$450 bill from NRG / eVgo

[user 10599]

OOOhhh. Good question regarding whether they continue to keep your account open after you disconnect? I hope not. I just finally used one of their stations this past weekend on the Flex plan. So I'm expecting a small charge for the approx. 30 minutes I was connected to their L2. I don't recall the station I was at having any buttons to operate, just the spot to wave their id card at to activate it. Hopefully I don't have to come here and post another update indicating problems with them.

 

[Tyger]

I visited a different freedom station on Friday then was back at the station that overcharged me last night, and I noticed something. The station I visited on Friday had 3 types of connectors/chargers.

1. L2 J1772 charger w/ holster, angled top
2. SAE/CHAdeMO combo station / CHAdeMO only station w/ holster, screen, and flat typ
3. Standard wall outlet station (No integrated EVSE) - aside from the lack of cord & holster, this looked the same as the J1772 station

The first type is supposed to end your session when you return the J1772 connector back in the holster.
The second type obviously has to either run out the time or you hit the stop button, and that ends the session before unlocking the connector from your car
The third I have never used and have no idea how to end the charging session.

The freedom station that charged me extra was none of those. It was L2 with a J1772 charger, but it had no holster, just a hook in front to hang the J1772 cord off of. Sort of like a hybrid between the first and third type I saw at the other freedom station location. And like the wall plug type, there was no obvious way to indicate the session was ended.

I emailed NRG about ending the session and was very unhelpfully told "The only way to immediately know is to ensure the handle was put back on the charger properly and locked in.". Without a proper place to put the handle, that doesn't really help.

 

[MichaelBornstein]

Thanks to Tony Williams, I now have JdeMO adaptor on my RAV4, so I was able to use eVgo for the first time. Of course I ran into some problems, but their customer service was very nice, I spoke to one of their reps when I hadn't received a bill for a while, and it turns out that they somehow lost all of my charges. I listed what my charges should have been, but they decided instead to waive the charges. It sounds like they are trying to improve their system and their image.

I am on their Flex system of charging as I live out of their area, and I charge at home all the time anyway. I noted however that the Flex system is designed to discourage people from using it. What follows is a letter that I sent to one of their reps:

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Please let me say a few words from my soapbox …

Your current Flex plan with $6.95 connect fee and $.20/min for L3 service would actually induce people to NOT use their BEV’s for travel. Let me explain why.

At home, I can charge my BEV at $.10/kWh using PG&E’s lowest TOU rate. This is only slightly less expensive than your $.10/min rate for L3 service on your standard plan. Charging twice as much is still reasonable as it puts the charge in the range of a high mileage (e.g. Prius) ICE. Adding the connect fee, however, increases the charge to the point that it becomes uneconomical to drive the BEV, and thus I would drive my Volt. As a result, you have lost my potential business.

For example, my last trip to LA was about 270 miles and I charged a total of three times for 90 minutes. In a Volt, the cost would have been $20-25 worth of gasoline. With my RAV4, the 90 minutes at $.20/min would be $18, comparable or slightly less (my 1.5 hours of waiting is worth something). Adding, however, three connect fees brings the total to $39 which is substantially more than the cost of gasoline.

For someone who uses your services several times a month, the $14.95 subscription price is not outrageous, and they get the lower cost per minute. There must, however be thousands of users that don’t use the service often enough to pay a monthly subscription, but would use their BEV for an occasional out of town trip if the cost was more reasonable.

What I am proposing is a new structure for the Flex plan. Namely a onetime connect fee of $7.50 for each calendar month that the service is used along with the $.20/min fee for the power. This would allow occasional users to drive their BEV’s at a rate comparable to gasoline and thus insure more usage of the BEV and more income to you. Anyone who regularly uses more than 75 minutes a month would be better off with the subscription plan, while the rest of us would be better with this new Flex plan.

On this new plan my trip to LA would have cost $25.50 which is comparable to gasoline, and not $39 as it would have under the old plan. I would never use my BEV to go to LA again under the current rate structure.

