alozzy wrote:@GRA
Not sure how my comments are irrelevant, I think they get right to the heart of the matter.
You said:
... I'm saying that while I'm in firm agreement that Vancouver should switch from providing free charging to making people pay for it, the odds of them doing so while pricing it profitably are minimal. After all, if it were possible to make public charging profitable there would be no need for governments to provide it, but we have 6.5 years of proof showing that it isn't, so barring some major technological breakthrough ...
I raised the topic of government complicity with big oil's agenda because it's the major reason that for profit charging vendors are struggling to make money. If gasoline was $6.27 per gallon, those same vendors could make decent margins and still undercut gas prices.
What's likely to happen is that the big oil companies will roll out EV charging infrastructure, like Shell has already announced they'll do:
https://electrek.co/2017/02/01/shell-el ... -stations/They'll use their political influence to muscle in, with sweetheart deals and government (our) money, to build out nation-wide EV charging infrastructure, then stick it to the consumer by raising gas prices while also setting EV charging at a price point that earns them huge profits. Oligarchies hate competition...
They're irrelevant because the facts aren't important, only the perception is, and the public, who's had this info for at least the past quarter century, simply doesn't care. Nor, with the current administration and congress, is anything going to change. As to energy companies 'muscling in,' sure they will if they think it's worth doing, and the more providers the better. They're energy companies, and they'll sell whatever they can. After all, it was a division of Shell who was one of the first companies to mass produce commercial PV modules, and both ARCO and BP also had such divisions. And Exxon commercialized the very first Lithium battery back in the '70s. They got out of those businesses because the volume and profit margins were too small for them to bother, not because they were trying to hold up deployment (not that that isn't or hasn't been a motivation for them at various times).
And no company can raise charging rates too high, as long as public utilities sell electricity for home use. Even if public utility regulators were to suffer regulatory capture, there's enough PV around now, and battery prices are low enough, that it will just drive people completely off-grid.