In Colorado I have seen one rural location in Buena Vista (with a time of use 4pm-10 pm) price of over $1.30/kWh. The rest of the day it’s just $0.56/kWh. There is an EV Connect site just outside of Telluride that is $0.75/kWh but it is an expensive resort area with no other DC fast charging options for close to 50 miles. On the positive side there are still plenty locations with a price of only $0.30/kWh.
Hey Steve - 64/kWh is quite an EYE POPPER! A quick survey of the EA branded / app listed stations along the NYS Thruway in west and central NY found: -Evolve NY sponsored, up from $0.38/kWh a few weeks ago to $0.40 EA-only branded stations, generally $0.48/kWh EXCEPT Waterloo Outlet Mall, that apparently count itself as an awesome destination @. $0.56/kWh even though it is ~ 4-5 miles off the Thruway. So the NYS sponsored stations hold out as more affordable, but the upward surge is happening here too.
Thanks for these, Dave. I think EVolve NY controls the price of their locations through the arrangement with Electrify Commercial, so the nudge up to $0.40/kWh seems reasonable... more like covering costs than anything more egregious. $0.56/kWh for Waterloo is an interesting choice, given that the Applegreen Electric chargers at the much more convenient Junius Ponds Thruway plaza are only a few cents more... the outlets did have a really nice chap selling Mediterranean food last time I swang by, though, so that might be worth the extra distance!
I moved from MA to PA this year but all last winter and this spring Saugus was fully operational maybe 5% of the time and often all but one station was offline. Hilarious that they're charging a premium at that location.
There are several EA locations in my home state of New Mexico with the highest $0.64/kWh pricing. Before it just used to be Wagon Mound (I-25), but now Grants and Santa Rosa on the I-40 corridor got a price increase to 64 cents. A majority of the other stations in my state also got bumped to the next highest tier of pricing. Luckily with a Pass+ subscription, the effective price is only 48 cents/kWh after the 25% discount. Now with that highest pricing tier, the breakeven point for the $7/month subscription is only 44 kWh.
Thanks for flagging these. I'm monitoring ahead of holiday travel and will update the list of most expensive stations with these locations. The rationale for getting on Pass+ at least hasn't changed much... if a driver is heading on a trip and charging more than once, it will pay for itself.
@@plugandplayEV When EA increased Pass+ to $7 from $4/month, there were a lot of people saying it wasn't worth it anymore for smaller battery EVs or for those not doing more than one full charge. The price hikes have proven otherwise. Thankfully EA doesn't appear to be doing time of use pricing, unlike EVgo. So rates won't change by the time of day. EA was experimenting with changing some stations (Lincoln and Lexington) in Nebraska to the more fair kWh billing. It seems to only have been a test as now it's all back to per minute pricing. The cheapest per kWh pricing is now in Evanston, WY and Wall, SD at $0.40/kWh. That would be only $0.30/kWh with Pass+. Evanston is also the only place in Wyoming with per kWh pricing.
For sure. Nothing new in as yet but I've heard AUTEL fast chargers will be installed at the original EVgo locations. Unfortunately, it sounds like they will still be 50kW hardware but better than nothing.
📈 Has an EA station near you seen a price hike? Let us know here so that others can take note! 🚨 📍 Confirmed at $0.64/kWh so far: 📍 Burlington Mall (Burlington, MA) Green Acres Mall (Valley Stream, NY) Walmart (Benson, AZ) Shopcore One Colorado (Pasadena, CA) Walmart (Longmont, CO) Walmart (Idaho Falls, ID) Walmart (Missoula, MT) Flying J Town Pump (Butte, MT) Dell Mercantile (Dell, MT) Smith Haven Mall (Lake Grove, NY) Walmart (Elko, NV) Walmart (Fernley, NV) Safeway (Lovelock, NV) Colt Casino (Battle Mountain, NV) Jefferson Park (Mt. Pleasant, TX)
California has certainly spoken on EV adoption, but there are other markets that are more sensitive and gas prices across much of the country are down. Price like $0.64/kWh might be justifiable in some locations, but you just know this will be used in one of those FUD article: "It costs $XXX to fill up a Hummer EV and go just XXX miles". You and I know that the Hummer EV is the least representative model of them all, but being able to say that's the price on the country's largest public charging network lends such nonsense a little more weight.
We are seeing these high prices out West - check out Smelterville, ID, Missoula, MT, Butte, MT all $.64/kWh. Last spring these charging stations were $.36/kWh. How can they justify this kind of increase?
Electricity prices have certainly risen, as with many things, but these hikes are out of step with inflation at the higher end. $0.64/kWh clearly makes these locations among the most expensive, without a corresponding improvement in service (reliability is either static or partially improved, while the build out of new stations has slowed to a crawl).
As Eric has long pointed out, DCFC is a more of a service than a commodity. People are willing to pay a premium for a maximally fast & reliable charge in a nice location with all the appropriate service amenities (restrooms, refreshments, trash bins, etc). EA is quickly losing their hegemony in public fast charging so they’d better improve on all fronts and do it fast, especially at $0.60+ per kWh.
I think therein lies the rub: price increases at what amounts to the most expensive in the current market, without any clear justification. Clearly free plans will keep folks coming back for a while, but competing on price was about all EA had after nationwide coverage. Introduce similarly priced, more dependable competition at those cross country locations and there's almost nothing to recommend at that point.
Are you on the Pass+ plan? That reduces it to $0.36/kWh, but the only places I've seen it lower would be the remaining states that use per minute pricing and the effective rate comes out cheaper with fast charging EVs.
Interesting, thanks for highlighting. There are certainly some weird site hosts that think they can charge insane prices at one-off locations, but those are quickly flagged and avoided. If a widely used network like EA starts pumping prices up on unsuspecting customers with no clear rhyme or pattern, we start to have a problem.
I'm a contrarian at heart... although I admit to having no clue about no-shave November! I'll keep the charge reports coming to offset the hairlessness :-) Thanks for watching!
Thanks for the intel. I found one other $0.64/kWh site in Pasadena but only the three so far. I think many just haven't been updated yet, which is why the pricing remains the same, including idle fees still set to 0.
This illustrates why easy availability of home charging is very important to making mass EV adoption affordable. Paying high prices once a year, when out on a trip, is one thing. Paying it for all of your daily driving because your landlord or HOA won't allow you to install a charger at home is something else, entirely. If $0.64/kWh is going to become the norm, that would mean that my $2,000 home charger installation has already paid for itself after just two years of EV ownership.
Absolutely, which is why L2 installations serving multi-unit dwellings and owners without a driveway become so important. We need to offer a variety of charging options, including affordable destination and streetside charging.
I may be fancifully speculating, but it seems a trend is to increase the cost of DCFC. I think it speaks to the transition away from early adopters who enjoyed a quiet subsidy for their charging, to mass adoption where profits are required. With the number of new people funneling into the system, operating below profit is simply no longer realistic. This in a strange sort of way is a good thing, as it speaks to the mass adoption phase occurring. Thx for the vid. I enjoyed watching.
We did talk about EA needing to plan for the future and profitability on a previous livestream... this could certainly be a step on the road to that. The frustrating contrast will be for those paying $0.64/kWh while charging next to a model that is still on a complimentary charging plan. Obviously, everyone makes their own purchase decisions and has the option to buy into these plans or not, but it will bite more if they bought when a state like MA offered $0.12/minute EA charging, only to watch prices shift up to 5x higher within a year.
The per kwh pricing is better for my 12 Leaf. Per minute was not workable on a Gen 1 car. But, per kwh can get pricey for larger battery cars. As I was watching your video around 6:30p, I opened EA app and all chargers near Boston were full. Burlington had 1 plug avail. Anywhere in SE Mass is always tight too. If I'm on a road trip, I'm more concerned about availability. Once the free charging winds down, I'm hoping most charge at home , where it's cheaper, and leave the DC fast to those who need it. Road tripping w our CCS car is a gamble at every stop. I don't have that issue w NACS. But, even that's going to get challenging as magic dock might clog those up too. I fear capacity will never surpass demand.
That "1 available" at the older EA sites is deceptive, as it's almost always the lonely L2 post that is available. It equates to another "Full" in terms of DCFC and I see the same as you, unless I check it very early AM. As we head to the Midwest, demand falls away and stations are a bit less congested. It's only a matter of time, though, as the EV trends on the coasts tend to work their way inwards. I do think the wealth of new networks and installations will ease the strain over the next year or two, but beyond that we're going to have much more complexity in aligning infrastructure with incentives that encourage people to charge at the times and in the places that are most efficient for their individual circumstances.