Try proposing this plan to management as see what they say. I think it will attract many more customers to your service.

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Making this change in the Flex system will allow those of you with Leafs to go to Palm Springs (as Nissan showed in their ad) without it costing an arm and a leg in connection fees. If this suggestion sounds reasonable, it wouldn't hurt if several other users wrote to them to suggest a similar system. Their contact number is:

http://www.nrgevgo.com/contact-evgo/

 

[MichaelBornstein]

A member on the RAV4 EV forum replied to this post by saying that he thought this was NRG's plan. That is, make the Flex plan pricing so onerous that no one would sign up for it. my response was:

That makes no business sense at all. The object of the business must be to expand the customer base, not limit it. There must be hundreds of BEV owners in the LA area that would make use of the Flex pricing plan if it weren't so onerous. There are plans for L3 stations at Tejon Ranch and at Santa Clarita, and these would make a trip from Bakersfield practical with a BEV. I know of several owners that would be willing to travel to LA in their BEV's, but the current Flex plan makes it much more economical to use your Prius or Volt for the trip rather than your BEV. If enough people pressure NRG, they may see that their current pricing structure is actually hurting their business.

Simply put, NRG is in business to sell electricity to EV owners. Once they realize that a part of their plan is not working, they will change it.

 

[caffeinekid]

Please let me say a few words from my soapbox …

Your current Flex plan with $6.95 connect fee and $.20/min for L3 service would actually induce people to NOT use their BEV’s for travel. Let me explain why.

At home, I can charge my BEV at $.10/kWh using PG&E’s lowest TOU rate. This is only slightly less expensive than your $.10/min rate for L3 service on your standard plan. Charging twice as much is still reasonable as it puts the charge in the range of a high mileage (e.g. Prius) ICE. Adding the connect fee, however, increases the charge to the point that it becomes uneconomical to drive the BEV, and thus I would drive my Volt. As a result, you have lost my potential business.

For example, my last trip to LA was about 270 miles and I charged a total of three times for 90 minutes. In a Volt, the cost would have been $20-25 worth of gasoline. With my RAV4, the 90 minutes at $.20/min would be $18, comparable or slightly less (my 1.5 hours of waiting is worth something). Adding, however, three connect fees brings the total to $39 which is substantially more than the cost of gasoline.

For someone who uses your services several times a month, the $14.95 subscription price is not outrageous, and they get the lower cost per minute. There must, however be thousands of users that don’t use the service often enough to pay a monthly subscription, but would use their BEV for an occasional out of town trip if the cost was more reasonable.

What I am proposing is a new structure for the Flex plan. Namely a onetime connect fee of $7.50 for each calendar month that the service is used along with the $.20/min fee for the power. This would allow occasional users to drive their BEV’s at a rate comparable to gasoline and thus insure more usage of the BEV and more income to you. Anyone who regularly uses more than 75 minutes a month would be better off with the subscription plan, while the rest of us would be better with this new Flex plan.

On this new plan my trip to LA would have cost $25.50 which is comparable to gasoline, and not $39 as it would have under the old plan. I would never use my BEV to go to LA again under the current rate structure.

Try proposing this plan to management as see what they say. I think it will attract many more customers to your service.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Making this change in the Flex system will allow those of you with Leafs to go to Palm Springs (as Nissan showed in their ad) without it costing an arm and a leg in connection fees. If this suggestion sounds reasonable, it wouldn't hurt if several other users wrote to them to suggest a similar system. Their contact number is:

http://www.nrgevgo.com/contact-evgo/

Two things IMO:

One- NRG had a good thing going with their $39.95/month unlimited plan. It worked especially well for people with battery degradation who under the new tiers are penalized by comparison to newer/better battery chemistries. For instance, even at the current $15.95/month plus $0.10/minute, if you are fortunate enough to squeeze 40 miles worth of charge in as much time, you are paying the equivalent of $3.00/gallon (plus a fraction of the service fee) at a time when gasoline is $1.90/gallon, which brings me to the second point.

