Welcome to Tesla Motors Club
Discuss Tesla's Model S, Model 3, Model X, Model Y, Cybertruck, Roadster and More.
Register

Electric car rapid charging costs soar, says RAC

This site may earn commission on affiliate links.
I can't fathom why people use Instavolt unless it's the only one available for miles. Their prices are stupidly high. Even Osprey are BP are getting close now.
Agreed, I think that non-Tesla people are so positively shocked that the chargers generally work they hold them in high esteem despite them being always the first to raise their prices. 57p/kwh is a high markup on any sensible electricity price today.

Having said that one of the two times I used Instavolt it wouldn't work, and the phone line was completely useless and couldn't even find the charger on their system.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Nick77
I can't fathom why people use Instavolt unless it's the only one available for miles. Their prices are stupidly high. Even Osprey are BP are getting close now.
I'm happy to pay a significant premium for reliability, availability, and ease of use. In my case I generally only use rapid chargers for occasional, long distance trips on less familiar roads - so the additional cost isn't going to mount up. Unlike @GRiLLA I have found Instavolt to be reliable, with the exception of using their app which failed on the one occasion I tried to use it - so I just reverted to tapping a credit card.

My household has just gone all electric - we now have a Model S and a Zoe - and I expect we'll fall back on using Superchargers for the Zoe in any "need to catch a ferry" situations. We also have the luxury of home charging; if we were needing to regularly top up on public chargers I'm sure we'd be researching/taking our chances with less pricey local options.
 
I wouldn't be so sure.
As I understand it, commercial supplies are not subject to the energy price cap so it wouldn't surprise me if they were paying not much less than that per kWh (bearing in mind how high domestic prices are now and still likely to increase further in October).
I did see someone explaining that Instavolt are especially poor at purchasing electricity compared to other companies, I don't understand the commercial market to understand why though. It would seem unlikely that anyone else is making a loss per KWH on the electricity cost though.
 
I did see someone explaining that Instavolt are especially poor at purchasing electricity compared to other companies, I don't understand the commercial market to understand why though. It would seem unlikely that anyone else is making a loss per KWH on the electricity cost though.
Yes, it may be that the others have hedged better on the energy markets.
But the point is that Instavolt's higher prices are unlikely to represent a large markup. More likely to be, as you alluded, worse deals being struck with energy providers.
 
We did fall for the clickbait, didn't we? ;)
Exactly ... the BBC News site is as bad as the red tops these days ...

Trying to find something positive though ... the title will also have attracted some died-in-the-wool anti EV folks who would be looking for ammunition ... only to find that the article clearly makes the point that EVs are still cheaper to run than buying fuel, even with price increases in electricity.
 
I can't fathom why people use Instavolt unless it's the only one available for miles. Their prices are stupidly high. Even Osprey are BP are getting close now.
I dc charge a few times a year.I am not rich but the cost is a rounding error in my household budget and if I am on holiday convenience is way more important than cost. I think of it the same way I do buying a drink at a motorway services. If I was a rep or had no off street parking and was DC charging daily it would be a different story. I think many people fall into this category.
 
I was at Corley N/B last week. There are 6 Instavolt and 2 Gridserve units. The lone car charging, an EQA was on an Instavolt - perhaps they thought they were getting premium electricity.....57p v 39p
I would probably have done the same, on the assumption that the Gridserve chargers would have been much slower. Where there are just two Gridserve units (replacing the original two Ecotricity units) the grid connections are in most locations still severely limited.