This has come up before, my 2 pence worth...

In East Lothian, for example, who also charge, the network is all-new, reliable and plentiful. Though no use to me as I live there, lol.

In Edinburgh, where charging is still free, things could not get any worse. It's absolutely shocking for Scotland's capital city. I don't think Glasgow is any better. The same with the Borders region, sporadic single site rapids that may work for you...

I'm happy to pay for a reliable service, even if I do think the CPS system has become a disjointed mess with an outdated app.

Cheers

 

The charges seem not unreasonable to me but...The Scottish have a reputation for being "careful with their money" (Tight) 😂
At least your council is providing chargers, those, (and there are very few of them anyway), I would use in Birmingham are all out of service. Consider yourself lucky!

 

The charges seem not unreasonable to me but...The Scottish have a reputation for being "careful with their money" (Tight) 😂

Yep, Agile should only be for Scots 😂

Besides, when public charging it’s common to find a few coins on the ground to subside the cost of the rapid, lol!

 

The glory days if relatively few EVs and reliable free rapids is well and truly over. Any free rapids that do happen work have become makeshift taxi ranks. Even electric courier vans are now hogging free public chargers. Happy to pay for a service as atm all long journeys are done in the old diesel.

Talking of which... I love to change the diesel for either a Golf GTE or MG but as it would be the main family car I’m thinking GTE.

 

Here in C the US EVGO is charging $1.70 per kWh. This price actually makes my Leaf more expensive per mile than an ICE car.

 

Thanks.
It's the fact that if you are in an EV you pay to charge then you pay to park!
If they were being forwarded thinking why would the cost of ICE parking not be increased? Increased income then gets used to install more EV parking and charging infrastructure.

The fact that they are charging would be ok... But the kWh charging rate and the connection cost is not related.. ie it's a flat rate connection fee regardless of charger type or speed?

 

Subsidised motoring was never going to last, nor should it.

 

Even ICE is subsidised with government investment and subsidies for oil companies as well as tax breaks.

I'm not looking for subsidy. I'm looking for equality!
Fast or slow chargers are still £1.60 connection fee.
Hogging a charge point will now be advantageous.. ie if you are plugged in you are not having to pay the additional parking costs. So sitting in a charger all day and night now makes more sense Vs doing the right and proper thing if letting another EV or phev plug in?

Or just drive a car with emissions and you only pay for parking.. multiply the parking savings across a year and a diesel or petrol could now make more sense!
That's just not right is it. Or am I simply wrong and it should be ok if EVs just plug in all day and night to save parking fees?

 

And penalising ICE could be seen as a form of regressive taxation as the average EV is more expensive than the average ICE.

A bit like charging per unit of alcohol rather than on the cost of the product - oh, they do that in Scotland already.

 

Alcohol minimum pricing in Scotland is not additional taxation AIUI - the duty is the same as in the rest of the U.K.

 

True, but it means more to the drinker of Buckie than a drinker of Champagne. Interestingly the health argument could be applied to penalising ICE rather than EVs, but I hope that there is no intention of forcing us all to drink Champagne - foul stuff (as I suspect Buckie is but I've never tried it).

 

I assume this charger is a rapid charger as that would be taking the piss if it only gave 3kW.

Polar Instant have a minimum charge of £1.20 and I have seen charges of 25p/kWh. So not miles away from them

For the few times a year you need to use them it paying what ever they as for is just going to be the cost. Would you rather not have the option to charge the car?

 

Gotta pay for all that free charging you Scots leached previously

 

Indeed, reckon I save £4k+ in petrol money

But to be honest, with Go/Agile charging is peanuts. So no longer have to camp out at free rapids late into the night in the middle of winter with no heater, lol!

 

15p/kWh is pretty reasonable.

£1.50 connection charge compared to £350 (minimum these days) for a home charger? Seems pretty good value for money if charging a couple of times a week.

