fiver for a 20 minute fast charge strikes the right balance

Pincher

BBC Radio 4 You and Yours today did an item on this today.

Ecotricity Chief Executive Dale Vince was on the program.

It's now 30 minute charge for £6, not £5 for 20 minutes,
changed due to feedback from pure EV users, who need 30 minutes to get to 80%.

One thing I can't quite believe is Mitsubishi sold 20,000 Outlander PHEVs in the first quarter of this year!

Well, I bought it for the £5,000 subsidy. Who knew there are 20,000 other great minds that think alike. :T
Or is that cheapskates?

EricMears

Pincher wrote: »

It's now 30 minute charge for £6, not £5 for 20 minutes, changed due to feedback from pure EV users, who need 30 minutes to get to 80%.

As usual, they didn't ask me ! My BEV would get to 100% in 20mins - IF the CCS unit was working.

And BTW I've still had no reply to my email from last week.

JustToComment

Is a 50p per KW charge, the maximum mileage you can add in 30 minutes is 60 miles. This is because the pumps slow down as the battery gets full.

This charging to payment method is a rip off for many reasons and will kill electric cars due to the petrol being cheaper.

Q. What if I am only stopping for 10 minutes? A. They charge the same price of £6.00

So in 10 minutes I get 20 miles for £6 RIP OFF - EV car is not a ferrari or to end sports model.
So in 10 minutes I get 39 miles for £6 normal cars much cheaper on regular fuel
So in 30 minutes I get 52 miles for £6 Hybrid cars much cheaper on regular fuel
Why not the same miles for each 10 minutes? Because the more you put in the slower it must go to not damage the batteries.

Nobody will buy electric cars now.

Somebody at Ecotricity really is a clueless wast of a salary. No clue on what they have done or how it will impact the EV world.

People will now leave their cars connected for the full 30 minutes. So good buy Ev drivers on the motorway.

They have not replied to my emails either, I did phone and they said> "We know the price is more expensive then petrol, this is to discourage drivers staying on the pumps.

LOL. This is what I would expect, a silly response from stupid staff reading off a screen, with lack of knowledge and foresight. what is 1 and 1, ohh let me think.... 2 or 11

EricMears

JustToComment wrote: »

Is a 50p per KW charge, the maximum mileage you can add in 30 minutes is 60 miles. This is because the pumps slow down as the battery gets full.

This charging to payment method is a rip off for many reasons and will kill electric cars due to the petrol being cheaper.

Actually, on the couple of occasions when I found a working CCS I managed to take battery almost up to 100% in under 20mins (and only stopped as I though I had enough to get home). On a fully charged battery I am promised 95 miles - though wouldn't be confident of getting more than 80.

Given the limited capacity of my battery, they seem to want to charge me at least 40p per kWh which would result in me paying 10p per mile. Not only is that a lot more than the 1.5ppm I usually get, it's also slightly worse than using my Volvo diesel on the motorway !

this is to discourage drivers staying on the pumps

It seems to have worked - I've certainly been discouraged

zeupater

Hi

Have I missed the point here ? .... Ecotricity are going to start charging what they obviously consider as being 'free-energy-sucking leaches' in the form of customers of other energy suppliers for 'leaching' but their own customers will still access the service for free? .... as a business plan, what's the matter with that ? ... is it any different to not understanding why the neighbours get a little upset when you plug an EV into their supply overnight ? ...

Simple answer for anyone moaning .... it's simple economics - work out the value of the 'free' charging, add it to the total cost of domestic energy purchases, compare that to the alternatives and make a sourcing decision ... it's not hard !

Anyone making a decision to purchase an EV should at least understand the capabilities and limitations, so I, having made the decision, can't really understand why there's so much negative reaction to the change. If you've made the wrong decision for a daily use vehicle then that's down to being either naive or completely stupid, but for those who understand EVs & occasionally need to top-up in order to get home on long journeys, then why not source appropriately or pay for the service provided, after-all, if the original EV purchase decision was sound it should be a rare occurrence and if not, remember to buy a PHEV next time ...

As for destroying the future of the EV market ... well, :idea::think: ... :wall::doh:... (say no more!)

HTH
Z

EricMears

zeupater wrote: »

Hi

Have I missed the point here ? .... Ecotricity are going to start charging what they obviously consider as being 'free-energy-sucking leaches' in the form of customers of other energy suppliers for 'leaching' but their own customers will still access the service for free? .... as a business plan, what's the matter with that ? ... is it any different to not understanding why the neighbours get a little upset when you plug an EV into their supply overnight ? ...

