The future of EV charging?

[AndyXF]

Herbs said:

Some already do this - £4 for the first hour and £12 per hour after.

Both slow and rapid have their place. Slow where you will be leaving your car for a period of time (train stations, office car parks etc) and rapid in coffee shops/petrol stations.

The starbucks near me have just had them fitted by Instavolt and they are charging 35p per kilowatt hour which is reasonable especially for a 50Kw charger. By the time you have had a coffee you are charged and ready to go.

That's pricey if you consider an EV will do about 3 miles / kWh i.e. 12p/mile. That's the equivalent of about 54mpg @ £1.25/litre. Achievable by quite a lot of petrol / diesel vehicles currently.

[kambites]

AndyXF said:

That's pricey if you consider an EV will do about 3 miles / kWh i.e. 12p/mile. That's the equivalent of about 54mpg @ £1.25/litre. Achievable by quite a lot of petrol / diesel vehicles currently.

Yes but the idea isn't that anyone uses Starbucks chargers for the majority of their charging. If you pay 10p/kwh or less (Octopus's EV tariff actually has an off-peak rate of 5p/kwh) for 80% of your charging and 35p/kwh for 20% it's going to work out considerably cheaper than petrol.

Edited by kambites on Tuesday 27th August 14:17

[Evanivitch]

kambites said:

AndyXF said:

That's pricey if you consider an EV will do about 3 miles / kWh i.e. 12p/mile. That's the equivalent of about 54mpg @ £1.25/litre. Achievable by quite a lot of petrol / diesel vehicles currently.

Yes but the idea isn't that anyone uses Starbucks chargers for the majority of their charging. If you pay 10p/kwh for 80% of your charging and 35p/kwh for 20% it's going to work out considerably cheaper than petrol.

In an inner-city environment where I suspect it'll be useful for those without home charging (200 miles whilst you coffe and socialise), it's still expensive but will probably be cheaper than running a car in a ULEZ.

[kambites]

If you go to Costa every day I think you'll have more of a financial problem with your coffee expenses than your EV charging.

In fact you'd have thought it would be worth places like Costa subsidising their EV charging points in order to bring in people to buy their coffee... it should be perfectly possible to get the machine to charge at a lesser rate if you scan a receipt before you leave?

[Herbs]

kambites said:

AndyXF said:

That's pricey if you consider an EV will do about 3 miles / kWh i.e. 12p/mile. That's the equivalent of about 54mpg @ £1.25/litre. Achievable by quite a lot of petrol / diesel vehicles currently.

Yes but the idea isn't that anyone uses Starbucks chargers for the majority of their charging. If you pay 10p/kwh for 80% of your charging and 35p/kwh for 20% it's going to work out considerably cheaper than petrol.

Exactly that.

I'm coming up a year with mine now (15,000 miles) and i've used public chargers twice. I've been paying 13.8p per kW at home (£35 per month) as opposed to £400+ a month on diesel).

I've just signed up to Octopus and my car charging is dropping down to 5p per kW which increases the difference dramatically. Public charging is a last resort when doing big journeys - even when using them its 54MPG (think what teh equivilant cost would be motorway petrol compared to normal Petrol stations

Also - mine is averaging 4.6miles per kW, not 3

[kambites]

Of course the people who drive them in cities are going to tend to average significant more miles per kwh than those who use them on faster roads.

At 4.6miles/kwh that's roughly price comparable to 83mpg. I don't think many ICE powered cars will achieve 83mpg around town.

Edited by kambites on Tuesday 27th August 14:29

[TuonoPants]

RobDickinson said:

You have an ev driver and passengers there for 20-30 min you sell them coffee/food and whatever else, plenty of profit on that

I know of a couple of major oil companies (or energy companies as they now seem to be re-branding themselves) that are installing guest WiFi in all of their petrol stations worldwide alongside a program to install EV charging points. Their rational is that customers will expect WiFi while they charge their car and drink their latte etc.

[Frimley111R]

TuonoPants said:

RobDickinson said:

You have an ev driver and passengers there for 20-30 min you sell them coffee/food and whatever else, plenty of profit on that

I know of a couple of major oil companies (or energy companies as they now seem to be re-branding themselves) that are installing guest WiFi in all of their petrol stations worldwide alongside a program to install EV charging points. Their rational is that customers will expect WiFi while they charge their car and drink their latte etc.

They need to because if I am waiting 30 mins to charge I want something to do. I'd rather go a shopping centre than a petrol station.