Where are the free chargers?

 

Still lots in Scotland. Many poorly maintained though and usually occupied by freeloaders.

 

Personally I think all chargers should have a cost. Some of us on here remember when the Electric Highway was free for the first 5 years and that was a bit of a nightmare if you were on a trip and needed to use them as they were used by many as local free juice instead of charging at home. Sadly maintenance wasnt improved when money was charged though. It did however, at a time when there wasnt many alternatives on long trips, leave them available to use. As EV use is increasing now it will become an issue all over again, it already is in some locations that are free. I would much prefer slow charges at Tesco etc to be paid if I was dependant on using them to charge if I didnt have home charging for example.

 

Should ALL charging stations cost money?

Yes - for DC rapid charging.
Slow AC charging is outside of my concern. They can be free to drum up interest.

Just asking what price for a fully functional charging network.

Depends on user experience on offer.

I think £1 per kWh is not outrageous for rapid charging with following capability that enhances user experience:

• More chargers than typical high demand period => very low chance of queuing.
• Live online status for the chargers, this made available to all apps and cars
• Easy payment method (no membership or apps)
• Able to saturate the car's charging capability
• Nearby free toilet and hot food
• Shielding from rain and general lighting
• 24/7 support

The last 5 are not really asking more than petrol station experience.

 

I think £1 per kWh is not outrageous for rapid charging

Actually I think that is a bad idea. So long since I've needed any, I've forgotten how much it costs to fill a car with petrol, but when you load the price of charging to that level it removes one of the arguments for EVs - cheap on-the-road motoring. Yes, of course to make it sustainable all rapid charging must be paid for, but for a reasonable price.

 

My calculations might be off a little but assuming 40-45mpg and £1.20 per litre it costs around £1 for 10 miles. My car has a 64kwh battery good for 250 real world miles which comes to around 2.6kwh for 10 miles.

£1 per kWh would be double the petrol price wouldn't it? Or is this not how to calculate a comparison?

Seems to me anything over 50p would be expensive compared to petrol.

 

At £1 per kWh i would take the V8.

The current ~25-40p range feels acceptable. Driving an EV longer distances that require rapid charging IS less convenient than running an ICE car, theres simply no way i would pay a premium for it. If price parity can be achieved to a typical midsize diesel returning say 45mpg, then that seems acceptable, which is roughly where you end up at with the 25-40p sort of price range.

 

One thing which is missed in this argument - the rapid charge may be around the same price/more expensive than ICE, but don't forget it's cost you a fraction of the cost to actually get there!

Say you're doing a 300 mile trip in your EV, the first ~200miles or so will likely be at your normal home/local charger @ 15p/kw or less, you only need the rapid to top up for that last 100 miles, overall the trip is still going to be quite a bit cheaper than in an ICE

Obviously this depends on what EV you drive and how frequently you need to use public rapid chargers, but I'd rather pay £1/kw knowing I can definitely always charge when I need to, than pay the 30p/kw Ecotricity etc. charge and know there's a 50/50 chance I'm going to have issues.

However I only need to use a public charger a couple of times a year on long family trips; obviously for those who do a lot of miles and frequently use rapid chargers, this is going to be a different story, so perhaps a subscription model with a significantly cheaper kw charge as an option.

 

Yes same here. I see anything over around 35p to be the equivalent of motorway service station prices. yes I'd charge at that price but only as a last resort. Haven't filled up at a services station for years!

I think there's a mindset to get around for EV drivers. Having charged at home for 14p or 5p if you're with octopus, it's a big step to be charged more than double what you pay at home. It's kind of a psychological barrier.

Now that I've figured out how to reduce my charge rate to 3.6kw, I'm charging for free directly from my solar panels so even worse for me. To go from free to 35p let alone 50p is difficult.

 

How have you managed to reduce your charge, I thought the wall box was set at one level of output?

There's clearly an advantage to charge up when the solar panels are kicking out electrons which could go into the car which effectively matches is the 3.5kWh output.

 

Around 30p/kWh on a Rapid seems reasonable to me as it allows me to travel beyond the out-and-back range that I could achieve from home on a full charge, and I need to remember that the first battery full (that I have taken from home), which cost me less than 8p/kWh, would have taken me the first 50-70 miles.

