Public Charger experiences?

[jsamp]

I started a new job recently, and found a whole bank of chargers behind the building.  They are ChargePoint units, and I started poking around to find out how much it costs to charge there.  When I hit the pricing option on the menu, it says the charge rates are set by the company and are:

 

25¢/kWh plus $1.00/hour.

 

Now 25¢/kWh is not outrageous here in Silicon Valley, as that is the average I pay at home.  However when you add in $1.00/hour to the mix, and the fact that our Energi's only charge at 3.3kW rate, that means it is ~55¢/kWh fully loaded rate.  At that price, it is not worth charging in my opinion as gas is far cheaper.  Even with the high CA gas prices I pay it only costs me ~8¢/mile to drive on gas.  This charge rate of 55¢/kWh is the equivalent of 11¢/mile if you drive very carefully (for speed demons it is worse).  If your car can charge at a full L2 rate like 6.6 or 7.7kW it might make sense as you get more kW per hour so the price averages down.  For us, we are stuck at 3.3kW.

 

Do any of you use public chargers, and what are the charge rates (fully loaded) per kWh?

[murphy]

My car is over 6 years old and I have never charged it at a public charger.

[rbort]

Never pay for a public charger, if you have to pay to charge, put in some gas its a whole lot quicker.  I only charge at free public chargers as the price they charge is more than what it should cost.

 

-=>Raja.

[Fgolman]

I always charge at public charging stations if I can. I rarely see one that isn't free, here in Chicago. Walgreens used to be free but they recently changed them out, many to Blink chargers which aren't free (don't understand why they'd do that except to keep noncustomers from using them). Target has installed one EV America station in the City that I'm aware of and it's ridiculously overpriced (perhaps they are assuming for Tesla owners). But most shopping centers use Volta and they are free and get lots of traffic.

[jsamp]

Yeah, there's 2 Volta stations at one of the local grocery stores here, and it's getting harder and harder to find those open these days.  I think those are the only public chargers I've used as most others charge a $1 connection fee on top of the per hour or per kWh fees (that are more than I pay at home).  

 

So much for incentive to have an EV.  I'm not saying that charging should always be free, but if gas stations only make a few pennies profit per gallon of gas they sell, charging companies should only make a couple cents per kWh.  Since they are getting it at the corporate rate, which is below half of the retail rate, they could be price competitive and still make a profit.

[RickEnergi]

I started a new job recently, and found a whole bank of chargers behind the building.  They are ChargePoint units, and I started poking around to find out how much it costs to charge there.  When I hit the pricing option on the menu, it says the charge rates are set by the company and are:

 

25¢/kWh plus $1.00/hour.

 

Now 25¢/kWh is not outrageous here in Silicon Valley, as that is the average I pay at home.  However when you add in $1.00/hour to the mix, and the fact that our Energi's only charge at 3.3kW rate, that means it is ~55¢/kWh fully loaded rate.  At that price, it is not worth charging in my opinion as gas is far cheaper.  Even with the high CA gas prices I pay it only costs me ~8¢/mile to drive on gas.  This charge rate of 55¢/kWh is the equivalent of 11¢/mile if you drive very carefully (for speed demons it is worse).  If your car can charge at a full L2 rate like 6.6 or 7.7kW it might make sense as you get more kW per hour so the price averages down.  For us, we are stuck at 3.3kW.

 

Do any of you use public chargers, and what are the charge rates (fully loaded) per kWh?

 

Just to be clear, the rates are set by the company YOU WORK FOR, not by ChargePoint.  Just making sure that's clear.

 

Recently stayed at a Hampton Inn by Hilton that had old GE chargers that no one has used in years.  ChargePoint bought out that network years ago.  Long story short, the hotel got them working by calling ChargePoint and agreed to foot the cost until they worked things out with ChargePoint. The original GE network was NOT free.

 

For what these vehicles get on a charge, in miles per charge hour, it's not worth paying anything IMO.  At less than $2.50 per gallon of gas, it barely pays to charge at home.

[jsamp]

Just to be clear, the rates are set by the company YOU WORK FOR, not by ChargePoint.  Just making sure that's clear.

 

Recently stayed at a Hampton Inn by Hilton that had old GE chargers that no one has used in years.  ChargePoint bought out that network years ago.  Long story short, the hotel got them working by calling ChargePoint and agreed to foot the cost until they worked things out with ChargePoint. The original GE network was NOT free.

 

For what these vehicles get on a charge, in miles per charge hour, it's not worth paying anything IMO. 

 

Yes, that is clear, which is why I stated it in the first place.  Going further, I am not an employee, but rather an engineering contractor.  For employees, the company foots the bill for the charging.  For anyone else including me, it is full price plus fees which makes it a non-starter.  I would pay up to what I pay at home, maybe even a smidge more as long as it is equal or less to what I pay for the equivalent miles in gas.  But I'm not going to pay over double what I pay at home.

 

  At less than $2.50 per gallon of gas, it barely pays to charge at home.

 

That is dependent on several things: your price of gas, your price of electricity, and your driving habits.  I average 5mi/kwh which takes my 25¢/kwh and turns it into 5¢/mile.  My gas prices are closer to $3.40 these days, which at 45MPG (again my average) nets ~7.5¢/mile.  Your 2.50/gal would be less per mile, but I'm betting your electricity is also a lot less than 25¢/kWh.

Edited September 10, 2019 at 04:40 AM by jsamp

[K22]

In Montreal, Canada, the public chargers are $1 per hour everywhere. I always use them when I go downtown for the convenience of finding a parking spot in impossible-to-find-parking locations.

[jeff_h]

Yes, that is clear, which is why I stated it in the first place.  Going further, I am not an employee, but rather an engineering contractor.  For employees, the company foots the bill for the charging.  For anyone else including me, it is full price plus fees which makes it a non-starter.  I would pay up to what I pay at home, maybe even a smidge more as long as it is equal or less to what I pay for the equivalent miles in gas.  But I'm not going to pay over double what I pay at home.

 

This is the same as I learned a few years ago when I was trying to lobby my then-employer to install stations at work, and as part of that I called and talked with a Chargepoint rep for 10-15 minutes and asked all the pertinent questions needed to present the pitch to my company management. They said no, but oh well I tried.

 

The property owner is the one that owns and manages the charging station, and pays Chargepoint to run the customer network interface and back then it was about $20 per month per station that the station owner paid to Chargepoint. There were also different arrangements when it came to installation of a Chargepoint station and service/repair charges differed based on whether Chargepoint installed the stations or not.

 

Anyway, after installation and activation, it was all up the station owner to set prices. So if the station owner wanted to make charging free for everyone they could do that... or the station owner could set up a special group (such as the employees as noted above) and let the members in that group (the RFIDs of accounts in that group) charge for free and outsiders pay 25 cents per kWh or 40 cents or whatever the station owner chose.  Or the station owner could only allow the RFIDs of registered employees to charge and not outsiders at all, which is what I found last year when I went to an Oracle building for a training course and was happy to see 4 Chargepoint stations out front, but sadly my RFID wouldn't activate any of them.