That figures to about 0.16 cents per mile at the 3.9 rate. . In many parts of the country a hybrid can give at least equal that, or beat it by several cents per mile.
I pay $0.07kwh to charge at home overnight. I can also charge at work for a couple cents more. I can’t remember the last time I used a DCFC. Hybrid can’t even come close to touching that.
The best hybrids were already pretty close to an EV charged solely on DCFC without a membership plan, so I'm not sure the cost per mile is being compared on that basis. But it's always worth noting, thanks. Home charging is far more prevalent for local use, as others have highlighted, and Electrify America on its own won't command that price. People will just go to a competitor, unless they're in an area where EA is the only game in town. That has been the case until now, but 2024 will add far more DC fast chargers to the map and EA will have to earn the business, not just hike prices and hope it sticks.
In normal states (as opposed to the ones who don't want anyone using gasoline at all) our 4th gen Prius generally costs about 5 cents/mile, which is less than our Bolt on DC chargers. The one that really hurt was the EVgo in Delaware, Ohio which was 71 cents/kWh.
With pass its still .56/kwh from .36/kwh. I used 6343 kwh over 6 months costed me $2283, Projected next 6 months will cost me $3550, and i made change to evgo , with early bird price in my area it will cost me $1458 at .23/kwh for six months with normal at $1712 at .27 /kwh and at peak at $1933 at .31/kwh . Which is way cheaper now. $1712 is almost half. Move to evgo its not bad. Just little slow charger . 100 kwh peaks at 73 kwh , Electrifying america 150 kwh peaks at 130 kwh i have seen .
Nearby Tesla station is $1/minute... I'd have no problem with that, as long as there's at least five minutes to zip back to the car once the notification is received.
Idle fees are meant to discourage people from incurring them and punish those who do…they need to be painful for those who choose to ignore the rules/basic charging etiquette. $1/min should be the minimum after 10 minutes grace period. With that said, being that this is EA, idle fees should not apply to session faults unless the car sits there absurdly long after the fault (like 30+ minutes)
@@plugandplayEVTesla sends you plenty of alerts once you're getting close so you are kept well aware of getting back on time. And now they give a warning of higher rates after 80% if the site is very close to full and others are heading there. That incentivizes newbies to stop charging at 80% if the site is full unless they truly need it. It really helps with congestion. I don't know why the others don't learn from them.
Good point, the prices could end up being much more dynamic than we've seen in the past in order to address competition. Unfortunately, that could also lead to price gouging in areas where EA is still the only game in town for some users. Hopefully that won't be the case but large location-based disparities in charging prices would be the first step on the road to that scenario.
The TX I10 stretch from El Paso to San Antonio used to be super cheap and time based. Now they are all showing $.56/kwh. (With a subscription)Wont be making that road trip electric anymore. My F350 gas hog will be the same price and faster…
Thanks for the regional perspective. I expect this will be a common approach for multi-vehicle households as DCFC costs rise and until competitors arrive to influence prices in the opposite direction. If EA (or another) is the only option in a particular location, they can more or less charge what they want until an alternative arrives.
These idle fees are too little and too late to save EA. They should have learned from Tesla and done it years ago like their customers asked. Way too many I.D4 drivers walking away and leaving their cars charging and sitting at 100% for hours. And these prices are the latest proofs of Tesla sinking them. Especially with the V4 stalls being installed now once the chargers are upgraded as well to 800 volts, with their 99.98% reliability, who will take a chance on charging on EA's crappy and unreliable ABB, Delta, and Signet(with their surge) chargers? Only as a last resort. For a comparison, we charged at a Supercharger in Scottsdale, Arizona a couple of weeks back for .13 cents per kilowatts after 10pm. It was .21 cents before 12pm. While others were .24 cents after 7pm. While EA's were all .48 cents with the pass. Oh, and gas was around $4.50 per gallon there, so as you can imagine, there were Teslas (and other EVs) everywhere.