Where destination chargers are provided as a means of attracting customers to a location, it may be cheaper to provide them free to use if this avoids the cost of having to install a means of collecting the payment - an 'honesty box' system could be provided to enable those who benefit from the use of the chargers to contribute towards their upkeep.

The problem with free destination chargers arises where they become essential to some users due to the lack of an adequate Rapid charger infrastructure (eg. in mid-Wales), rather than a convenient method of topping up while at the destination.

 

There have been several goes at working out the cost of operating a rapid charger and 30 p/kWh seems to be reasonable giving a return on the investment in a few years with a modest number of charges per day. I'm happy to pay a higher rate for rapid charging than home charging. Around 30 p/kWh feels about right, it's around the same price as using an ICE and at the same time high enough to encourage users to charge at home or destination chargers if they can.

 

I have to agree, Ionity has clearly proven that point as most people won’t pay 69p except as a last resort so £1 per kWh is excessive. 35p seems to be the sweet spot for me and instavolt seem to be ok at charging that regardless the charger speed and they all seem pretty reliable. As for the AC posts, I think those should be free or charged at cost because they only exist at venues where you will be spending money (mostly). My local shopping centre has nearly 60 7kw posts for free and they don’t charge for parking either. Sure, you’ll get a few freeloaders but at that speed you’ll have to camp out to get anything particularly useful from them and I’d much rather go in and have a coffee or lunch while charging.

 

£1/kWh WTF

 

Rich man talk

 

The purpose of EVs as opposed to ICE is to avoid burning fossil fuels and reduce environmental damage.

The real question is therefore whether mass EV uptake would benefit more from copious free public charging with all the pitfalls, or from reliable but expensive public charging.

Personally I say free charging (or at least very cheap charging eg Dundee council at 15p/kWh). Not all can easily install a chargepoint at home and the perception of low running costs is very important for the millions of middle class people who perceive that they are only just getting by and want to do their bit in the face of climate crisis but are wary of cost.

 

The purpose of EVs as opposed to ICE is to avoid burning fossil fuels and reduce environmental damage.

The real question is therefore whether mass EV uptake would benefit more from copious free public charging with all the pitfalls, or from reliable but expensive public charging.

Personally I say free charging (or at least very cheap charging eg Dundee council at 15p/kWh). Not all can easily install a chargepoint at home and the perception of low running costs is very important for the millions of middle class people who perceive that they are only just getting by and want to do their bit in the face of climate crisis but are wary of cost.

 

I don’t see at all why EV ‘fuel’ has to be cheaper than petrol or diesel.

And why are people still obsessing over the Ionity pricing structure? It’s their business model, if they’ve got it that wrong they’ll go out of business.

I don’t get this idea that we should somehow be entitled to no/low/cost price electricity from Rapids because we’re somehow doing the world a favour by driving an EV.

We made those choices, nobody forced an arm up my back, I drive an EV for all sorts of reasons, and running costs are pretty low down the list to be honest, I could buy a lot of petrol with the money I spent to buy an EV.

Let’s take a dose of reality as well, we are still very much in the early days of EV adoption, if you think the £1 per kWh charge is a grim fantasy, just wait until HM Gov get involved in and start putting duty on top of electricity drawn whilst away from home to ensure we ‘pay our fair share’.

Might not be for a few years, but we’re living in fantasy land if we think it isn’t coming someday.

 

I don’t see at all why EV ‘fuel’ has to be cheaper than petrol or diesel.

Because nobody in their right mind would buy a more expensive car (EV) which can't drive nearly as far and takes much longer to "fill up", if filling up is twice as expensive as filling a Diesel car. (As £1/kWh would be)

Zero incentive to buy an EV if its less convienient to use and more expensive. Difficult for the government to reach emissions targets if they price would be EV drivers out of the market...

The other issue is one of resources and efficiencies and the "value" of electricity - oil and the petrol and diesel that comes from it is a finite resouce which takes a lot of money and energy to drill, transport, refine and transport again to get to you as the consumer. You then put it in a vehicle which is around 25% efficient and throw the other 75% away as (mostly) unwanted heat. (even in winter, most of the waste heat is unwanted as the heater only taps a small amount of it)

Electricity can come from renewable resources that don't have this same byzantine supply chain. No drilling for oil, no oil tankers, no refineries no delivery trucks. Just electrons travelling back and forth across wires on the national grid into your 90% efficient car. (total efficiency from generation to wheels approx 60-70%)

If it's so much more efficient and so many less steps are involved why should you be paying more to fuel a car by electricity than Petrol or Diesel ? EV's are inhernently so much more efficient than combustion cars that it SHOULD be cheaper to run them if the price of fossil fuels and electricity is comparably priced.

