ChargePoint now charging $$$

[sp4rk]

I was under the impression that ChargePoint network charging is free for now?

Several news articles have stated this.

Yet I find in my CP account that I am being charged (next to nothing) ... but ...

Are they really charging now or only some locations?

 

[GaslessInSeattle]

I believe that some locations are free and will continue to be indefinitely, in part depending on the agreement with the host. I have to say, of all the public L2 I've used, I'm happy to pay money for their dependable well engineered product!

 

[WetEV]

Some locations have always been $.
Some locations will always be free, or at least until the site owner changes their mind.
I would expect more paying for charges, but I don't think that is a bad thing. The well sited, well maintained location has a real value to me. I'm willing to pay for use of it, or willing to use the site owner's business.

 

[tbleakne]

The Chargepoint stations at 3 colleges in my area, PCC, Caltech, and Pomona, all charge fees, from $1.25/hour to $2.00/hour. Seal Beach also charges a fee. It is the choice of the host. It is best to be prepared with some money in your Chargepoint account. When my initial $25 deposit was depleted, Chargepoint billed my credit card another $25 automatically. I guess I had authorized that.

I have seen speculation that some sites' Chargepoint fees are covered by grants, and when these expire, perhaps this Summer, fees to the user will begin.

 

[sp4rk]

Thanks "everyone" ... I wasn't being cheap ... just confused ... as usual.

Now looking for mechanic to attach my new HORN!

 

[evnow]

I was under the impression that ChargePoint network charging is free for now?

Several news articles have stated this.

Yet I find in my CP account that I am being charged (next to nothing) ... but ...

Are they really charging now or only some locations?

The owners of the EVSE i.e. the landlord decides whether to charge or not. Coulomb just runs the network infrastructure for them and collects a small % as service fee.

 

[sp4rk]

I was under the impression that ChargePoint network charging is free for now?

Several news articles have stated this.

Yet I find in my CP account that I am being charged (next to nothing) ... but ...

Are they really charging now or only some locations?

The owners of the EVSE i.e. the landlord decides whether to charge or not. Coulomb just runs the network infrastructure for them and collects a small % as service fee.

Whole Foods (in Schaumburg, IL) has decided to charge. Oh, well. Don't need it anyway.
Level 3 Whole 'nuther story. Pun intended.

 

[UkrainianKozak]

In chargepoint app as well as on their website, you can click on charging station icon to get details, which will tell you charging rates if there's any. if you don't see any rate info for the station, most likely it is free. Details have some other useful info, like if the spot is publicly accessible or not.

 

[DeaneG]

I just paid $1/hour at the Pleasanton Civic Center, very reasonable and pleasant indeed.

 

[EVDrive]

I was in a pinch last week in Las Gatos and needed a charge to get from Las Gatos to the Stanford mall to QC.

I swung by the charge point offices where they have 6 l2 chargers and they charge $1:50/HR. They are out in the middle of nowhere but I was able to grab dinner at a nice Italian restaurant 3 blocks away while I charged enough to get to me to the qc station.

I had to call chargepiont and pay for the session as I had no money on my account. So yes, please pre-pay online or be ready to take 15 minutes to call and pay for each session as you go.

Boy will it be nice when there are more QC stations around. L2 is great for work and home but that is it. Nobody wants to wait for 7 hours to get a charge on the go. Now that I have used all the bay area QCers, i can safely say they are fricking awesome. Hopefully chargepoint will start installing them.

 

[Randy]

At least for the City of Cupertino, the Coulomb/Chargepoint fee structure as posted online in this document is as follows (on page 16/17):

http://cupertino.granicus.com/MetaViewer.php?view_id=14&clip_id=1105&meta_id=58307" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

50 cents per session, and 7.5% of session fees

Interesting....

 

[CubsFanRon]

Hi all - I'm not a Leafer, I'm a Volter (are those the right terms?).

I know there's a lot of cross-traffic among our communities regarding certain topics, and this is should be one of them. I've dropped both Coulomb and Walgreens a note regarding this change in policy and how ass backwards I think it truly is. I can understand why all y'all might be stuck in a situation where you need to charge, but I never will be, and that latter part is the gist of my message. The thread on the gm-volt.com forum is this one, but for those of you who can't read it for whatever reason, I've copied the message portion here:

Seems that all the Walgreens units have gone to pay-per-use. I just sent a nastygram to some write-only mailbox:

This isn't about a specific visit, rather a change in a policy that has very little impact on me, but a significantly larger impact on you.