 

Is your local council introducing a £1.60 connection charge plus 15p/kWh..

So, charging the actual normal retail price of the leccy and adding £1.60 for use of the charger, then.

They're not going to get rich on that are they?

 

No but neither will it encourage EVs to move off the chargers at 80% or before. Or you then have to pay for parking as well as your charge and connection.
It means PHEVS are now cheaper chucking out fumes than charging up?
If you have a large battery I guess it's not so bad but small battery EVs and PHEVS will be disadvantaged. Or will just park on the charges all day to avoid parking fees..

 

Yeah, I know what you mean. In the good old free days if someone else pulled up needing a charge we'd switch plugs as most folk then just wanted to splash and dash though always ended up chatting for ages. Sadly many of the self-righteous are in EVs now so charging for charging is the right thing to do

 

There’s clearly a problem with pricing. Too cheap and there’s no funding to maintain things. I suspect many council setups have this problem, they’re a cost rather than a profit centre so don’t get maintained properly. Too expensive and it doesn’t get used, so also makes no money. Chap from zap-map on the fully charged podcast in September commented they have some insights about how much people will pay. They can see expensive charge points are avoided.

personally, outside an emergency, the only acceptable fees are: free, connection charge but then unmetered, pay no more than 45p per kWh.

I feel Instavolt have got the balance right. They’re not cheap but don’t feel extortionate.

get this wrong and it’s nonsense, I don’t think the above example is too bad, but it depends on the charger speed and how long you want to leave it there.As the OP says, it could encourage abuse of the slower charge points.

all councils are going to be absolutely stuffed financially.... their EV charge points will break and be abandoned unless they are something they have to do or bring in money.

 

Sounds like they need to apply the parking tariff to the chargers too in order to solve the issue but you’ll moan about having to pay for that as well!

 

It's about the double charge and about the fact there is a penalty If you give up your charging spot!
That is my objection.
Fife Council don't have many chargers and EVs will simply turn them into their own personal daily parking spaces.
No charge if you need it...
Can you say that you would be happy about this when it comes in to force in your area?

Btw I recognise free parking and free vend create the same issues.
It's about balance.

 

Is your local council introducing a £1.60 connection charge plus 15p/kWh..
And when you move off the charger you then need to pay for parking!

My local council charge a little less for connection £1.50 and more per kWh-30p 😢

This move does nothing to Encourage EV use and ownership!
It means that you are cheaper to drive a gas guzzler pollution creating vehicle.

Very true.

Is this the most expensive Council run charge network in the UK?

Not really.

 

A 30kWh refuel costs £6.10.

That's about 100 miles per gallon equivalent.

Seems reasonable and keeps infrastructure clearer of freeloaders (like me)

 

How is it cheaper to drive a gas guzzler?

15p/kWh is about standard electrical unit price on a standard tariff.

£1.60 connection fee is small. Compared to a home charger, which I just checked and many are nearer £450 with the grant. That's 280 charge connections. At charging twice a week (200-300 miles), that's a bargain.

 

At 160 miles/charge and 3miles/kWh that adds up to 6p/mile, or if petrol is £1.10/litre thats about 83mpg. There aren't many, if any, non-PHEVs that manage that.

 

I've queried this connection charge with the person in charge of it at Fife Council as there are Rapids at a particular location that can have several attempts to get a reliable connection and this would result in several connection charges. I've experienced three tries myself which would cut off after a few minutes and then calling the helpdesk who rebooted the unit a couple of times so that is 5 connection attempts before it was stable enough for me to get enough charge to get me home. I was told that if there are issues like this to report them to CPS who will investigate and, I suppose, will deal with them on a case by case basis. The only issue now is trying to get through to them on the phone to report the issue.

 

There could be a resoloution.
The maximum time allowed on the chargers could be 1hour with a £60 fixed penalty for any overstay.

This could work well to keep things moving?

