Free Public charging station

[JeffAnd]

Will the 8000 plus public charging stations remain free of charge? I can already answer this question as a no. I did some checking of some of the public charging station to see if they were charging fee’s. And unfortunately some were already charging fee of up to $2.99 an hour. Most stations that were charging a fee were in the $1.00 to $2.00 per hour. The majority stations don’t charge a fee right now. Some don’t charge you by the hour, but instead by the Kilo Watt Hour. These rates seemed to range from 13 to 49 cents per Kwh. In some states it seems that vast majority of the charging stations are free. But in the Chicago area it seems about 40 to 50% of the charging stations are charging a fee. Why are some operators charging a fee and others are not? Some of the charging stations are installed by local governments, and are funded by tax dollars. But as government budgets get tighter they will start to look for sources revenue and will end up charging a fee. Other charging stations are installed by local businesses, and are used as a way to attract customers. These are most likely will remain free, as long as it keeps attracting customers. Now stations that are installed by secondary party are installed as profit making business. These stations will only be very temporally free because their investors are expecting to make money on the business. The reason they are not charging a fee is because they want to get people use to using the charging station first. The down side of charging a high fee is that it will discourage it use. So charging station fees need to be in align with be able attract customers and still make a reasonable profit. Now while I was checking to see if a station was charging a fee I did notice that the rate of usage is up. I would say compared to a year ago usage was less than 1%. Now I would say charging station day time usage rate is in the 2 to 6% range. The reason for the variation is that some states have more public charging station than electric vehicles. The increasing number of public charging stations being used is a good indication of growing number of electric vehicles on the road.


I would like to encourage EV owners to comment on their use of public charging stations.

[Focused]

One thing I know for sure if that as more EV's hit the road most if not all charging stations will charge a fee. I noticed some malls don't charge, might be their way of making you go in the mall to buy something while your EV charges.

[JeffAnd]

For the retailer half the battle is getting the customer to the store. The other half is to get the customer to buy. A charging station is just one more tool a retailer can use to help improve sales.
I personally have used a public charging station only twice. Once was to get FFE home from the dealership that was 93 miles away. The second time was at the end of a 100 mile range test.

[yakers]

In some cases I would be happy to pay a reasonable price to have an opportunity to charge up. If I can recharge on the road it effectively doubles the range of the car. Without knowing I can charge on the road I am nervous about going too far.

[GKalkas]

" And unfortunately some were already charging fee of up to $2.99 an hour. Most stations that were charging a fee were in the $1.00 to $2.00 per hour"

When it gets to be more than what I'm paying for gas, I start to feel like I'm being gouged.

But, looking at it another way... we are at the beginning of a new phase of automobile propulsion...electricity. Providing charge stations is a new business, with higher start-up costs. And because of the variables, in this start up period, they don't know exactly how much to charge and still make a profit.

A time that I would pay that much if not more, is for example, on turnpikes and rest areas between cities. Because, if I could count on a charging station every 50 or so miles, that changes the dynamic of pure electric vehicles. And, perhaps we could get by on 1 car?

[yakers]

Looks like if you live in Canada you could, at least theoretically, get across the whole country from Atlantic to Pacific:
http://www.greencarreports.com/news/...lets-it-happen.

But under optimal conditions if I could go 100 miles on a charge (probably less) and it takes 4 hours to recharge (hopefully less, fast charging). Then it would be a formidible project to go across the country, maybe 200 miles in a day with a lot of time for reading and the like. Guess my FFE will alwways be a city car.

[GKalkas]

Originally Posted by yakers

Looks like if you live in Canada you could, at least theoretically, get across the whole country from Atlantic to Pacific:
http://www.greencarreports.com/news/...lets-it-happen.

Yakers, thanks for the link. I'm glad to see that Canada has picked up on my idea so quickly

[Charles]

hmm that is interesting.... now people are moving to hybrid cars because they are cheap to use... you don't need to spent a lots of money on expensive fuel if you have to run the car under 50kmph.. Now this thing is very good to promote the sale of electric cars...