Walgreens has a corporation-wide initiative to provide charging stations for electric vehicles (see, for example, http://news.walgreens.com/article_di...rticle_id=5482" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false. As an owner of an electric vehicle (Chevrolet Volt), this is an extra reason to visit Walgreens when I have an option among stores. Recently however, a provider of this service, Coulomb Technologies and their ChargePoint system, has started charging a fee for this service in the stations placed at your stores. I find the fee to be exorbitant, to the extent that these charging stations have changed from being a reason to go to Walgreens to a reason to NOT go to Walgreens.

I charge for convenience, not need. The fee being charged is $2.00/hour, which is overpriced by at least $1.00/hour and probably more if you want it to be an attraction. I don't have to charge my car, I can simply drive on gasoline, so if the price of the corresponding electricity is more than the price of gasoline, I'll simply ignore the charging. I don't need it, EVER. That makes Walgreens no more or less attractive than any other option, some of which are closer or cheaper or otherwise more attractive.

The math is really simple, and I'm actually a little surprised you are incapable of doing it: 1 hour of charge is the equivalent of 10 miles of range in a Volt. When I drive on gasoline, I get ~40 miles/gallon of gas. 10 miles on gasoline therefore requires 1/4 gallon of gas. Gas is currently available for about $4.00/gallon, making 1/4 gallon of gas cost $1.00. So any price for electricity of $1.00/hr means that it's overpriced. Further, should the price of gas fall to $3.00/gallon, pricing electricity over $0.75/hr falls into the same category; similarly, if the price of gas grows to $5.00/gallon, then my willingness to pay for electricity goes up to $1.25/hr. It really is that simple.

I'm not saying that you should make it free (though that is my preferred solution), but you should be prepared that your plan for turning electric charging into a profit center is severely flawed and will turn away almost every Volt owner and the majority of Leaf owners. Even at $2.00/hr with infinite margin, you will not make back the capital investment (presuming $10K/station) in under 3 years unless each station is used for 4.5 hours a day every day. Do you really believe that will happen? You should instead be looking at this as a feature more like "Free WiFi," something that doesn't really cost that much to provide but provides utility to some of your customers.

Your policy is your choice, of course, but my choice as a consumer is to be fickle. Free EV charging attracts EV owners to Walgreens; it's a reason for me to go there preferentially. Pay EV charging is at best a neutral, and if another similar store offers free (or even reduced-cost) charging, then I have a reason to go somewhere else.

I would be quite interested in hearing a response from you. I've shared this letter and will share any response you provide with a broader Volt audience (via gm-volt.com).

Thank you

I've dropped a similar message to Coulomb just to see what their response might be.

I did say that pay charging will likely be uninteresting to Leaf owner without any real evidence to that fact, but I do understand a fundamental difference between our vehicles: you might get stuck in a situation where a little bit of pay charging is cheaper than the alternative. But I also anticipate that the majority of the time you're more than aware of any range limitation ahead of time and can avoid paying the equivalent of $8.00/gallon gasoline prices for electricity.

Anyways, if I do hear back from either of them I'll post that response here if that's of interest to this audience. (If you want me to go away, I can do that too...)

 

[waitingforaleaf]

I've dropped a similar message to Coulomb just to see what their response might be.

Coulomb lets the host set the prices on their EVSEs. In the case of the EVSEs at most Walgreens, they are hosted by 350Green, whose policy has just recently been modified so that "Coulomb Level 2 charging stations are $2 per hour and you will need to use a ChargePoint card to activate those, SemaConnect stations remain free."

You'll want to direct your letter to 350Green instead of Coulomb.

 

[TomT]

It's a good letter. It'll be interesting to see what kind of a response you get. Unless it was a dire emergency with no other alternatives, I certainly would not charge there at those rates. It would be a little better with a 6.6Kw charger but still not great...

Anyways, if I do hear back from either of them I'll post that response here if that's of interest to this audience. (If you want me to go away, I can do that too...)

 

[grommet]

Yes, this specific scenario is all 350Green... Walgreens (and Coulomb) has nothing do with their L2 charge model, other than having business arrangements with them. (Coulomb gets $ from 350Green for products & services, and 350Green gets $ from Walgreens.)

Our Walgreens often have a 30 minute parking limit... such a deal for $2!

 

[Stanton]

There's a couple of (always) "free" CP chargers in town that I've used--and they have much better reliability than their Blink counterparts--but it's gotten to the point where the majority of them are NOT "free". I believe we are finally seeing the failure of the L2 (or L1) charging model: who will pay for (short) charging sessions (except in dire emergency) when we can get all we want at home or work (if you're lucky)? As has been pointed out, I view an EVSE as an incentive to shop/eat at place "A" over place "B", but I would NEVER pay for it by choice. I see this as a losing business model in the long-term, and eventually either businesses will install EVSE's as a "free" customer perk (like Wi-Fi), or the ChargePoints of the world will go away, or public charging (with the possible exception of L3) will go away. It's just not a money-making business model.

