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Free charging for all EVs -- Should this be a thing?
- Thread starter MarcoRP
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- Canada Charging North America
Ok fine, some of them, soon all will be. I know MEC as a very environmentally friendly company
mknox
Well-Known Member
I always thought it was "In my humble opinion", but same thing, I guess.
My favorite is BANANA. We all know about NIMBY (not in my backyard), but BANANA = "Build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything".
f-stop
Active Member
FYI, as an example of user fees at public EV chargers, starting Nov 15, 2017 the City of Vancouver is introducing new user/EV charging fees at some of the city owned/operated L2 charging locations - the EV fees will be $1 to $2/hour in addition to regular parking fees at each specific location.
There are dozens of public EV chargers in the Lower Mainland area - almost all of which are free to charge - this change only affects 9 of the 16 city-owned & operated charging locations. The change was made based on a study and report to council last year of usage patterns and is intended to encourage turnover of spaces. I agree with that reasoning and the fees seem reasonable.
Electric Vehicles - City of Vancouver
There are dozens of public EV chargers in the Lower Mainland area - almost all of which are free to charge - this change only affects 9 of the 16 city-owned & operated charging locations. The change was made based on a study and report to council last year of usage patterns and is intended to encourage turnover of spaces. I agree with that reasoning and the fees seem reasonable.
Electric Vehicles - City of Vancouver
Ulmo
Active Member
This exact point is flipped directly on its head in places with sufficient solar panels; you should charge during the day at work, and not at home.
It turns out that the earliest EV adopters were freeloading hippies, so it went with their unrealistic fantasy of what communism and/or socialism must be to get "everything free", as if that was a real concept. However, in California, that quickly came to an end when EVs started ramping up in market share, and the norm became that all charging points charge for connection, with few exceptions. The exceptions had to do with units that were broken so no one noticed any extra money being spent on electricity because they weren't even working, or units that were not used much and owned by governments with so much waste they hardly noticed. Even most of those laggards have been phase out.
The opposite problem is that a lot of charge locations charge too much: solar electricity is about $0.03/kWh, according to Apple solar data center at 3.099¢/kWh helps NV Energy near lowest US PPA , and yet it is not unheard of to see charge locations charging $1.00/kWh or worse. That's nuts.
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f-stop
Active Member
whoa, you really are Mr. Plugshare !
TBF I'm occasionally checking or updating local Plugshare entries myself - I do make use of some local free L2 chargers when convenient i.e. if I'm shopping or have something to do where there's a charger available anyhow, since I only have 120V charging at home.
BTW, I mentioned the study the city did on public EV chargers, and that they decided to only introduce fees at the 9 of the busiest city-owned & operated locations (again, the purpose is to encourage turnover). But I happened to notice that one of the least utilized stations in the study (to which they didn't add the user fee) isn't marked as EV-only and also seems to be very frequently ICE'd. I don't believe it's a coincidence.
So although user fees are a good idea to encourage turnover of the charging spaces and help ensure that mostly people really needing a charge will use them, it does nothing about the ICE'ing problem. Not to mention that at at some EV stations occasionally there are EVs parked but not charging and therefore hogging EV-only charging spots too. For that, additional parking enforcement is needed.
igotzzoom
Active Member
Actually, that brings up an interesting incentive. What if you had like integrated parking meters/charging posts where the fee to charge was actually less than it was to park an ICE car in the space?
f-stop
Active Member
that's an interesting idea...
BTW in the case of some of the charging locations where Vancouver is starting to charge an EV fee, the charging fee and parking fee are blended and collected via just the charging station. e.g. Many of the locations use ChargePoint hardware, and you'll just pay both parking+EV fees via that, rather than a separate parking fee at the parking lot's ticket dispenser. There are a couple other locations where they're not actually adding a separate EV charging fee, however they're integrating the parking fee payment via the ChargePoint station, as a convenience. Another street-parking/charging location never had any parking meters - free parking while charging, whereas the rest of that street has regular parking meters - at his location they're adding a parking fee + EV fee to the previously free-parking EV spots - easy to do with the ChargePoint hardware already there, without adding a conventional meter.
whoa, you really are Mr. Plugshare !
TBF I'm occasionally checking or updating local Plugshare entries myself - I do make use of some local free L2 chargers when convenient i.e. if I'm shopping or have something to do where there's a charger available anyhow, since I only have 120V charging at home.
Again, when convenient. If you're going out of your way for a free charge it's because you want free and not payed. There is a stretch of road near MTL which has 6 different charging locations, when it had only 2 charging locations and people needed a weeny boost, they would steal from the hotel and not pay a minute fee for a paid charger. At some point, the hotel caught on and put big patrons only signs. Guess what, a month later, a new Nissan charger pops up. 2 months after, another hotel: Château Vaudreuil and a Volkswagen dealer 100m away get their own + a ripped off CCS and $7,00/ hour and now a new 4 spot charger is in construction! Wth!
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sakimano
Active Member
I don't see why free. Selfishly it would e great but I think in 10 years every household is going to have at least one of these electric cars so free will mean governments who subsidize it will have to tax me even more than 53.53%. Thanks but no thanks.
I think those Ontario subsidized chargers should change their pricing scheme to something like double the electricity rate. Enough to make a margin but not enough to gouge which is kind of what they're doing now (the KSI ones ive seen anyhow). I don't agree with government contractors screwing us twice (because you know they screwed us when they overcharged the hapless province for construction and installation/hardware).
The concept of charging a 5 dollar connection fee and then charging for usage on top of that is strange. All that will encourage is longer charge times which means less access /sharing.
I think those Ontario subsidized chargers should change their pricing scheme to something like double the electricity rate. Enough to make a margin but not enough to gouge which is kind of what they're doing now (the KSI ones ive seen anyhow). I don't agree with government contractors screwing us twice (because you know they screwed us when they overcharged the hapless province for construction and installation/hardware).
The concept of charging a 5 dollar connection fee and then charging for usage on top of that is strange. All that will encourage is longer charge times which means less access /sharing.
I've chimed in earlier in this thread... but a number of subsequent posts seem to conflate the issues slightly.
I don't believe anyone should expect free charging. But certainly it's appreciated when offered.
I don't believe anyone should expect free charging. But certainly it's appreciated when offered.
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