Industry thinks $1/hr for public charging is about right

[volt11]

One can hope that someday there will be charging station competition, and that will drive the rates down. Personally, I think $1 an hour is fair, but especially so if you can draw 6.6KW. I'll be stunned if the Volt and ELR both don't support that faster charging rate in 2014.

[baragona]

According to a recent industry report, they think $1/hr. is about right.
http://green.autoblog.com/2012/07/29...g-industry-sa/

Personally, I won't use them unless they are free or at least cheaper than that, perhaps $0.50/hr.

A full charge of my Volt costs about $1.50 at residential rates of $0.14/kWH. It saves me the equivalent of about a gallon of gas, which is roughly $4-ish. I'm not going to pay the same amount as gas to use a public charging station, especially since they likely round up to the next nearest hour, so a half-hour visit is going to cost me more than just burning gas.

This a public charger not a home charger. One can get a CNG home charger and save a boatload on refilling a CNG vehicle but you don't see public CNG filling stations lowering the price to residential natural gas rates....

$1/hr is the same as $4/gallon for a 40 mpg vehicle. That's pretty fair. You want residential rates? Stick to home charging......

[2BeLivingGreen]

My experience is the L2 chargers are usually free or at most I pay 25 cents an hour to charge. I think that is very fair as these are public chargers in shopping areas. I have used these shopping areas more often with the VOLT due to the charging access.

[jbfalaska]

Honestly, if electricity costs MORE than gasoline, everyone will charge at home. The cost of owning a car may be stiff up front, but the proof of this being a better buy is in the low energy costs and super low maintenance.

[Ladogaboy]

Considering how much public parking is in Los Angeles anyway, then I'd definitely support this. Especially if they started making certain parking spaces EV only. It doesn't have to be a lot, but it should be enough to motivate those poor people in Escalades who can't find a parking spot to consider a different vehicle.

[Jedi2155]

In Irvine (which is about 20 miles), they're typically charging $2/hour in most of the charge stations. I had a very unfortunately incident where I was going there to hang out with a old friend at the park. I wanted to try out a paid public charging station for once and I left with a very bad experience.

First it was $4/entry fee for the first 4 hours + $2 an hour thereafter. Then when I got to the charge-point station, my normal Charge Point card would not work since I didn't have a credit card associated with it (this was my first surprise since all the stations here use to be free just a few months earlier). So I thought, I could just use my PayPass CC and it'll be fine. I swiped my card and I got it activated no problem with the $2/hr rate as I was expecting to be there for about 2 hours.

Unfortunately, my friend had to get something from his place and eventually we skipped out on the park entirely..about 30 minutes after parking.

So I had to stop my charge only after about 1.5 kWh or charge which I paid: $4 + $2. To add insult to injury then I found out later that there was another $2 ATM fee on top of that.

That was the most expensive 1.5 kWh I've ever paid ($8 for 30 minutes or $5/kwh). Yeesh. While I know it could have been avoided but next time I'm just going to burn gas....

[arveedee]

I'm perfectly happy with $1.00.

[saghost]

$1.00 per hour, or preferably $.30 per kWh, seems about right to me - it's similar to the cost of an equivalent distance worth of gas - more than the business pays for the power so it's worth their time, but still cheaper than the alternatives.

[Chris Harvey]

I'm not sure why everyone is ok with $4/gallon. I seem to recall everyone around me and the news media having heart-failure over $4/gallon only a year or so ago. It seems like we're all used to the new 'norm' of gasoline prices and frankly this overly inflated rate (let's just ponder the multi-billion dollar yearly revenues of the top oil companies for a second) and this is exactly why I purchased an EV.

I just don't see why charging companies should make their pricing 'comparative' to gasoline, they ought to price based on cost recovery and an acceptable profit. Let's face it, if they rack up the charging costs now, it'll stall the uptake of EV's when it's in its infancy and just when the industry needs all the help it can get.

I personally think we have a long way to go before we see charging being competitive. Right now they are building their infrastructure and ought to be looking at cost recovery as their primary goal while seeding the market.

[Ron C]

Does it cost 5x as much? If it did, I'd be bringing my own more often!

3.3kWh costs me, based on my last summer-rate bill with all taxes etc in, just the bill divided by delivered kWh, about 40 cents. $2/hr charging for me is 5 times more than that.

All I can say is, if my special charging deal goes away, I'll let my garage owner know, and if I can't wangle free/cheap charging due to my monthly fee, I'll likely switch garages to one more convenient for my building.

$2/hour is too much, I believe the market has decided that. The open question is whether $1/hour is too much. I think that it's the right price, but I don't know.

BTW, that can of Coke that you bought out of the vending machine for $1.00 IS about 4X what you pay at home.