A couple of years back, I took a look at the EV charging market around me, and concluded that it was just a mess.
(Tesla excluded. This is really a rant about the non-Tesla car charging market in my area.)
Now FF to the present, and … it’s still a mess.
My only solid conclusion is that it’s worth signing up with a charger network or two. Not out of brand loyalty, or for the nominal discount. I’ve signed up with my local charging provider (EVGO) just to avoid having to use the totally-exposed-to-the-elements frequently malfunctioning outdoor credit card readers that seem to be standard on EV charging stations.
The lesson being that even if all the high-voltage stuff works right, if the charger can’t read your credit card, you’re still out of luck.
The bottom line is that the electrical energy that costs less than $4 at home, cost about $16 at my local EVGO fast charger.
OTOH, an hour at the fast-charger accomplished what would have taken about 20 hours of charging at home.
DC fast-charging is bad for your car’s battery, anyway. The fact that it’s expensive is just further validation of charging at home whenever possible.
Probably better to know how it works before I need to use it.
I guess knowing-how-to-fast-charge fits in with flashlights and other preparedness gear. If there comes a time when you need to use a fast-charger for your car, it’s probably best to know how it works, already, rather than wait to figure it out on-the-fly, when you really need it.
And so, even though I’m a 120V at-home charger 100% of the time, I got a notion to fast-charge my Chevy Bolt. Just to make sure I could do the entire transaction.
I settled on the nice EVGO station next to the Safeway where I get my groceries.
Probably better to know what it costs, before I buy it.
Turns out, I have to drive to the EVGO car charger in order to have any idea what it costs to charge there.
Shouldn’t the economics/transaction part of this be relatively drama-free?
I mean, it’s not like the technical side of fast-charging is without issues. Things can go awry as you try to fast charge EV A with Charger B under Conditions C. If nothing else, the temperature of the battery matters. So there’s plenty enough to worry about, there.
Anyway, I’m not at the point of finding the technical issues. Because, stubbornly, I want to know how much the damned thing costs. Roughly. Before I pay. And at this point, I’m betting the answer is, hey, we’ll bill you the right amount, don’t worry.
What’s your over/under bet on the transaction?
Here’s your chance to play The Price is Right, on the spot purchase of 25 KWH of electricity, using an EVGO fast-charger for my slow-charging Bolt, today, at my local EVGO station.
I’m guessing this little preparedness exercise is going to cost me like $30.
That, as a one-off customer in a slow-charging car. Buying from a public charger with (so far) absolute lack of transparency about their rates. Just from the smell of all that, I’m guessing my $4 at-home slow charge will cost me $30.
It’s now 1 PM on a sunny Saturday, and I’m off to fast-charge.
Don’t judge me. Maybe this is how economists have fun.
Useless additional details follow.
Gentlemen may cry Price, Price — but there is no price.
I admit to being an economist. And cheap.
Despite these handicaps, I don’t think I’m asking too much, of any vendor, of any good or service, that I get to see what the price is, before I agree to pay it.
Today’s challenge: Can I determine how much it will cost to charge my Chevy Bolt at the local EVGO station, before I sign up for anything?
(Spoiler: No. That’s how it looks at the moment.)
Or, the more generalized version, how much (information and money) do I have to fork over and agree to, before they’ll tell me their rates?
Or, not to spoil the punch line, the even-more-generalized version, being, will they ever tell me their rates?
My point being that the lack of any price transparency, for what is a pretty simple deliverable, is really irksome.
There are plentiful technical issues, that I’ll try to get to some, at some point.
But, after nearly half a hour of digging, I finally came across a footnote in a section on a page, referred by a map, linked by the EVGO help section, which I only found because Google stumbled across it for me.
Pricing for EVgo DC fast charging is determined by charger location, your plan, and, for per-minute locations, the maximum power level your vehicle can accept. Real-time pricing is available in the app or at the charger.
Completely true, yet completely unhelpful.
The at-home benchmark
The at-home cost of this would be about $4, for 25 KWH plus charging losses.
I need like half-a-battery’s worth of charge. Call it 25 KWH, for this Bolt. That 25 KWH recharge costs me well under $4 at my current rate of 12 cents or so, per KWH (Virginia Power). Tossing on an additional 10% tax for energy losses in the charger and battery.
Given that the at-home cost is under $4, I just want a rough idea of how much it’ll cost to use this EVGO station.
I know it’ll cost more. I realize it’s complicated, e.g., they’ll charge for the time occupied, and the electricity delivered, the former to ensure you don’t just park, walk away, and hog the spot. So there’s a charging formula somewhere, not a simple flat rate per KWH.
But so far, I have been able to find anything remotely like pricing or cost information, anywhere. Not even in comments (e.g., on the PlugShare app.)
So, off to I go. To see if I can figure out their rates, if nothing else. Worst comes to worst, I can sign up for their app on my phone, then see what they feel like charging me.
Like a normal American.
To be continued.
Results: Success
Sure enough, the process was balky. At least this first time.
It took a few tries to get the charger a) to talk to the car, and b) to take my credit card. (I now see a big reason to sign up with EVGO is that they’ll have my credit card info and I can skip the @#$#W! exposed outdoor credit card readers.
Near as I can tell, the credit card readers on these machines are an afterthought. Having run into this issue multiple times now, on EV chargers, and almost never on gas pumps, I have to wonder who thought that having a card reader totally exposed to the elements (e.g., no roof) was a good idea.
The total bill was about half what I expected it to cost, above. But that works out to $0.56/kwh, or about 4.5x as expensive as charging at home. Charging the car 20x faster than I can from a 120V wall outlet.
None of the experience was hugely out of line with what I expected, except that the car was slow to charge. (These chargers are capable of putting out 50 KW, but my car would only charge at 25 KW. At that rate, a full charge would take a little over two hours).
I won’t be fast-charging again until I need to.
At that $0.56/KWH average rate, the cost of electricity was about twice as expensive as gasoline would have been, to get me the same number of miles, in an efficient hybrid car. I went through that calculation in:
