A Man Charged His EV at a Dealership - and Was Billed $418 (electrek.co) 166
The EV blog Electrek reports:
A Clinton Township, Michigan man was charged $418 for a single EV charging session at Elder Hyundai's Macomb Township store after finding the charger listed as publicly available on the EVgo app, but didn't discover the charges until after wrapping up his 40-ish minute charging session. "I was flabbergasted," explained Stanley Kpenkann, who had been driving a rented Chevy Bolt EV at the time. "Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be saddled with a bill of $418 for a charging session."
After calling EVgo to report the error, he found that the exorbitant charge wasn't a mistake at all - Elder Hyundai was charging customers an eye-gouging $5 per kWh, plus another $5 for every minute connected.
A local news report notes that "After back-and-forth with EVgo, the company processed what it called a goodwill refund of $405." (And the dealership argued their charger was reserved for its own customers and vehicles, so they set prices high to deter outside use.)
But Electrek argues the story "speaks to much larger problems among the EV charging business in particular and car dealerships in general..." [In June] Plug & Play EV's Steve Birkett took to LinkedIn to call out his local Hyundai dealer in Union, NJ for charging a ridiculous $15 per kWh to top off his IONIQ 5 (!)... Even worse, he noted that a number of area dealerships that had listed their ports as "public" were actively discouraging public use with signs and stickers designed to turn people away...
[U]nlike gas stations, EV charge point operators in many states aren't required to clearly advertise what they'll charge before a driver plugs in in the same way that gas stations are: with clearly legible signage that's visible from the street.
After calling EVgo to report the error, he found that the exorbitant charge wasn't a mistake at all - Elder Hyundai was charging customers an eye-gouging $5 per kWh, plus another $5 for every minute connected.
A local news report notes that "After back-and-forth with EVgo, the company processed what it called a goodwill refund of $405." (And the dealership argued their charger was reserved for its own customers and vehicles, so they set prices high to deter outside use.)
But Electrek argues the story "speaks to much larger problems among the EV charging business in particular and car dealerships in general..." [In June] Plug & Play EV's Steve Birkett took to LinkedIn to call out his local Hyundai dealer in Union, NJ for charging a ridiculous $15 per kWh to top off his IONIQ 5 (!)... Even worse, he noted that a number of area dealerships that had listed their ports as "public" were actively discouraging public use with signs and stickers designed to turn people away...
[U]nlike gas stations, EV charge point operators in many states aren't required to clearly advertise what they'll charge before a driver plugs in in the same way that gas stations are: with clearly legible signage that's visible from the street.
News Flash (Score:5, Funny)
Car dealership ran by piece of shit.
Re:News Flash (Score:5, Insightful)
Not quite. The dealership is doing basically what we do as well: Pay for charging stations for private use, but because they partnered with a company they need to be publicly accessible. So they set a ludicrous rate for the general public and then discount it for employees / customers by a high number.
It's not that out of the ordinary.
The dealer explicitly said the charger was intended for their use and the high prices are to try and prevent members of the public from blocking it from the employees.
Re:News Flash (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:News Flash (Score:4, Informative)
No they didn't, they partnered with a public company to install chargers at their place for their own purpose and set rates accordingly. The fact that the public can access it is an (expensive) bonus.
This is not assholes, this is actually quite normal. It allows people access to quick power in an emergency. It allows companies to get infrastructure installed for their own purposes. And it allows the use of large companies like EVGo's expertise for quick install.
Again this is really really normal and common the world over, even in Europe where charging infrastructure is regulated. E.g. just opening my charging app I can see the local DHL distribution centre is listed as a public charging point as well. Clicking on it shows a set of fees that makes my eyes water, 4 doors down is a street charger from the same company with the normal rate applied. Oh and the DHL chargers have signs up saying public use is limited to 15minutes with a little tow truck symbol (though that is completely stupid because there's no way a towtruck will get there quicker than your fast charging session ends).
Re:News Flash (Score:5, Insightful)
No they didn't, they partnered with a public company to install chargers at their place for their own purpose and set rates accordingly.
They partnered with a company that puts them in their public network. If they didn't want to be part of that public network, they should have gone elsewhere. They knew what they were getting into when they signed on.
This is not assholes, this is actually quite normal.
Those two things are not mutually exclusive.