Two- Basing the comparison costs on current (relatively low) gasoline prices makes the situation even less attractive for going with eVgo. If they cannot formulate a profitable pricing structure that does not require $5.00/gallon gasoline, then I don't see things moving along for much longer, especially as native ranges increase.

 

[GRA]

Two things IMO:

One- NRG had a good thing going with their $39.95/month unlimited plan. It worked especially well for people with battery degradation who under the new tiers are penalized by comparison to newer/better battery chemistries. For instance, even at the current $15.95/month plus $0.10/minute, if you are fortunate enough to squeeze 40 miles worth of charge in as much time, you are paying the equivalent of $3.00/gallon (plus a fraction of the service fee) at a time when gasoline is $1.90/gallon, which brings me to the second point.

Two- Basing the comparison costs on current (relatively low) gasoline prices makes the situation even less attractive for going with eVgo. If they cannot formulate a profitable pricing structure that does not require $5.00/gallon gasoline, then I don't see things moving along for much longer, especially as native ranges increase.

You've just enumerated the problem with public charging - no one has been able to come up with a business plan that shows a profit, and until someone does (probably only the utilities can do it), installations will remain limited to those with public subsidies, which are increasingly unpopular. Also see

Is There Any Business Model For Public Electric-Car Charging? Plug-In 2013 Report

http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1087489_is-there-any-business-model-for-public-electric-car-charging-plug-in-2013-report

 

[DaveEV]

Please let me say a few words from my soapbox …

Not bad, but I'd prefer that there be one plan for everyone.

$0.30 / minute until you hit 75 minutes of use. Then each subsequent minute costs $0.10 / minute.

75 * 0.30 = $22.50 - or the equivalent of $14.95 + 75 minutes at $0.10 / minute.

Want to taper it more to make up for the lack of subscribers?

First 60 minutes $0.30 / minute.
Second 60 minutes $0.20 / minute.
All additional minutes $0.15 / minute.

120 minutes in a month would cost $30, or just slightly more than the subscription fee. Heavier users would get a discounted rate.

$0.10 / minute is a very fair price, and eVgo is probably not making much money if anything at all for customers who charge more than 4 times a month.

 

[MichaelBornstein]

drees:

Your plan makes more sense than mine!! Now how do we go about getting NRG to accept it?

 

[DNAinaGoodWay]

Regarding the inability to track sessions on an app or website, maybe this will help:

http://insideevs.com/major-charging-networks-us-come-together-roev-interoperability-now-reality/

"ROEV will ensure that different networks can communicate with one another and share charging requests and details, for an easy and convenient consumer charging experience."

So, should be able to track eVgo sessions on ChargePoint.

 

[caffeinekid]

Please let me say a few words from my soapbox …

Not bad, but I'd prefer that there be one plan for everyone.

$0.30 / minute until you hit 75 minutes of use. Then each subsequent minute costs $0.10 / minute.

75 * 0.30 = $22.50 - or the equivalent of $14.95 + 75 minutes at $0.10 / minute.

Want to taper it more to make up for the lack of subscribers?

First 60 minutes $0.30 / minute.
Second 60 minutes $0.20 / minute.
All additional minutes $0.15 / minute.

120 minutes in a month would cost $30, or just slightly more than the subscription fee. Heavier users would get a discounted rate.

$0.10 / minute is a very fair price, and eVgo is probably not making much money if anything at all for customers who charge more than 4 times a month.

Wow. For a 2011 Leaf with typical battery degradation, 30 minutes will get you MAYBE 20-30 miles of mixed range for only $9.00, with the newer Leafs pulling roughly twice that range- maybe not so bad in the land of fruits and nuts where $1 = $3, but most of the rest of eVGo's territory is currently enjoying < $2.00/gallon gasoline. What a bargain! :shock: :lol

My opinion remains that the charging stations should either be municipally funded or subsidized by tax credits for local real estate holdings such as shopping centers and big box stores. I can't gig NRG for their work, but I have personally shied away from their pricey new model and canceled my membership altogether.

 

[DaveEV]

Not bad, but I'd prefer that there be one plan for everyone.