I like the lower off-peak charging prices... seems like a good way to incentivize price-focused drivers to visit when it's quieter. Tesla's prices spiked for a while there, to the point that it wasn't uncommon to California drivers visiting EA locations with the adapter. The situation seems to have flipped back now, though, and even Magic Dock prices are reasonable in comparison to non-plan Electrify America or peak EVgo. V4 Superchargers will need to roll out quickly, though, and not just the facelift ones that still use V3 cabinets. As an IONIQ 5 driver, I'm not going to pay a premium for half the power and awkwardly short cables. Competition is hotting up with so many new charging providers... let battle commence!
@@plugandplayEV Besides Tesla, the one that I think will succeed, due to their experience in Europe (particularly in Norway) is Circle-K. They are currently testing Alpitronic 400kw chargers. In fact, they have a couple of them live for everyone to use at their South Carolina research campus. They have dual cables and share power brilliantly. If you are going to be anywhere nearby, please stop by and test your Ioniq 5. The other great hope is Kempower, which is now finally in North America. ABB, Delta, and even Signet (due to their surge on high voltage EVs) have worn out their welcome. Their poor reputation due to their notorious unreliability will sink them all. I also think ChargePoint and EVgo will both go bust. Both their models were doomed to fail. ChargePoint for selling their chargers to small outlets who then fail keep them up, and EVgo's use of unreliable chargers and failure to repair them in a timely manner were a recipe for disaster. Hopefully, their equipment and assets will be taken over by a larger provider.
I can't see EA surviving honestly. They have the worst reputation in charging currently with a bunch more about to enter the market. This seems like a take-the-money-and-run situation. Fatter checks for execs while the company is still here. I've chosen a 50kw EV Go station with autocharge in the past instead of EA just to avoid the potential headache.
I know several CCS EV owners who, when they need to charge away from home, they don’t even think about anything but EA. I guess they’re taking advantage of the ignorance of their customers. Typical business practice. That said, their pricing isn’t that far off from any other DCFC near me, including one particular provider that is just nearly as expensive, 50kw max and somehow even less reliable than EA. Personally, I’m ok with paying more *as long as* there is a significant improvement in the experience to go along with the increased price. Charging more for the same _terrible_ charging experience they’ve been providing is completely unacceptable. The idle fees need to be higher too. At least $1/min after a reasonable grace period, and they need to apply to everyone, including those with free charging plans. Those with free charging plans are, in my experience, among the worst offenders for camping at stations
It's not just ignorance. Historically, EA has tended to have more stalls per site than the competition, which translates into better reliability because, if one is broken or occupied, you can go to another. Even though the reliability of EA may not be all that great on a per-stall basis, it is very rare to see all 4 or 6 stalls at an EA site go down at once. A site that has only one charger is much more likely to be entirely broken or occupied. It's also not like the reliability of the EA's competitors is any better than EA, anyway. Tesla has started to change this paradigm with the opening of magic docks that have way larger capacity than EA sites, but they still only exist in limited areas; where they don't exist, EA usually offers the highest capacity and most redundancy. And, of course, the magic docks don't have the same level of reliability as an actual Tesla car plugging in natively. Plus, once you already have the EA app on your phone, using EA saves time by not having to download another app. And, historically, once you buy Pass+, EA is cheaper than the competition as well (although, if the video is accurate, that may be starting to change).
Or spur price competition. If EA is expensive and new stations are being activated in the area, drivers will simply go to the more affordable alternaitive. Or charge at home for lower prices, as most EV owners opt for.
it will soon cost more to own and charge EVs than gas cars, due to the infrastructure requirements, both publicly and at home. The idea that EVs will save money will dissipate
This is only one side of the coin. The other is low-cost charging at home or work, free charging from manufacturer deals and ad-supported networks, and time-of-use charging discounts from utilities to incentivize off-peak power use. Gas prices are significantly more volatile, as we know. What's coming down now could easily spike during the next geopolitical shift. At least with electricity we have multi-faceted domestic production to spread the risk and limit price volatility.
07:03 starts your answer of 0.64 cents per kWh. That’s way more than a few gallons of of gas if your BEV is not efficient. If your BEV does 3 miles/kWh, that’s $29 bucks to go 135 miles. Ouch. A car getting 30 mpg is much more efficient at that cost per kWh.