Re:News Flash (Score:4)
This is not assholes, this is actually quite normal. It allows people access to quick power in an emergency. It allows companies to get infrastructure installed for their own purposes. And it allows the use of large companies like EVGo's expertise for quick install.
This is most certainly asshole behavior. They willingly agreed to accept the condition of being a publicly available charger in exchange for EVGO network installing, maintaining and managing billing for their charger. Then they set billing prices high enough to make a single charge cost $400+? They want the benefits of EVGO's network without any of the liabilities.
My state has prosecuted gas station owners for jacking up prices during crisis events with less cost impact. Our local DA would probably investigate this kind of thing if it went viral around here. This is textbook asshole behavior.
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"Everybody does it" doesn't mean you're not an asshole if you do too. And "partnered" isn't the magic word biz types and influencers think it is.
I'm surprised the charger network lets them get away with this. It's terrible for their customers, who are likely, and correct, to blame the network. It sounds like a loophole that somebody's going to close after they get enough complaints and having a few extra chargers on your app isn't the flex it was in the early days.
It also sounds like clear price advertising
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It's normal for companies to upcharge for nonmembers, yes. For example, stores and gas stations offer lower prices for people with loyalty cards, like 5% or 10% maybe. But not by 50x.
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It boggles my mind that you are defending this practice.
An "emergency" is not a reason to price gouge. In Houston where I live, gas stations often try to price gouge during hurricanes, when supplies are scarce, and people will pay anything. City and county regulators go after these stations. They do not take this behavior lightly.
If DHL wants their charger to be for DHL use, they should require a DHL employee badge to operate the charger, rather than charge extremely high rates to others.
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The dealer explicitly said the charger was intended for their use and the high prices are to try and prevent members of the public from blocking it from the employees.
Except they didn't say it explicitly enough for the general public. Put a big, visible sign with the price and then I'll agree.
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Except they didn't say it explicitly enough for the general public. Put a big, visible sign with the price and then I'll agree.
Except they did. It's literally on the giant screen of the charger that the person needed to interact with. Go look at the video in the fucking summary. Stevie fucking wonder should have been able to see this before starting their charging session, and the app lists the fees as well.
Re: News Flash (Score:2)
No one said it was out of the ordinary, it would be unusual if they weren't pieces of shit.
"The dealer explicitly said the charger was intended for their use and the high prices are to try and prevent members of the public from blocking it from the employees"
Yes, and that make them a piece of shit.
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I wish I could speak as confidentially incorrect as you. The price was specifically set by the dealership in the contract to have EVGo build the charger. But don't take my word for it. Read TFA where they said they specifically set the high public price with EVGo, and why. And also note that a significant portion of the person's charge was related to a $5/min fee set by ... the dealership for the use of their parking lot.
But, BEVs are a really great idea!
If you're being sincere I'm with you. If you're going for sarcastic I'm going to call y
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Owner should be forced to wear a plaid jacket, cheesy mustache, slick-backed dyed hair, and smoke a smelly cigar so customers know who they are up against.
Chargers for the customers and employees (Score:5, Insightful)
Car dealership ran by piece of shit.
No. A business has every right to put an EV charger outside for THEIR customers. For example a restaurant or a store. An employer putting up chargers for its employees.
However such a charger should be plainly identified as such with its signage, that it is for customers or employees not the public at large. Costco gas pumps need to see a Costco membership before pumping. EV chargers could do something similar to restrict to customers or employees.
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However such a charger should be plainly identified as such with its signage
I honestly don't know how the guy started his charging station without seeing the fees on the screen. They were very plainly indicated at $5 / kWh and $5 / minute.
Re: Chargers for the customers and employees (Score:2)
It was a rental, the driver probably knows nothing about electricity prices. I don't own an EV, I have no idea what is expensive for a KWh of electricity.
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"A business has every right to put an EV charger outside for THEIR customers. "
A business has no obligation to employ a contractor that lists the service for public use that they do not want to offer for public use. They knew the terms that EVgo offered and could have declined their offer.
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a) I made no such assumption.
b) The existence of such a pricing scheme is irrelevant. It still would not *oblige* the dealership to contract with them rather than some other business. The easiest way to not offer something to the public is to not enter into a contract that offers it to the public.
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Car dealership ran by piece of shit.
No. A business has every right to put an EV charger outside for THEIR customers. For example a restaurant or a store. An employer putting up chargers for its employees. However such a charger should be plainly identified as such with its signage, that it is for customers or employees not the public at large. Costco gas pumps need to see a Costco membership before pumping. EV chargers could do something similar to restrict to customers or employees.
They are pieces of shit. If they want a private charger, they should install their own private charger like I did and manage it themselves like I do. They want a public charger installed, maintained, managed and listed by a public charger company but want to keep the public out. They want all the benefits of someone else installing and taking care of the charger but none of the responsibility that comes with it. This absolutely makes them pieces of shit. As I said in an earlier post, this might have be
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An EV infrastructure company that installs and maintains a charger is likely to charge more for its services if the client company wants to keep it private. The "roaming agreement" allows the client to cover costs for changing prices of electricity tariffs and make a profit, not just to gouge the wrong sort of customers. This is a clear case of the dealership being assholes.
No. This is a clear case of (1) a poorly labeled charging station. The differential pricing for customers and the public should have been clear. Although it does seem the prices to be charged are displayed in advance. I would agree that there should also be clear signage for inattentive drivers. (2) Chargers with such differential pricing should be clearly indicated in the whatever maps or listings the charging company provides. Or maybe they should display the public prices.
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We are not talking reasonably higher. $5 per kWh plus a $5 connection fee per minute meets the definition of gouging. Electricity is a fungible commodity. Their electrons are no different from Tesla's, Ionna's, or Walmart's. There are tons of public chargers for comparison of reasonableness. It's fine if they want to set a price differential for their business customers, but simply gouging the rest of the public is (generally) illegal.
Go ope
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Go back and reread the legal definition of price gouging.
When I referred to a public price, and a discounted price for customers and employees, I did not support gouging. Actually I specifically said " it should not be gouging".
Your assumption that I supported the price charged in the case of the article is erroneous. I have never support the pricing in this particular case. What I have supported is that a company or employer can have EV chargers that are for the benefit of the customers and employees, and the public in cases of emergency.
Re:News Flash (Score:5, Informative)
A tip I picked up is that it's cheap to charge up an EV at campsites
There are so many caveats to that idea:
1. Most campground owners don't want you drawing 32A for hours. Their wiring infrastructure was designed with assumption it would only see the intermittent spikes in usage typical of an RV.
2. An EVSE plugged into a NEMA 14-50 outlet maxes out at 32A. Even with a car with a smaller battery pack (such as the Chevy Bolt in TFS) is going to be charging for hours depending on how much juice you're trying to add. You may very well end up spending the night sleeping in the car.
3. Public L2 chargers are a thing (usually found at hotels, shopping centers, and parking garages) if you really don't mind the slow charging speeds. A lot of them are cheap or sometimes even free.
4. DCFC is expensive, but generally still not as expensive as paying a campground fee. Just get an adapter if your car doesn't already support NACS, and go to the nearest Tesla Supercharger that is open to non-Tesla EVs (most of them are at this point). You won't have to worry about sketchy dealerships and their price gouging chargers.
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Never owned an RV, then?
The RV parks provide several - 15/20A outlets (110V) are basic trailers. 30A outlets (240V) are standard for RVs, and 50A for land yachts. The AC units alone typically draw 10A each constantly, plus all the other electrical loads. You get an RV using the 50A socket and you can count on it using 30
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There's no shortage of stories on Reddit from people who have melted their NEMA 14-50 outlets at home. RV parks that won't let you charge aren't entirely being overly paranoid - their outlets are exposed to weather, dirt, and abuse. Everything is fine until someone comes along and draws 7,680 watts through it for hours on end. No RV comes close to that, unless you've built a mobile data center.
Also, the NEMA TT-30 frequently found in RV parks is a 120v outlet, not 240v. It also presents a rather interes
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Great, I just discovered an urgent need for a 'TLDR' moderation option.
Thank you...
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The non-Tesla surcharge isn't really that bad and I don't recall it ever pushing the rates beyond what EA tends to charge in the same area. It only makes financial sense to subscribe if you have a non-Tesla EV and do a lot of DCFC charging.