Simple answer for anyone moaning .... it's simple economics - work out the value of the 'free' charging, add it to the total cost of domestic energy purchases, compare that to the alternatives and make a sourcing decision ... it's not hard !

Anyone making a decision to purchase an EV should at least understand the capabilities and limitations, so I, having made the decision, can't really understand why there's so much negative reaction to the change. If you've made the wrong decision for a daily use vehicle then that's down to being either naive or completely stupid, but for those who understand EVs & occasionally need to top-up in order to get home on long journeys, then why not source appropriately or pay for the service provided, after-all, if the original EV purchase decision was sound it should be a rare occurrence and if not, remember to buy a PHEV next time ...

As for destroying the future of the EV market ... well, :idea::think: ... :wall::doh:... (say no more!)

HTH
Z

Not exactly 'missed the point' but there are things about that deal that make it very unattractive.

For instance, the email was suggesting that by switching your home supply to them you'd continue to get free EV top-ups. But tucked away in T&Cs (and inaccessible to anyone who relies on using their site by the recommended smart app) it turns out that they have a 'fair use policy' limiting customers to one free session a week - so at £6 a session the free facility is worth a maximum of only £312 per year whereas most people who've posted figures on SpeakEV seem to think that they'd be paying Ecotricity at least £300 extra if they bought electricity from them. That aspect doesn't bother me since I can't ever envisage using one of their charge stations more than a few times a year and not expecting even to need that many.

By charging a flat rate of £6 for all you can use in half an hour, they'd effectively be charging me around 40p /kWh giving running costs of 10p/mile (actually even more than my Volvo diesel costs to run on a motorway). I guess that's really good news for me since I only ever intended to use the e-Up! on local trips and won't now have to think how much extra I'm paying when I take the Volvo down the motorway

At first sight, one might think Ecotricity have made a huge investment in installing their chargers around the country and now deserve to be rewarded. However, I understand most of their machines were donated by manufacturers &/or supported by government grants so perhaps they're not so 'deserving' ?

Definitely not 'destroying' my sector of the EV market but there are quite a few people who were lured into buying an EV on economic grounds and now find that it's not quite so cheap to run after all.

Martyn1981

I guess this is similar to buying petrol at the services. If you really need it, then it's worth it and you're glad it's there, but otherwise try to avoid as much as possible.

Mart.

michaels

I have tried to explain that people need to look at the opportunity cost of provding the infrastructure - a petrol pump might be used for about 5 mionutes per vehicle in which time it would earn £1 in profit so an EV 'pump' would also need to earn £1 profit per five minutes of use so £4 for the 20 minutes - add on £1 for the leccy and you get £5 for 20 minutes.

Fairness would then dictate that continued usage would cost 25p/minute but I guess they think they can make more profit by charging in big chunks....

EricMears

Martyn1981 wrote: »

I guess this is similar to buying petrol at the services. If you really need it, then it's worth it and you're glad it's there, but otherwise try to avoid as much as possible.

Mart.

That indeed is how I viewed it. However, Ecotricity have sucked in customers on the promise that although they intended to start charging eventually, the facility would be free for everyone for the time being but always free to those who used them to supply electricity at home

almillar

Something like a lawn mower engine, with a five litre tank. Pull the chord, charge for five minutes. £200?

You grossly underestimate the amount of energy required to provide movement, and/or grossly overestimate how much electric a lawnmower engine would be able to produce - Eric Mears explains it very well in post #9

Is a 50p per KW charge, the maximum mileage you can add in 30 minutes is 60 miles. This is because the pumps slow down as the battery gets full.

That assertion is for one vehicle. They all charge differently. I assume you're talking about a Leaf on 50kW DC.

The get out, of course, is if you're an Ecotricity Electric customer, you get free charging, AND a £40 per year discount for owning an EV. For me in NI, I can't take advantage of that as they don't operate over here. They have 1 'pump' which is at IKEA Belfast, and it'll go rusty through lack of use...

Just for info, I've got a 22kW charging Renault Zoe - some are 43kW. All Zoes have a 22kWh battery. So for me, ignoring slowdown at around 95% charge, I'd get 11kW, 'half a tank' in 30 minutes. That's 55p per kW, which is too much, for me and my car. It'll be a similar story for lots of hybrids too.
They're charging for time, rather than per kW, as time is the more valuable asset here. but the change they've made means you can max out at TWO, not THREE, users, per pump, per hour. Nobody is going to leave the pump for you now, they'll want to get their money's worth. And if there's a queue, it'll move more slowly too.