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NCSカード New NCS card announced

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Unfortunately in Japan that visitor rate seems to be standard for now. NCS would introduce some form of membership, so hopefully we will be able to pay monthly and much lower pre-use charges... For example Nissan introduced 3000JPY per month flat rate all inclusive charging.
 
Around 2 hours a month charging on CHAdeMO is the break-even rate. If you're under that, it's cheaper to pay the a la carte rate of ¥3,000 an hour. If you're over that, having the card (and its monthly charge) is worth it.

Another consideration is if you're in need of a charge outside of regular business hours. If you go to a Nissan dealer at night, for example, there's no one to pay to get a code for charging. I have no access to Superchargers, so I may be forced to sign up for the NCS card. If I do get one, it'll be just the CHAdeMO version.

Why do they charge so much money for these cards?!
 
If you buy a Leaf, pay the ¥3,000 a month, then you get unlimited charging with no per charge fee, right? That's not a bad deal. We have to pay a monthly charge and still pay a fairly high per charge rate (it's about double my night rate). Sorry for complaining; I just had a different image for charging my car on the road. Superchargers, please! :biggrin:
 
My wife called NCS last night. CHAdeMO monthly fee is ¥3,800 a month, and charges cost ¥15 a minute, just like the web's pdf states. Maximum charge time is 30 minutes; that could leave a Model S stranded if there is not another charger in range on the highway. I could see giving up my spot after 30 minutes if another car is waiting to charge, but that would really extend our time for charging.

More info from the call: if you do not have an NCS card, you can charge on a NEXCO highway charger with an elephant logo. You get a password EACH time and pay ¥50 a minute up to 30 minutes. I assume we go into the office at the service area, pay, and get the password under this system. It may be hard to plan this way, too, since we may not know for awhile which are the elephant-logo-ed chargers.
 
Yeah, I also called NCS this afternoon and found out the same thing. We pay 3800/4200 every month, and in addition we pay minute-by-minute charges.
You can always find some chances to charge another 30 minutes. Don't worry I always do that. Just plan ahead and try charging after going 200km for at least 30 minutes. If nobody comes, repeat the session. Or what I usually do, is charge for 15 min, abort charging and start a new charge session. This way you can get 45 min charge with about half the risk of getting somebody in the middle. If you need more, then charge 15-15-30 minutes, total one hour.

To find out which is elephant compatible, you can use the map on the NCS site. EVsmart will also have a filter for that later.
 
Hiroshi! That 15-minute charge and restart is both sneaky and brilliant. :wink: My wife said we have to keep our fingers crossed for those first 15 minutes. To use it, we'll have to get an NCS card. I want to wait to get the card till I start traveling more. How long from application to getting the card do you reckon? Thanks for the tip.
 
Hi, Jay, actually, having traveled 1300km to Fukui, 1000km to Osaka, and 900km to Gifu (Geroonsen), I had zero incident of waiting for the public charger. Don't worry, I think it's going to be OK. Also, just to be on the safe side, if you use NEXCO-Nakanihon (between Tokyo and Osaka), you can use this web site to check the availability of chargers at each location: http://c-nexco.smartoasis.jp/sp/line.html (from your Smartphone).

NCS said in their email that they'll send the card in 10 days.