I've also found it to be the case (at least here in Florida) that the Tesla Superchargers tend to be located in areas with better amenities. EA and their ilk seem to be laboring under the delusion that everybody just wants to sit in some empty parking lot behind a hotel
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Shocking not shocking (Score:5, Insightful)
If the dealership wanted to discourage public, non-customer use, they could post the fees and ward off those who would not pay $5 per minute PLUS kw charges. But, I suspect, this is just sharp practice, gouge them when they are not looking.
And why do I want to stick with hybrids?
Re: Shocking not shocking (Score:2)
There's probably some sort of a price break they're getting for listing it public. Typically dealership using forms of fraud though.
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And why do I want to stick with hybrids?
If you did own an EV, you'd probably just do the bulk of your charging at home. That's what most of us do.
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While I'm sure there are at least some people who have use cases where L2 charging at home is too slow, the idea is that it will generally give you a full charge while you sleep. Now if you're some mutant who can get by just fine on 4 hours of sleep and then immediately leave your house, yeah, an EV probably isn't for you.
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If you're an average person, you can often get by with L1 charging.
The average BEV will get between 3-5 miles per hour on L1 alone. If you charge 10 hours overnight (come home, wash, eat, sleep, wake up, morning routine - that's at least 10 hours), it means you'll get around 30-50 miles of range. A commute is typically around 20 miles round trip, so ad
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What I was implying is that for the majority of EV owners, this sort of situation (extremely overpriced DCFC) is the exception not the rule. Typical use involves arriving at home, plugging in, and by morning the car's good to go. Yeah, for apartments without charging infrastructure and for use as rental vehicles (as the article demonstrates), a traditional ICE or hybrid car would be less hassle.
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And why do I want to stick with hybrids?
Because 100% of petrol station owners are a paragon of virtue and no one has ever been caught price gouging consumers at a pump?
If the dealership wanted to discourage public, non-customer use, they could post the fees and ward off those who would not pay $5 per minute PLUS kw charges.
The fee was listed up front on the screen of the charger. Additionally the EVGo app the person used to find the charger also lists the fee of the charger. There were multiple warnings here to avoid this cost.
The guy basically said in news article he just didn't look and blindly assumed what the price will be. He also said about the same thing for gas, "Going to a gas station and ex
Re: Shocking not shocking (Score:2)
It's kinda dumb. I'd never buy from a dealer who did that. And word spreads.
They're not just asshats, they're stupid.
Was not driver's dealer (Score:2)
It's kinda dumb. I'd never buy from a dealer who did that..
I don't think that was the driver's dealership. My dealership gives cards to buyers that lets them have free car washes, tire inflation checks, etc. That card could also authorize the dealer's EV charger. Much like Costco gas pumps need to see a membership card.
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That's a nice piece of speculative fiction from someone who doesn't even own an EV.
The service department at car dealers certainly do a lot of scummy things to jack up a repair bill, but sticking you with a huge fee for recharging your EV isn't one of them. The dealers have a means of activating these chargers for their own use, which does not trigger any billing. These chargers are primarily there so the dealer can keep the vehicles on their lot charged up enough for test drives, and to fully charge a ve
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How many timeshares do you "own"?
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How many timeshares do you "own"?
I've actually never taken the dealership up on their gracious offer of letting me charge for free. (It was just something they'd mentioned when I bought the car.) Mostly because they're fairly close to where I live and I'd rather pay my utility rates to charge at home than be stuck at a car dealership for an hour.
Haven't done the free swag for sitting through a timeshare presentation thing, either.
Forced to provide chargers? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm thinking these are dealerships that are forced to carry EVs and have chargers by the manufacturers as part of their dealership agreement. So they jack up the rates, block the chargers, etc. to discourage use then tell the manufacturers "See? They don't sell and the charger isn't used so let us out of the EV requirement."
This is a solved problem ... (Score:2)
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In this case, it looks like the dealer pays a company called ChargePoint for the charger, and ChargePoint has an agreement with EVgo to list the chargers they provide. The dealership seems to be stuck with that arrangement, so they charge a prohibitive rate to keep strangers from tying up their charger.
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No it doesn't. It remains a public charger with fees listed. It's not being an arsehole to provide emergency power to those in need from an otherwise private infrastructure. In fact it is the exact opposite. The charger has fees listed not only on the screen, but also in the app. When you use an app to look for a charger, the capabilities and fees are shown.
It is completely possible to lock down chargers so they don't work with credit cards or with certain apps. Does blocking you when you're in need make me
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No it doesn't.
