As Volt owners, we pretty much agree we will not pay $1/hour for level 2 charging. Maybe level 2 owners or service providers (ChargePoint) don’t understand why.
The Volt will get 35-40 miles per gallon in charge sustaining mode.
For 1 gallon of gas, priced at $3.65, the Volt can travel 40 highway miles; roughly 9 cents a mile on gas.
On a full charge the Volt will travel approximately 37 highway miles.
With level 2 charging at $1.00 / hour, $4.00 will fill up a Volts empty battery.
At this price it comes to roughly 10.8 cents a mile.
For a Volt owner it only makes sense to pay $1/hour to charge if the price of gas was a lot over $4.35 / gallon.
Because it only takes 5 minutes to get 9 gallons of gas for roughly 360 miles as opposed to four hours for 40 miles.
IMO, high public charging rates stem in part from the yearly fee companies like ChargePoint are charging Level 2 charging station owners. I have been told, ChargePoint charges a yearly fee of $230 for services like account maintenance, credit card processing, and internet map functions. That’s roughly $19 a month to recover via charging customers not to mention the $7,000 for the Level 2 charger itself or the addition cost for electrical installation work. For business owners that can deduct those upfront costs as capital improvements and hope to increase store traffic of affluent plug-in owners it might make sense. For industrial parking lots of businesses installing level 2 charging stations for employees it’s a waste of money. There is zero chance of profit with middle men like ChargePoint hitting owners with $230 a year service fee. That’s why current owners are charging $2 per hour. I don’t know what kind of costs ChargePoint has to deal with, but if they can’t lower their service fee to $120 a year, I predict we’ll see a lot of public ChargePoint chargers going private due to owners not willing to pay the yearly service fee.
The Volt will get 35-40 miles per gallon in charge sustaining mode.
For 1 gallon of gas, priced at $3.65, the Volt can travel 40 highway miles; roughly 9 cents a mile on gas.
On a full charge the Volt will travel approximately 37 highway miles.
With level 2 charging at $1.00 / hour, $4.00 will fill up a Volts empty battery.
At this price it comes to roughly 10.8 cents a mile.
For a Volt owner it only makes sense to pay $1/hour to charge if the price of gas was a lot over $4.35 / gallon.
Because it only takes 5 minutes to get 9 gallons of gas for roughly 360 miles as opposed to four hours for 40 miles.
IMO, high public charging rates stem in part from the yearly fee companies like ChargePoint are charging Level 2 charging station owners. I have been told, ChargePoint charges a yearly fee of $230 for services like account maintenance, credit card processing, and internet map functions. That’s roughly $19 a month to recover via charging customers not to mention the $7,000 for the Level 2 charger itself or the addition cost for electrical installation work. For business owners that can deduct those upfront costs as capital improvements and hope to increase store traffic of affluent plug-in owners it might make sense. For industrial parking lots of businesses installing level 2 charging stations for employees it’s a waste of money. There is zero chance of profit with middle men like ChargePoint hitting owners with $230 a year service fee. That’s why current owners are charging $2 per hour. I don’t know what kind of costs ChargePoint has to deal with, but if they can’t lower their service fee to $120 a year, I predict we’ll see a lot of public ChargePoint chargers going private due to owners not willing to pay the yearly service fee.