 

I have to admit that pricing doesn’t seem too bad. We have rapids around here charging £0.39 per kilowatt which I feel is fairly expensive. With the size of the E-Tron’s battery it is completely comparable to petrol at those rates.

I personally love the free rapid charging around here, however I must admit even I know that’s not sustainable and many of the free ones have now broken after years of under-maintenance. I found one individual on a free rapid struggling to get it to work, after purchasing an EV seemingly self-entitled and felt it was their every right to charge their vehicle for nothing and expected the council to subsidise the electricity. It’s the wrong mentality and unfortunately a few individuals have bought EV’s based on free charging who will end up bitterly disappointed within the next year or so, I imagine.

 

Haven't been on this forum for a while but I've had a response to a complaint I made to Fife Council and I wanted to share with the group.

My complaint was that smaller battery EVs, particularly used models which tend to be cheaper, and PHEVs will be disproportionally impacted by the change in policy from free usage to connection fee + metered rate. I argued that it penalises users without access to home charging or car owners who don't want to or can't afford cars with enormous batteries like Teslas or E-trons etc. Instead, I advocated a higher metered rate to encompass the costs of running the network along with the actual cost of electricity and I suggested a figure of £0.18/kwh which I thought was higher than domestic rates but also not too harsh to become a deterrant to EV adoption.

Here is the response:

"Thank you for your email regarding the new tariff and the connection fee. I am sorry that you are unhappy about the pricing structure.

The tariff was designed to cover the increasing cost of the electricity for over 1200 users of the network in Fife and maintenance of the existing units. This will not provide any additional funds to add new units to the network or replace units when they come to the end of their operational life. Part of the reasoning of the connection fee was to discourage drivers using a chargepoint as free parking when they do not need to charge their vehicle and blocking it from a driver who really does need to use a chargepoint. So, the £1.10 of the connection fee is to cover the use of the space, and 50p is to cover the transaction fee.

The tariff will be reviewed annually so we are taking drivers feedback seriously, so I have noted your concerns over hybrid drivers and those with smaller capacity batteries paying more when having to charge more often. I will also record your proposal for an increase in the rate per kWh in place of the connection fee.

The connection fee will only be charged where a session has been established successfully and power is being taken. If there are any issues with the network or a chargepoint and more than one connection fee has been charged, this can be raised with ChargePlace Scotland in the first instance and refunds will be given in these cases. We want users to have a positive experience of the network and would work with CPS to resolve instances such as these.

We understand that the tariff is not a popular decision, but it was not taken lightly."

I appreciate their response but I remember participating in a consultation (can't remember if it was CPS or Fife Council) and I'm pretty sure that most owners would not have been requesting connection fees.

In most railway car parks or park and ride facilities there is already free parking so the blanket £1.10 for use of the space just doesn't really make sense to me. These were usually the only spaces I used before I had access to home charging. If Fife Council wanted people to pay for their space then they should just make EV drivers pay to use the space like every other car already does.

I've been saying for years that the network couldn't continue to be free because of all the freeloaders, but I just feel like Fife Council has dropped the ball on this one. If you feel the same way as I do then I would encourage you to make a complaint at Make a complaint | Fife Council. I'm hopeful that they will genuinely accept the feedback and use it to make improvements to policies so that they meet the needs of the majority of network users.

 

The connection fee will only be charged where a session has been established successfully and power is being taken. If there are any issues with the network or a chargepoint and more than one connection fee has been charged, this can be raised with ChargePlace Scotland in the first instance and refunds will be given in these cases. We want users to have a positive experience of the network and would work with CPS to resolve instances such as these.

Lol, I have a current dispute with Chargeplace Scotland over the £1 connection fee. Despite the charge-point delivering no power, well 50 watt hours! before bombing out, still got charged so trying to get refunded. No response yet so it's likely I'll have to call. Anyway, had to move to an adjacent charger and got charged another quid, sigh, this EV lark is ridiculously expensive