Yes it does. Just like they would be assholes if they had a single company gas pump and charged more than triple the going rate to the public instead of not allowing them at all to use it at all.
It's not being an arsehole to provide emergency power to those in need
If actually an emergency, they're definitely gaping assholes. Also way better solutions exist.
Does blocking you when you're in need make me less of an arsehole?
Yes. If they aren't actually intended for public use then don't allow the public to use them at all and don't list them as such. Put them in a gated employee only lot, lock them down with special cards, or some other bullsh
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Watch the video. It's completely baffling how the person didn't see the fees on the screen when starting the charging session. It was a very dissuading number on the screen before the charging session started, but Stevie Wonder here wasn't paying attention.
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Dealerships have gas pumps too; they need them so that customers can drive away. Well, they need them so customers can do test drives and so that they can move cars around the lot.
If you buy a car, don't have them gas it up, they overcharge. The pump, and presumably the charger, are there for the dealership's use and they will overcharge anyone else. I worked at one.
Posted prices are important-but not exactly easy (Score:2)
Posting a price is easy if it's part of your business. Gas stations can update their prices and are incentivized to keep the prices up to date.
A hotel that has a couple supercharging stations may not even be running the charging stations in their parking lot.
My local hospital just put in a couple chargers. No posted signs up but their is a QR code that goes to a link to the current prices. So I guess that's something.
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they can easily require the LCD display on the charger to list the prices and have them updated via software. like the system already knows the price since it is charging you a total, it's not just dispensing unmetered energy.
all gas pumps I've seen in the past 2 decades at least, in the US, have this feature.
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This charger DID have that. In fact if you look at the video in TFA you can clearly see the charger lists $5/kWh + $5/min of connection right on the screen of the charger. Additionally the EVGo app will have listed these prices too.
Usury (Score:2)
Don't pay.
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This is a nothing burger. (Score:5, Informative)
The guy admits he saw the price on the screen and charged anyway.
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Yep, stupid is what stupid does.
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Disclosing that you are price gouging, doesn't make price gouging OK.
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That said... he's may not be completely stupid, he did say it was a rental car.
You'd assume though that most people would have at least some familiarity with what a kWh of electricity costs from their utility bills. Also, the Bolt does display how many kWh you've consumed while driving, on the infotainment screen. So, t's not that difficult to get a rough idea of how much power it's going to take to charge it back up.
Of course, I've personally encountered more than a few people at DCFC stations who were utterly baffled by the fact that downloading the requisite app required their Goo
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You'd assume though that most people would have at least some familiarity with what a kWh of electricity costs from their utility bills. Also, the Bolt does display how many kWh you've consumed while driving, on the infotainment screen. So, t's not that difficult to get a rough idea of how much power it's going to take to charge it back up.
That's just more of a defense for this guy, if anything. I would expect a markup over the going rates, but their $5/kWh is over 20x higher.
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I would expect a markup over the going rates, but their $5/kWh is over 20x higher.
Clearly he's never bought a bottle of water at Disney World.
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Actually, the real problem with my analogy is that bottled water is already insanely expensive compared to city tap water. Taking a bath in bottled water from Disney would cost over a grand. To make things worse, it's literally just Dasani (which also ironically is just filtered tap water).
The difference, of course, between that and the extremely overpriced EV charging is that there's no practical way to buy that many water bottles and carry them out of the park. That does sound like an idea for a MrBeas
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You'd assume though that most people would have at least some familiarity with what a kWh of electricity costs from their utility bills.
No that wasn't my point. My point was that a first time EV driver may assume that kWh of electricity cost is not dissimilar from their utility bills. This may have contributed to him not reading the screen (which did clearly say $5/kWh and $5/min). Certainly when I got my first EV I was quite surprised at the variance you can experience in public charger pricing.
Of course, I've personally encountered more than a few people at DCFC stations who were utterly baffled by the fact that downloading the requisite app required their Google/Apple account password from their phone's app store.
Honestly this was a pet peeve of mine. There's no reason for this to be so complicated. Fortunately in Europe there's a legal requirement that all
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That said... he's may not be completely stupid, he did say it was a rental car. I can imagine this could catch someone out if its their first time charging an EV. You don't get this kind of price variance on gasoline.
And gasoline is close to five bucks a gallon. So if he assumed a kilowatt hour is about the same as a gallon of gas (around here, we know it isn't), he might have expected to get charged for about ten of them.