$0.30 / minute until you hit 75 minutes of use. Then each subsequent minute costs $0.10 / minute.

Wow. For a 2011 Leaf with typical battery degradation, 30 minutes will get you MAYBE 20-30 miles of mixed range for only $9.00, with the newer Leafs pulling roughly twice that range

For occasional usage, I really don't mind that much paying high prices because it doesn't affect TCO all that much. Until there are a lot more cars on the road and charging stations come down in price, it's a price I'm willing to pay, though not all that often. I'd much rather see eVgo charge much less than $0.30 / minute at first - $0.15 / minute would be a much more reasonable rate which can then be dropped to $0.10 / minute for heavy users.

Maybe you charge $0.15 / minute for the first two hours a month and $0.10 / minute after that. Or just maybe keep it simple and charge a flat $0.15 / minute regardless of usage. If they want to minimize credit card processing fees, bill in increments of $15 similar to Chargepoint.

As far as value - obviously billing by the minute rewards users for only charging as much as they need to get to the next QC station or destination given the tapering off of charge rate.

My opinion remains that the charging stations should either be municipally funded or subsidized by tax credits for local real estate holdings such as shopping centers and big box stores. I can't gig NRG for their work, but I have personally shied away from their pricey new model and canceled my membership altogether.

Good luck with that in this political environment. A carbon tax would probably go farthest in putting EVs on more equal footing with ICEs, but good luck getting anything like that across the line.

 

[DNAinaGoodWay]

Regarding the inability to track sessions on an app or website, maybe this will help:

http://insideevs.com/major-charging-networks-us-come-together-roev-interoperability-now-reality/

"ROEV will ensure that different networks can communicate with one another and share charging requests and details, for an easy and convenient consumer charging experience."

So, should be able to track eVgo sessions on ChargePoint.

Got a response from NRG:

We recently started the development of our online customer account management system. We understand that this has been in discussion for quite some time and also understand how this wait has been an inconvenience to our customers. We are working diligently to ensure the deployment of this application goes without flaw. We hope that you understand and we will be announcing the deployment of this system in the near future with no ETA available at the moment.

Kind Regards,

Eric Lopez
Operations Analyst I
eVgo Operations

They're going to have to work fast as ROEV promises:

charging networks will share charging station and session data with one another while keeping personal information private.

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

My ideas on billing is a bit different and let me explain why.

we are still at a point where there is much more need than plugs and this is aggravated by the fact that at least half the plugs are simply not convenient so some plugs sit unused most if not all the time while others have constant queues.

So billing that encourages "get only what I need and scoot" is appropriate here. Now it may be different in CA but in WA generally speaking I see lines at L3's while L2's are ignored in the same location. So my thoughts apply to L3 only.

I think billing should run 20 cents per minute for first 30 minutes which would include a connect charge of $12 for first use of the month and $2 each afterwards. Rates rise to 40 cents per minute from minute 31 to 45 and 60 cents per minute from 46 mins plus. Then allow L2 top off at $2 per hour

Under this scenario; a one time user needing 90% on a 24 kwh pack would pay out the nose (kinda like bottled water...) or about $24. The obvious choice would be repeat customers paying only $14 on similar trips. The smart person would obviously opt for just the 30 minutes "best" rate or $8

now why would this be more attractive to NG? well, it would boost morale in the community, encourage more L2 usage and increase thru put at the L3 while likely maximizing its benefits to us

 

[DNAinaGoodWay]

Regarding NRG's fees, remember they're a big NCTC provider, so guaranteed 2 years from OEMs. That's what drives their build out.

 

[MichaelBornstein]

In my limited experience, I prefer drees approach to Dave's. I live in Bakersfield and occasionally travel to LA, From the charger in Canyon Country to my house is 86 miles including a 4000' hill. I therefore need to get a full charge before I attempt this. 45-60 minutes at L3 will do it, and the L3 chargers at CC are usually available. On my way down, I will charge for 30 minutes and have enough to do my LA shopping and get back to CC to recharge. I don't see why I should have to pay a premium rate to use an L3 charger that is sitting vacant, and I surely don't want to charge at L2 and sit around for an extra hour.

