Ok, so the thread on charger locations got me looking for spots around my various kids houses. My one son is up in the Cincinnati area and we often go to the Walmart near their house which just happens to have an NRG EVgo charger. So a quick look at their site, and they allow you to sign up for a $1.50 per hour level 2 charger plan (according to them, best for casual users). So, the prime can do a level 2 charge in a little over 2 hours (lets say 2 for ease of math). That then costs me $3 for a top-up on my prime. That $3 gives me about 30 miles in a good flat area (which, in this case, it mostly is... and to make the math easier again). So that's about $.10 per mile. Local gas is around $2 per gallon, and let's say I can go 60 miles on that gallon (flat, round the math), that costs me roughly 3 cents per mile. So charging at anything even approaching the cost of the NRG network is insane. You can also look at it from NRG's standpoint... $3 for 6.6 KWh of energy, or roughly $.45 per KWh (discounting losses, etc.). I live in NJ. I can get electric for less than $.08 per KWh if I want to sign a 2 year fixed rate contract or $.097 from JCP&L (jersey central power and light) on a variable basis. So that means that the markup for electric power is roughly 500%. That's pretty steep. I can only surmise that they don't expect to make back their money on their stations any time soon.
You got a bad sample. There are dozens of chargers around the Cincinnati area. Some are free, some are very expensive. Charging at home is almost always cheaper than charging out in public, unless you are at one of the free chargers. Many hotels in the area also have chargers, ranging from a 120 outlet up to DC fast chargers. Please don't take the most expensive outlier and generalize it.
Those pay chargers arent really for plug inhybrids since obviously the gas side is by far cheaper and is an available option. Those are really for pure electrics that must charge or get stuck. You think that’s expensive? Most pay chargers around me cost about $5 to get 25 miles lol.
Many jurisdictions only allow the power company to charge for kWh directly. So car chargers have to use another metric, usually time, to charge a customer by, and they have to base that on the car having a faster onboard charger. A BEV will likely charge at twice the rate your Prime does. Then time is a consideration. An AC Level 2 charger is not going to be able to service as many cars as a gas pump can during a day. The gas station can afford lower margins on fuel by making it up in having more customers. Essentially, a charger bills a parking fee for the time charging.
Pay charging by the hour is incredibly expensive for the Prime because of its slow 16A charger. Some L2 chargers are also 208V instead of 240V. 208V at 15.1A plus wire losses could mean a charge rate of about 3kW. To match the approximately 5 cents per mile of gas in the Prime an hour at such at charger would have to cost less than 60 cents. Aside from the free ones, I've never seen one this cheap.
The screwy bureaucratic rule reference here says that if you sell electricity by the kWh, then you are an electric utility, and subject to all the regulations pertaining thereto . Some states, like California, have specifically exempted car charging from this rule.
That explains a big part of it. I forgot about the slow charger in the Prime. As others have stated, public charging for the Prime is really not needed. Here in MN, we did have a similar rule about charging by the kWh. That was changed a couple years ago. But even with that, the general rule that public charging costs more than charging at home is still true. Many places in our area are still free, but even the ones that charge aren't too crazy. Mainly I view it as a convenience charge. Of course, I also never use them
$2 in Kentucky. Jersey was $2.39 when I filled up for my last trip out here. Of course stupid laws would complicate things further with charge cost. I would certainly expect things to cost more than at home (you do, after all, have to amortize the cost of the charger (something that home people don't think about and don't add into their charge cost)).
i wonder what they around here, since residential cost can be as high as 24 cents/kwh. local story today, power company forgot to send a bill to a guy in an 800 square foot business condo for 10 years. when they discovered it, they thought an estimate of $30,000. would be a nice surprise.