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And gasoline is close to five bucks a gallon. So if he assumed a kilowatt hour is about the same as a gallon of gas (around here, we know it isn't), he might have expected to get charged for about ten of them.
Which is why he might've wanted to look on the infotainment to see how much juice the car burned through before making that assumption. Granted, that's something they should tell people about when they rent an EV, but after hearing about my brother's own experience renting a Ford Mustang EV about a year ago*, I wouldn't be surprised if the rental company just said "This thing uses electricity instead of gas. Good luck!" and sent him on his way.
* My brother ended up renting a car that literally refused to
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Granted, that's something they should tell people about when they rent an EV, but after hearing about my brother's own experience renting a Ford Mustang EV about a year ago*, I wouldn't be surprised if the rental company just said "This thing uses electricity instead of gas. Good luck!" and sent him on his way.
* My brother ended up renting a car that literally refused to connect to any DCFC station he tried it at. I guess that's still better than being billed $418.
I had a similar experience renting an EV in 2024. They gave it to me only about 35% charged. Now, the thing about renting a car is you only rent one because you need to drive the damn thing. So handing one to a customer with less than half its range is a dick move. And if you're renting a car, you're probably not a local and have no idea where the "best" places to charge are. I was lucky, I was able to mash buttons on the infotainment and find a charger en route. Yeah, one charger (rural Colorado). Fortunat
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If I was a bit more paranoid, I'd say someone encouraged the rental firms to push EVs specifically to highlight their deficiencies and bias people against buying one for themselves.
That was basically the effect it had on my brother. I ate a lot of crow on that one, because I'd lent him a NACS adapter and pointed out the apps he'd want to have set up on his phone before he rented the car. It all ended up being for naught when the car refused to charge at several different chargers. He even tried going to a Ford dealership and they said the rental company was going to need to have it serviced. Ultimately, the rental company swapped him over to an ICE car.
He's pretty much put off fro
murky (Score:2)
It's a car dealership (Score:2)
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Stadiums charge more like $4 for a hot dog, not $20. And even with that, your scale is off. This dealership was charging not 10x the normal price, but 50x. That's not OK, even if you do disclose that you are price gouging.
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No it's more like complaining about $20 hot dogs from a corporate canteen while the employees get it for free.
You don't expect a street vendor on Yelp to be in a random business's parking lot. But in any case the charger listed the fee on the screen, it's up to you to walk away when the fee is displayed.
Except nearly every public charger is in some random business's parking lot. You are doubling down on excusing these dickheads for gouging the public.
Public is not discouraged (Score:2)
1) People are discouraged by SEEING the high price. hiding the high price is not 'discouraging'.
2) Hiding intentionally high prices is called GOUGING.
3) The best way to 'discourage' use it to not list it as public.
These people are scammers. You can charge high prices if you want but you have to prominently display them. Anything else makes you a gouging scam artist.
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There was nothing "hidden" about this price. Not only was the price clearly displayed on the charging screen (example of it in the video on the news site), but the EVGo app displays the fees as well when you select the charger on your phone.
EVil (Score:2)
EV-illan
Exploitat-EV
Decept-EV
EV-asive
Driving around looking for plugpoints? Your chances of encountering misspelt EVil are endless!
Plug-in hybrids are the best option, followed by hybrids, EVs (short trips) and finally gas vehicles.
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Here is the charge details on Plugshare. (Score:3)
https://www.plugshare.com/loca... [plugshare.com]
Perhaps the username "sri" is Stanley Kpenkan
It's a Chargepoint charger, and the pricing is clear. Thinking that the display was a mistake was in fact a huge mistake.
A few bad apples killing billions of $$$ in ads (Score:2)
All the ads and articles about filling up electric cars for pennies will be erased when a few events like this happens and scares prospective EV purchasers from getting a $400+ fill-up when they aren't paying attention. Someone better quickly get laws forcing them to display pricing or the industry will be set back a decade.
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Point out how most daily driving is within 100 miles of where people call home, and even an abused cheap used BEV will make up for those miles on a single overnight charge from a common 120 VAC outlet.
Your math is off by quite a bit. A standard 15A 120V outlet will give you 1.5 kWh of charging per hour, minus some conversion losses. It's roughly about 5 miles of range per hour (depending on the efficiency of the EV). It's generally enough for people who have an average commute, but you're not doing 100 miles per day with only L1 charging available.
