Forced EV charging pricing by time is dumb
It's idiotic to be forced to sell or buy access to EV Charging stations based on time charging and not kWh delivered. It's so, so incredibly stupid that only a few states still require it (I happen to live and occasionally use fast chargers in one of them....GA). And like many things related to energy and government policy, not only is this policy inane but it's also opaque.
Try googling which states allow "selling EV charging kWh" and see if you can find an up-to-date running tally or even a recent and well-written article on the topic. Chargepoint did put together this excellent resource back in 2019, but it's 3.5 years old by now! One of the best resources is Electrify America's pricing page and you can select different states to see if they charge by kWh or time. Electrify America (like all charging networks including Tesla) has stated that their preference is charging by kWh...and that makes the most sense because you actually want to charge for the energy you deliver! With that said Electrify America still charges by time in PA even though I believe they are allowed to charge by kWh there? Like I said, it's confusing.
I'm not a policy expert but my understanding is the reason behind this byzantine pricing method is because state's have laws around who can charge for selling energy (in an effort to protect utility monopolies). So states that haven't passed new laws allowing EV Charge Point Operators (CPO) to sell kWh (energy) require those CPO's to rent access to the chargers. What a genius workaround! (I saw a tweet requesting a sarcasm font and I second)
What's the problem with that? Well...let's take a look.
The pricing for Electrify America's in GA is below:
I won't bore you with a bunch of half-hearted prose explaining why being forced to pay by time is dumb considering different charging speeds of different EV's, so instead I made a table where you can hopefully draw your own conclusions.
And if you're having trouble, the conclusion should be it's stupid to be forced to price for EV charging based on time at station. I'm not even going to get into how most EV batteries force fast charging to slow down above 80% battery capacity and how that rips off EV drivers who are forced to pay by minute.
"But wait!", says the astute table observer, "EV drivers get a better deal by paying by the minute and not kWh consumed." and yes, that is true in this case and I'll say two things to that:
1) CPOs that charge by the time are probably losing money on many of these transactions while they work to change the state laws...and from my observations it seems that many CPOs are fine losing money on operations for reasons I think about daily (literally).
2) In areas where CPO are forced to charge by time (and not kWh) they have every incentive to deliver the lowest amount of kW at the highest price. If EA charges 32 cents whether they are delivering 100 kW or 350 kW (to a Hyundai Ioniq 5), why would they ever deliver more than 100 kW?
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(side note: I also can't figure out why EA's price/min is so low relative to their price of .43/kWh because one would thing it would be relatively similar on a dollar for dollar basis but smh)
There are 3 main national CPOs currently
1) Tesla Supercharger
2) Electrify America
3) EVgo
Tesla provides Supercharging mainly as an incentive to buy Tesla EVs and they've been damn good at it but Tesla is Tesla and a bit of an anomaly in the CPO space. Electrify America was created as a result of VW Dieselgate and they HAVE to spend the money. EVgo stock is down over 50% since it's high in Nov of last year and they aren't profitable and probably wont be for awhile.
Being a CPO is hard...being forced to charge by time and not kWh makes it that much harder.
We need more CPOs to make life better for EV drivers and to increase EV adoption. Laggard states need to change their laws to allow for selling EV charging based on kWh consumed ASAP and let EV charging flourish in their states.
What did I miss? Anyone have an up-to-date list of states that don't allow for kWh EV charging pricing?
Notes:
1) I'm too exhausted to discuss the cost side of this equation and how demand charges further reduce profitability (more likely increase losses) in areas where CPO's are forced to charge by time
2) A similar topic of CPO pricing was covered in my post on "DCFC Price and cost comparison in SCE territory"
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2 年As the world loses its road and bridge revenues generated by #gasolinetax, it will need a new source for funding its #transportation infrastructure. Many states in #USA are considering taxes be assessed annually based on the number of miles driven. Therefore it makes sense for #chargingstation to charge by energy consumption not how long it takes to fill. Patience is necessary as the #businessworld moves much quicker than those responsible for enabling #legislation. States move even slower trying to implement solutions as they try to assess the impacts to its operations based on the new legislation. Bottom line is it makes sense for a #flattax percentage of energy consumed e.g., the more one consumes (drives), the more they pay.
EV Content Creator | Electric transportation expert and travel enthusiast | Technical Sales Manager @ alpitronic
2 年kWh is only fair for all parties in involved.
10 year EV owner and charging nerd, climate dad, story enthusiast
2 年I will be an unpopular dissenter here with defending time-based pricing, even as an EV driver who regularly uses public DCFCs. I see the rationale for time to be one component of the price for us EV drivers as an effective means of allowing them to participate in the market for what we are really buying: access to the infrastructure. Gasoline is a product, where delivery of it is a small component of the gas station's costs. Public DCFC is much closer to being a service. Even though the user only wants energy, they want it quickly and in a convenient location. That inherently adds a significant amount of complexity to the offering. I think that allowing the end buyer to participate in the market for what they're really receiving - not just kWh, but kWh delivered rapidly through expensive equipment they monopolize while using it. There could be a 2014 BMW i3 charging at 12kW on an EVSE that a Kia EV6 is waiting to use at 235kW. Both want access to the charging, not just the energy. Shouldn't time be part of the price if the EVSE could be driving more revenue for its owner if the i3 driver had a monetary incentive to move on, or at least be paying for the access they are using? A blended rate of both energy and time makes sense.
Content & Comms @ SWTCH | Passionate about EVs ?and Climate Action ??
2 年Nice article, Chris. I'm up in Canada and we have way too many charging networks that price by charging time. Drives me crazy. I've seen some networks here and in the northeastern US that will either apply an additional charge for charging past a specific amount of time (ex: >40 min.) or for charging past a specific state of charge (ex: extra fee for time charging over 90%), and I can understand the point of those, though it's unrelated to the main thrust of what you're talking about. But time as the main pricing factor does not make much sense to me.