If more chargers were available at the sites in LA that I visit (Fairfield Century City, Del Amo. Mitsuwa Market Torrance), then I could do L2 charging there and only need 30 minutes of L3 when I reach CC. Untill then, I would like to see a more reasonable rate that doesn't penalize those of us that can go a long distance and therefore need a longer charge time.

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

In my limited experience, I prefer drees approach to Dave's. I live in Bakersfield and occasionally travel to LA, From the charger in Canyon Country to my house is 86 miles including a 4000' hill. I therefore need to get a full charge before I attempt this. 45-60 minutes at L3 will do it, and the L3 chargers at CC are usually available. On my way down, I will charge for 30 minutes and have enough to do my LA shopping and get back to CC to recharge. I don't see why I should have to pay a premium rate to use an L3 charger that is sitting vacant, and I surely don't want to charge at L2 and sit around for an extra hour.

If more chargers were available at the sites in LA that I visit (Fairfield Century City, Del Amo. Mitsuwa Market Torrance), then I could do L2 charging there and only need 30 minutes of L3 when I reach CC. Untill then, I would like to see a more reasonable rate that doesn't penalize those of us that can go a long distance and therefore need a longer charge time.

"sitting vacant" is completely against my scenario. if you are lucky to have L3's like that, then never mind! cheaper the better I say. I wish we were as lucky

 

[MichaelBornstein]

I think I somewhat misstated my case. It appears that there are at least two groups of L3 users:

a) local residents
b) travelers

Lets consider case "a":
Tesla is running into this problem with their SuperCharger network. These were originally designed to allow Model S users to travel around the country . Tesla had assumed that owners would buy a HPWC for use in their home for everyday use. What they are finding, however, is that at sites that are near residential areas with a lot of Teslas, local residents are using the stations for their day-to-day charging needs. Thus stations in the SF Bay area are flooded by local residents. Tesla has even started sending letters to owners asking them not to overuse the local stations. The nearest SuperCharger to my house is 33 miles away, so even if I owned a Tesla, I wouldn't consider driving 66 miles RT to get a charge. The same would apply to L3 stations that are near residential neighborhoods. I have even seen this at L2 stations. The Northridge Fashion Mall has three L2 chargers. Prior to getting a JdeMO in my RAV4, I would stop there at about 7am (leaving Bakersfield at 5:30), and charge for about 1.5 hours before driving on. I would often find cars covered with dew and plugged in, with a full charge on the car and the charger not charging. These cars had obviously been left the night before and I would have to unplug them in order to use the charger.

Local residents usually only need to charge for 30 minutes at L3 as they can always come back the next day for another 30 minutes. They shouldn't use the public charger for long term sessions.

Now consider case "b":
The traveler has to get from point A to point B and would like to make as few stops as necessary. When I set out from Bakersfield, I have an Extended Charge (100% +/-) so that I can make it into the LA basin. I then want to recharge as few times as necessary, usually once on the way down and then again once on my way back. I will usually travel about 80 miles between these two charges and another 86 miles to get back. Therefore I will often have to charge for more than 30 minutes at each session. I am willing to spend a little extra to top off at L3 rather than L2 as I don't want to spend that much extra time in a strange location while I am charging. I don't think I should have to pay more for the extra 15-30 minutes than I did for the first 30 minutes as I am saving users at some distant station from my having to stop a third time to charge further down the line.

I realize that this brings up the debate of how public stations should be used, and whether people without access to a private charging station should consider buying an EV. I obviously have an opinion, but I would like to hear from those who use (or abuse) public stations for their point of view.

 

[user 10599]

Another update - this time good.

After getting the improper charges fully resolved, I finally had the opportunity to use one of their stations on a per use basis. About a month later, I got a nicely organized e-mail invoice that was accurate regarding usage and amount owed. So hopefully, this is a sign they have gotten their accounting issues straightened out.