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Probably the most common L1 charging globally is 230V 10A. 120V is pretty rare, only the USA and parts of Japan that I know of but I am sure there is others. Likewise that 100 mile figure is well above the average daily commute globally. L1 charging is fine for the vast majority of commuters.
I would agree that 100 miles daily from a 15A 120V outlet would be an issue. It might get closer if you factor in charging to 100% in the weekend on a BEV with a large battery.
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Here's the wiki, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] which has a map. Basically from northern S. America north is 120 or so (Mexico is 120 and 127 for example) with lots of minor variation, 110-127 and 220-240 depending on location with a few weird ones.
I didn't realize there was such variation
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L1 chargers operate at 110V.
L2 chargers operate at 220V
If you're in a place that uses North American power, you have L1 charging. If you're in the rest of the world, you have L2.
A 220V 10A outlet is still considered an
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L1 charging is using a regular domestic power socket. In the USA that will be 110V but in most other countries that will be 220 to 240V. In my case my level 1 charger can do 10A at 230V.
L2 charging is using fixed wired EVSE. In the USA that is typically two phase 220V at up to 80A and in the rest of the world that is single phase 220 to 240V at up to 32A or 3 phase 415V at up to 16A. In my case both my level 2 chargers are 32A at 230V.
For completeness L3 is DC fast charging.
T
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The information ecosystem for EVs probably needs a look too. If this guy was using the EVgo app and it wasn't showing him the chargers at the Exxon station literally 2 miles down the road from that dealership, then he was at a disadvantage. Plugshare covers pretty much every network, and this dealer's charger has ratings and reviews commensurate to its fees. So the warning signs were there, he just wasn't exposed to them.
That might not even have been his fault given that he was in a rented Chevy Bolt; eithe
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There's actually a few gas stations I've seen with a similar sort of "fuck you" pricing, too. I'm not sure what the logic is behind charging over a dollar more per gallon than your competitors a mile or so down the street, but they do it anyway.
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Check for a nearby airport rental return. The rental agencies require a fill up within x distance or they charge even more.
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That's arguably the bigger issue: an EV driver shouldn't have to discover after a 40-minute session that a charger listed as public carries punitive pricing.
A reasonable thought. You should run WSDOT. We have a tolled tunnel where the toll rate isn't displayed until after you exit it. I've always wanted to ask DOT officials if this means that, upon seeing the rates, I'm allowed to back up (through the tunnel) and seek an alternate route should I be unwilling to pay.
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A reasonable thought. You should run WSDOT. We have a tolled tunnel where the toll rate isn't displayed until after you exit it. I've always wanted to ask DOT officials if this means that, upon seeing the rates, I'm allowed to back up (through the tunnel) and seek an alternate route should I be unwilling to pay.
That sucks.
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If the dealer doesn't want random EV drivers using it, the network should be able to mark it as private or customer-only. A $5/kWh + $5/minute "deterrent" is a pretty lousy substitute for accurate access information.
Being public is the price to be paid for having EVGO install and maintain an EV charger. They want all the benefits of someone else taking care of it but not the responsibilities that come along.
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Being public is the price to be paid for having EVGO install and maintain an EV charger. They want all the benefits of someone else taking care of it but not the responsibilities that come along.
It's not an EVGo charger. It's a Chargepoint charger that the car owner accessed via a roaming agreement in the EVGo app. This is made clear in TFA.
But I wonder if the dealership is received some kind of credit for having a "public" charger, while discouraging the public from actually using it via the outrageous pricing.
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It's not an EVGo charger. It's a Chargepoint charger that the car owner accessed via a roaming agreement in the EVGo app. This is made clear in TFA.
But I wonder if the dealership is received some kind of credit for having a "public" charger, while discouraging the public from actually using it via the outrageous pricing.
Thanks for the correction. Chargepoint and AmpUp specifically use the business model of setting up public L2 chargers and taking a cut of the revenue while letting the "owner" set the price. I avoid them because there are too many that appear to be set up be opportunistic grifters. I had never heard of anything as egregious as this one though.
I have never been to any EVGO branded stations and there are none close to me. It sounds like they are more DCFC than L2. They look more like a legitimate comp