will pay whatever they have to if they need a charge. Kind of like the "last gas for 200 miles" gasoline station in desolate areas in the West.

 

Here is an old article about Walgreens Questionable Pricing for EV Charging- in some comments added to the article the author (Brad Berman) states that it is not Walgreens that is charging the fee, but their vendor "350Green" is who is doing the charging of fees-
Questionable Pricing for Walgreens Electric Car Charging | PluginCars.com

 

Related to charging rates, I heard somewhere that charging stations do not charge by the Kwh, since if they did, they would be be considered electric utilities in certain states, and subject to all associated regulations. So they just charge by the hour, which avoids the problem.

 

...until you consider how much people pay for each use of diamond lanes. Here, it's $3. So, some of it comes down to priorities.

 

Paying for use of the diamond lanes is a simple time/$ tradeoff (save X minutes on your commute for Y dollars). There is no economic reason for a PiP owner to pay the equivalent of $12/gallon to charge their car; the reasons would be for other principles, such as environment, lessening dependency on foreign oil, dislike of the oil companies.

 

At least it's better than those who justified "good for the economy" guzzling in the past.

It didn't work out as a sound financial decision, yet they did it anyway. At least this, as you pointed out, is actually helpful to environment & dependency issues.

 

what do you do in walgreens whilst waiting for your car to charge?

 

Walgreens & Walmart EV spots are always ICE'd anyway. Common folk don't know what those things are for.

 

my area chargepoint stations are $1/hr but there is a $25/6 months card for unlimited charges. And you get free parking at the stations while charging (versus the $1/hr parking meter charges).

 

If I was paying for one of those cards and I rolled in and the spot was ICE'd I would be rather unhappy and expecting that vehicle to be towed.

This is going to be a problem, if we are paying for the spots, they need to be available. There are different Chargepoint option prices when you register, and some require a certain amount of use. Can't do that if the spots are taken up. I would go back on ChargePoint with photos of ICE cars in the spots and lean on them that they need to get these spots parking enforced.

 

there are about 100 stations already installed and more being added every month. They usually install 2 at every location and they are pretty well marked for plug-ins ONLY. We have a citizen initiated towing program for people that park in handicaped spots so I'm guessing the same program could be applied to abuse of charging stations. I'm not sure how much grace time you get after your plug-in is fully charged.

 

Used the Walgreens in Pleasanton and the Dublin Library over the weekend without any problems.

 

Sema is still free here. used it on...the First! as i understand it, it is each individual location that will set prices so they wont be the same every where, but i could be wrong.

 

Like DaveinOlyWA, I charged for free 6/2 at a Walgreen's in Seattle (and they'd recently repainted the spot in green with "electric vehicles only"). bisco, no kidding--I ended up with 10 cents worth of corn syrup and water for which I paid $1.50 so that my son, who had just finished a track meet, could down it in a gulp just like his heroes on TV. But the novelty of charging was fun, and last time I'd tried a Mitsu MiEV was in the spot.

 

thanks!

 

Interesting to note- the charge point stations at the Stoneridge Mall in Pleasanton were also developed by 350Green, the same group that developed the Walgreen's Charge Point Stations. Basically any of the stations that have 350Green as the Developer, are charging 2 dollars per hour for EV charging.

Also, on the 350Green website, Electric Cars, Chargers and Infrastructure |  Card
It states here that their level 2 chargers are still free- which is inaccurate information!