J1mbo I am very clear that the UK Tax payer pays for the UK road network in its entirety unless its a toll road. I have made no comment on subsidies to companies that place the chargers as I don't have all the information.
Then I don't understand why you keep mentioning tax payers money at all? MSAs are privately owned retail parks, so do you want the Government to install Rapids on the hard shoulder..?
Why don't you just respond to my comment of
"I can see no reason why any company should be prevented from installing Charging points at Motorway services to encourage take up of Electric vehicles. Motorway services in general have huge amounts of space in the car parks. I don't require the Tesla charger to be outside the front door. I don't mind if its the far away. I just don't see why we cant have multiple power vendors at the services. They can all run there own models and decide what to charge or not."
Since settling with Ecotricity, Telsa have installed superchargers at a number of MSAs, and more are planned.
Here's a map.
The owner of Welcome Break drives one and is apparently passionate about their success.
Nothing to stop another company from negotiating with Ecotricity and the MSAs as Tesla had to. They also would have find a way of supplying power to the site, as Tesla are having to.
All this costs shed loads of money, especially if they have to upgrade the power from the grid coming into the MSA. So the third party would want to be sure of getting a return on their investment. Based on the RCN report I linked to above, that would be at least £5.50 for half an hour, for a 10 year payback.
Maybe it is this that is stopping them? Otherwise, why haven't we heard the other providers complaining? Especially when Ecotricity were giving it all away for free - surely that is pretty uncompetitive - premium locations, free to customers? You would have expected some robust complaints, right? But, nothing.
Do you have some connection to Ecotricity that would prevent you from supporting open access to any companies wishing to offer charging facilities at this countries motorway network.
No connection, other than being a happy customer for a couple of years.
Am happy for others to operate. Always thought that BP would want to get into it, as they have done in France. But so far, none have stepped up to the mark. There are huge parts of the A-road network where others
could be building their own networks, but where are they? Ever been to Cornwall, East Anglia, or North Wales? You can count the number of rapid chargers there on one hand. Maybe that should be more of a priority than trying to screw a few pennies more out of Ecotricity?
The reason why I focus on the motorway network is that most long distance driving in this country utilizes these networks. Also most of the high powered chargers are placed on these routes. I doubt many people would op for a low powered charger if a high powered was available. Assuming that Tesla is at least helping to drive the uptake of modern electric vehicles and assuming the number on the road will considerably increase in the coming 2 - 5 years we need remove any barriers that discourage increasing the numbers and diversity of these on are countries main arteries.
The only barrier for Tesla owners is the speed that Tesla can build out their network.
Thus I return to my reply to the orginal post that showed support for. I agreed that we cant allow one company to control such an important commodity and as I see it right now IN MY OPINION Ecotricity are being allowed to operate a monopoly with no chance of competition where they have exclusive deals at the majority of uk services. I also agree that any sites that tesla have exclusivity should also be open to other companies including ecotricity. We all know this is important for the future and I cant understand why anyone wouldn't support that????
Walk into an Apple shop and try to buy an HP laptop. You can't. Do Apple have a monopoly? No. They decide what goes in their stores. In the same way, MSA operaters get to decide who can operate which services in their retail parks.
Ecotricity do not have a monopoly. As a Tesla owner you are lucky enough to have a choice between Tesla and Ecotricity at many MSAs. Very handy when the Superchargers are all full.
As a Leaf owner on a tight budget, you can normally plan to bypass the MSA and leave the the motorway network to get your charge. This takes a little planning and generally costs more (unless you find a Nissan dealer). But if you have a massive problem with Ecotricity then why not.
I can't understand why you want competiton
just for charging in a place where there is no competiton. Or why you think £6 is too much when
the alternative suppliers are more expensive, despite being Government funded!
Let's agree to differ and move on.