Electrify America Changing to Station-Specific Pricing and Resuming Idle Fees

[Logal727]

“…and resume charging for idle fees at most nationwide charging stations.”

Thank God. Now maybe the “charge to 100% and leave the car for another hour” VW ID4 crowd will get the hint.

they can still unplug and leave the car, idle fees only keep honest people honest

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[eleven24]

This is EA preparing to have competition from Tesla Superchargers, and adjusting their pricing per station as Tesla does. Would not be at all surprised to see EA pricing being lower at stations where a Supercharger is close by and higher where one isn't

 

[RickMachE]

This is EA preparing to have competition from Tesla Superchargers, and adjusting their pricing per station as Tesla does. Would not be at all surprised to see EA pricing being lower at stations where a Supercharger is close by and higher where one isn't

Bingo

 

[Mach-Lee]

Yay, I'm excited for idle fees! That should give those cheap bastards that park for hours some pause. I hate free charging and all the crappy people drama it attracts.

 

[Mach Eight Three]

they can still unplug and leave the car, idle fees only keep honest people honest

Should be revised to “just plug the goddamn thing back in!”

 

[RickMachE]

EA will be rolling out a new >10 min idle penalty device soon:

 

[Iceslicer39]

The reality is that unless you only have one utility in your state then there are multiple rates that EA has to pay for its electricity. It looks like EA is moving more to actual cost versus a blended cost approach. I wonder if they will also charge more based on the time of day?

The way I read it is that EA's cost to you will reflect the local provider's cost to them. Costs within a state can vary. (As I've posted a lot), I'm in CA and get my electricity from a local community owned provider. If I lived a quarter mile away (as the crow flies) I'd be serviced by PG&E and would pay a lot more for electricity. I would think that an EA station in my location would cost less then one getting electricity from PG&E.

I think both of you have it figured out. WI for example has 24 coops, 3 major investor owned utilities, 6? Minor investor owned, and probably 75 municipal power companies, each with different rates.
Each utility looks at the level of risk of a type of service will have load on at the the peak times. The utility that I am familiar with could see a very significant bill, $10,000 + if just 1 150kw charger was in use during the 10-15 peak hours in a year. That risk gets built into rates, as well as incentives or penalties for time of use. Night time at home charging will likely never be on peak. DC fast chargers create more risk of on peak issues, with limited actual kWh sales to spread the costs over. There’s a lot more to it, but i’ m not surprised to see the announcement, trying to build an average and constant rate with so many variables is extremely difficult.

Kenny

 

[kennethjk]

Yay, I'm excited for idle fees! That should give those cheap bastards that park for hours some pause. I hate free charging and all the crappy people drama it attracts.

There should be idle fees for car that don’t plug in while parking at a DCFC. Someone should come up a way for that to happen

 

[MMEmax]

Just finished a 1000-mile trip and experienced the new structure. YIKES!. Old structure was price per minute (adjusted for how much your energy your car can take per minute) to a price per KWh. I experienced both on my trip - at EA an average rate of 0.44/minute and 0.48/KWh. GET READY - The cost under the new structure was ROUGHLY DOUBLE to add 50% OF Battery - going from 15% to 65% SOC. Some states have to approve the change to the charging method so thats why they say state by state roll out. Under the new structure i found better pricing at gas stations that now have chargers. They were at $/KWh too but at $0.40/KwH.

 

[RickMachE]

Just finished a 1000-mile trip and experienced the new structure. YIKES!. Old structure was price per minute (adjusted for how much your energy your car can take per minute) to a price per KWh. I experienced both on my trip - at EA an average rate of 0.44/minute and 0.48/KWh. GET READY - The cost under the new structure was ROUGHLY DOUBLE to add 50% OF Battery - going from 15% to 65% SOC. Some states have to approve the change to the charging method so thats why they say state by state roll out. Under the new structure i found better pricing at gas stations that now have chargers. They were at $/KWh too but at $0.40/KwH.

New pricing hasn't started yet... Some states are per minute, some are per kilowatt.

 

[SteveEngineer]

I hope they fix their software before charging idle fees.

This is a known bug. After you are done charging open the EA app and log yourself out. Then log back in. All will be good again after you do that. Otherwise the app thinks that you are spending the rest of your life at the original charger! One would think that EA would have released an updated version of their buggy app by now …

charged in Auburn AL a couple days ago. A couple hours later I arrived in Chipley FL and tried to charge but was unable to initiate a new charging session because EA thought I was still plugged into the station in Auburn.

I had to call and was put on hold so I just used plug and charge so I could start the charge session. In the end I was on the phone for about 15 minutes before the call was answered and they ended the hung session.

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