And why are people still obsessing over the Ionity pricing structure? It’s their business model, if they’ve got it that wrong they’ll go out of business.

We can only hope.

 

EV 'fuel' has to be cheaper than petrol or diesel otherwise there's no incentive for mass uptake of EVs and that means the UK will miss its emissions targets of 2035 or sooner if they can. In that sense yes, EV drivers today are doing the world a favour. A favour in 3 ways.
1) by reducing emissions though with so few EV drivers, the effect of this is minimal.
2) more importantly, helping develop the technology and thus make it cheaper for mass adoption.
3) iron out bugs in the EV charging infrastructure and thus make it easier for mass adoption.

For those reasons, it should be cheaper to drive an EV compared to fossil fuels for at least the next 5 years or so.

Agree eventually the government will add duty but that's 10 to 15 years away. If they add duty before then, it will again discourage EV take up and again mean they miss their emissions target. Once they have a captive audience as it were then agree they'll add duty or better still, create a new tax based on your odometer i.e tax by combination of how much you drive plus the fuel used.

Any increase in duty on electricity drawn away from home will itself trigger more interest in home grown electricity via solar panels or even wind if that tech gets cheap enough to add to homes whiich makes the break even point come sooner so long term that's acutally a good thing for the individual and the environment.

 

EV 'fuel' has to be cheaper than petrol or diesel otherwise there's no incentive for mass uptake of EVs and that means the UK will miss its emissions targets of 2035 or sooner if they can. In that sense yes, EV drivers today are doing the world a favour. A favour in 3 ways.
1) by reducing emissions though with so few EV drivers, the effect of this is minimal.
2) more importantly, helping develop the technology and thus make it cheaper for mass adoption.
3) iron out bugs in the EV charging infrastructure and thus make it easier for mass adoption.

For those reasons, it should be cheaper to drive an EV compared to fossil fuels for at least the next 5 years or so.

I must be strange, but none of those things drove me to buy my 3rd EV in 6 years.

Grants to help towards the purchase of EVs and chargers are welcome carrots, but there’s also the stick approach. Look at how quickly the grants on EVs have diminished, and they’re only going one way.

Surely if we’re all engaged in some kind of pre mass adoption testing programme, the manufacturers should be subsidising the car purchase, not the U.K. taxpayer?

EVs need to stand on their own merit, maybe they don’t and it’s why we see time and time again the idea that they need to be cheaper in order to be acceptable.

This is where sometimes I think Tesla have it right, their offering is compelling in that all the cars are relative high performance, and they have a paid for charging network.

Even the U.K. Govt don’t have the muscle to pull everybody over to EVs, even Norway is ‘only’ about 30% EV sales annually.

They’re miles ahead of us and have done it not by mass subsidies but via punitive taxation on new petrol and diesel vehicles. Coming soon to the U.K. I’m sure.

As for the UKs emissions targets, we’re not ever going to hit those based on switching even all passenger cars to Electric, other more difficult areas will need to be tackled to.

Because nobody in their right mind would buy a more expensive car (EV) which can't drive nearly as far and takes much longer to "fill up"

And yet every day on here somebody comes on and says they’ve done just that.

We must have some solid faith that policies aren’t going to change soon. Maybe we are all out of our minds?!

 

The problem with free chargers is that they’re undervalued and overused, and with little incentive to maintain them.
I’m all for a free charge - I won’t look a gift horse in the mouth! - but I’ll happily switch them all to 40p if it makes them more reliable and less busy.

 

I think that all rapid chargers should be chargeable - most are anyway apart from the sizeable number of ChargePlace Scotland ones.

Not sure charging for destination chargers is the answer to anyone’s problems however I’d be in favour if it would support increasing the number available.

 

Changing the topic very slightly, how do people feel about the connection charge? I've been having an argument with the CEO of a startup looking to install rapid chargers around the UK, charging at 36p kWh but 50p to £1 connection charge. His argument is that other companies do it. But it seems to me if there's a problem with a charger and you get partial charge and then have to reconnect, you'd have to pay your connection charge again.
I don't understand why there needs to be a connection charge but he claims that how much the company handling the payments charge him. I don't get why he can't use a simple debit card reader.

 

Connection charges seem outdated and unnecessary - Instavolt and Engenie manage fine without.

 

They charge a higher per-kWh to compensate.
50p+30p/kWh vs 35p/kWh. ie. you're paying for the connection charge on the assumption that everybody is taking at least 10kWh (or whatever amount cancels out the card processing charge).

 

Connection charges are fair IMHO. It costs more to sell 100kWh to 100 punters buying 1kWh each than it does to serve two customers buying 50kWh each. Not just the payment processing charges (which are often a percentage PLUS a fixed fee per transaction), but also more customers who want to phone up for help, more fingers pushing the touchscreen, more clanking of the connectors.

Petrol pumps often have a minimum delivery, although rarely necessary to enforce it. Perhaps Instavolt etc have just decided they don't need to, and the fact that it's a simple single price is more appealing to the customer and makes it worth it.

 

Petrol pumps often have a minimum delivery.

I think that might be to make sure that their metering is still within allowances so that +/- is still within % tolerances - 2L appears to be the standard. If you delivered 0.2L - 0.1L error you would only deliver 50% of the fuel paid for.

 

In my mind minimum charges are fine, connection charges NOT fine.

 

Don't they give you the same problem if the charge cuts out early? You say Potato...

 

35p per kWh is sustainable. They buy electricity at wholesale prices though they have to guarantee a certain amount of custom to get the larger discounts. Of that 35p, 6p is Vat which leaves around 20p as margin from which you deduct maintenance. The main issue for charging companies is the ROI. Even a slow 11 to 22kw charger can cost up to £9k per socket when you take into account digging roads to lay cable etc so break even is in the 7 year ball park for slow chargers costing £9k, less if theres no digging required and more for fast chargers because they cost more upfront . But given sufficient demand, theres money to be made at 35 to 40p.

 

Happy to pay and 25p to 36p, seems about right to me

 

Until this year, rapid free rapid charging was the norm, still is in an adjacent county but with loads more EVs and taxis the party is over, for me anyway. Why use the home charger... when there are free rapids a mile along the road that were rarely used in the evenings Besides, it took several months to get a home charge-point thanks to hopeless installers

 

My feeling is we need to consider this from the endpoint back, rather than considering this as purely a consumer driven, open market industry.

If the UK is to ban the sale of fossil fuel vehicles by 2035, we have just under 15 years to get there.

Hopefully costs of vehicles will come down, but to what degree I am not sure. That is largely irrelevant. In 15 years we will have to pay whatever they cost, so hopefully competition will drive it, but dont set your expectations too high.

In terms of electricity costs - I fully expect it will be progressively taxed more over the transition period. By the end of that, I dont expect to be able to make any financial savings whatsoever.

I do care about the environment, but if I'm honest, a big reason for my switch to electric right now are the tax incentives and fuel costs. I calculate overall I'll be paying half my usual transport/commuting costs for the next 2 years. I wont be taking this for granted and I dont expect it to last.

Overall - Im happy to pay public charging kwh fees comparable or somewhat higher than petrol for a good fast charge. So long as it stays in line for the transition period.

 

It doesn't seem that much of a stretch to me that utility suppliers could be forced to only charge EVs once a handshake (authentication) is made with a legally registered vehicle. The usage data is then collected and taxed however gov see fit. Public charging points are trivial as their only purpose is to charge EVs so taxation is simple.

I guess 3 pin (granny) portable EVSE's will just have to be outlawed in this brave new world you describe....

Also how does your proposed scheme handle those who charge from solar ?

 

Mostly agree but how do you tax a utility? How does the government know that I use 64kwh per day charging my car or heating my swimming pool?

Originally the whole point of road tax and petrol tax was to help finance the maintenance of road infrastructure.

With EVs increasingly in the equation it seems to me the only way to get revenue fairly is to charge by number of miles covered. At each MOT or service or other mechanism record the mileage on the odometer and charge based on miles driven. Right now it's early days but we're moving in the direction of "connected" cars. We have cars that talk to a central server to record the current status including the mileage for us to view that data on our apps. It's a short technical step to standardise that mechanism and access that data to pay tax based on miles driven. It's a further step to record where and when the mileage was done in conjunction with GPS data to automate the collection of money for things like congestion charges. My belief is thats the future once fossil fuels cars are obsolete. Can't wait frankly.