Which is all to say: “There’s a lot of variability in terms of costs and how they’re passed on to customers,” says Ben Shapiro, who runs the Carbon Free Transportation Program at the Rocky Mountain Institute.
Another odd feature of electricity pricing is demand charges. These are fees that EV charging site hosts pay and are based on their highest usage, in 15-minute to one-hour intervals, during a billing period. These consumption charges help utilities meet the various costs of building and maintaining an electric grid. But they are disappointing in the context of EV charging because some chargers are used very rarely, but when they are used, they require a lot of electricity in a short time. This results in search fees.
Those search fees can run into “hundreds of thousands a year for a particular site,” says Rachel Moses, who leads sales, marketing and business development at Electrify America.
Meanwhile, some utilities charge “peak” prices — that is, more money when many other people are using electricity. This means it tends to cost more for charging sites to provide electricity between 4pm and 9pm, when everyone gets home, turns on their TVs, air conditioners or heaters and probably starts their cars. All this leads to slightly unpredictable charging prices.
Electrify America says its pricing is “station specific,” meaning it will charge customers more money to charge at stations that are more expensive to operate. But other EV charging companies are taking a broader approach and averaging the costs of running their entire network to understand pricing over a wider area.
What’s more, companies are allowed to charge dynamic EV charging prices, which means they can change. Fortunately, there is a limit to this strategy. Rules on funding the nation’s public charging infrastructure mean that any chargers built with public funds cannot change their prices when you’re in the middle of charging your car, even if the price the company pays for its electricity rises. changes.
All of this means that it’s currently difficult to predict what you’ll pay to charge at a public fast charger. No wonder drivers are frustrated.
Gas station Nu?
But must drivers to be frustrated? Not knowing how much you’ll pay to charge your car at a public fast charger can be annoying. But it’s also not a complete reflection of most people’s experiences with EVs.
The real advantage of owning an electric vehicle is that while you can only find gas at a gas station, cars can be charged in many different places. At home, at the grocery store, at work: These places may not have fast chargers, but many have outlets and slower “level 2” chargers where drivers can get some power.
The headlines – and some drivers – really linger at public charging stations. But about 90 percent of today’s electric vehicle drivers have garages, driveways or other places where they can charge their cars at night. Someday that won’t be the case, and public chargers will have to fill the gaps for people who live in apartments or park on the street.
But for now: Maybe don’t get too carried away public chargers that today mostly fill the gaps when EV drivers are on long car journeys.
“We have this gas station model in our heads,” said Kellen Schefter, senior director of electric transportation at the Edison Electric Institute, an association representing U.S. investor-owned electric companies. “If our goal is just to replicate the EV gas station model, we’ve missed one of the real benefits of EVs.”