 

[CubsFanRon]

I've dropped a similar message to Coulomb just to see what their response might be.

Coulomb lets the host set the prices on their EVSEs. In the case of the EVSEs at most Walgreens, they are hosted by 350Green, whose policy has just recently been modified so that "Coulomb Level 2 charging stations are $2 per hour and you will need to use a ChargePoint card to activate those, SemaConnect stations remain free."

You'll want to direct your letter to 350Green instead of Coulomb.

Thanks for the head's up - I'll drop them a note too. Venting is fun, but I'd rather these companies either fix their business models so they survive (and we'll have charging stations to use) or go out of business quickly so some company that gets it comes in with a workable model (and we'll have charging stations to use).

 

[edatoakrun]

L2, per kWh delivered, is the most expensive and inefficient way to charge an EV, in most public charging circumstances. It's rate of charge is so slow, it requires bringing the charge to the parking spaces (many, many parking spaces, many of which must be left empty for most of the time) rather than utilizing the EV's mobility, to bring the vehicle to the highway charge site, where kWh can be delivered much faster, with much lower total costs per kWh.

Unfortunately, the various "free" L2 promotional efforts, have obscured this fundamental economic reality.

PHEVs will tend to avoid public L2, since Gasoline will usually be cheaper.

DC capable BEVs will avoid public L2 parking spaces, whenever given the option of faster, less expensive per kWh, DC charge stations.

So why are we encouraging the installation of so many public L2s?

And why waste our time complaining, when the L2 operators attempt to get a return on their investment?

 

[abasile]

Anyways, if I do hear back from either of them I'll post that response here if that's of interest to this audience. (If you want me to go away, I can do that too...)

Absolutely, please stick around and let us know if you get a response. A nontrivial number of posters on this forum actually are Volt+LEAF households.

I think the Volt and Plug-in Prius add a valuable dose of reality for L2 charging station operators. It truly makes no sense to charge more for electricity than the price of gasoline, particularly for such a slow "fill-up". In my opinion, overpriced L2 stations are a disservice with respect to EV adoption, as for the most part they will sit and gather dust while discouraging the use of electricity instead of gasoline. Ideally, IMHO, any would-be L2 host should cut out the middleman (Chargepoint, Blink, etc.) and hire their own contractor to install basic EVSEs for less money.

DC Fast Charging, on the other hand, offers greater value to BEV drivers and can be worth paying a premium for.

 

[DaveEV]

I don't have to charge my car, I can simply drive on gasoline, so if the price of the corresponding electricity is more than the price of gasoline, I'll simply ignore the charging. I don't need it, EVER.

Where's Tony - I can see him now muttering "I'll just drive my Prius!" under his breath - or in this case - I'll just drive on gas! When in reality - you probably should expect to pay the equivalent of a 25 mpg car driven on gas. At $4/gallon that's 15c/mile which comes out to really close to $2/hour.

So if the charge keeps you from burning some gas on the way home - just do it!

A couple points:

1. You paid a huge price premium to have the option of driving electric or on gas with the Volt. Presumably you did this because you dislike burning gasoline for one reason or another. Presumably you'd be OK for paying $2/hour while shopping simply because this is not a lot of money - and public charging infrastructure is far from free.
2. Sure - we're talking about L2 here, but in real life an hour of L2 here and an hour of L2 there makes a big difference in EV range for those who need it.. Case in point today - 2 hours of L2 let me drive 90 mostly freeway miles without worrying about range. 1 hour of L2 would have been enough to make the trip driven a lot more carefully.
3. If you're only charging for convenience and don't need it for the EV miles - why are you charging at all? There's a chance you may be preventing someone who _needs_ the charge to make it do their destination.

Is free charging at retail establishments a nice perk? Sure is! But at the same time I realize that installing and maintaining these charging stations is far from cheap and if you want to see this infrastructure stick around - expect to pay for it.

Perhaps a good compromise would be the hosting retailer offering discounted or free charging with a minimum purchase.

All that said - do I particularly like paying $2/hour to charge at 240V/16A from a 32A capable station? No - biggest reason is that I feel that I'm paying twice as much as the 240V/32A capable vehicles - I think that cost to charge should be adjusted based on some combination of rate of charge, time spent charging and time spent plugged in (being plugged in and not charging prevents them from otherwise collecting money from actively charging customers).