GoE3, how does this make any sense?

[Desertstraw]

"GoE3 is working with multiple partners to install charging stations and benefit local communities along interstate highways I-40, I-10, I-20 and I-70 with a station located every 50-75 miles. For Level 3 chargers, the costs will be $12.50 for a full charge and take 10 to 45 minutes, depending on how depleted the battery is. The company will roll out the route of its first 50 planned locations by April 21 with the remaining 450 in the next 18-36 months. A complete route from Flagstaff to Tucson has been secured."

Unless my arithmetic is wrong, at $12.50 for 50 miles, this is 25 cents per mile, the cost of an SUV gas guzzler. How could they ever do enough business to justify the investment?

 

[TomT]

I don't know what area this is in since your signature does not so indicate, but at that price, I'd only use it in an emergency.

"GoE3 is working with multiple partners to install charging stations and benefit local communities along interstate highways I-40, I-10, I-20 and I-70 with a station located every 50-75 miles. For Level 3 chargers, the costs will be $12.50 for a full charge and take 10 to 45 minutes, depending on how depleted the battery is. The company will roll out the route of its first 50 planned locations by April 21 with the remaining 450 in the next 18-36 months. A complete route from Flagstaff to Tucson has been secured."

Unless my arithmetic is wrong, at $12.50 for 50 miles, this is 25 cents per mile, the cost of an SUV gas guzzler. How could they ever do enough business to justify the investment?

 

[EVDRIVER]

Places like this are better charging less and capturing the audience for sales of other things like food and advertising. Paying $12 for a full fast charge would make sense for occasional travel but not commuting of course. It's a bit early for them but a couple of these between SF and Tahoe would do well in time. $50 round trip or less rather than drive an SUV, sounds good. Not to mention it would not happen without L3. LA to SD a couple times a year? Makes sense. My guess is they could get revenue from advertisers if users take surveys, etc. There are many revenue and subsidy options. Watch a 15 min presentation, get free charging. If it were Mexico one would have 20 time shares by the time they made it to Cabo.

 

[coqui]

Sheesh! That's about 10 times the price of my home charger.

Unless my arithmetic is wrong, at $12.50 for 50 miles, this is 25 cents per mile, the cost of an SUV gas guzzler. How could they ever do enough business to justify the investment?

 

[garygid]

The same price ($12.50) if you only charge for 10 minutes as when charging for an hour?

 

[EricBayArea]

The same price ($12.50) if you only charge for 10 minutes as when charging for an hour?

That's what I don't like - same price for 10 minutes or 30 minutes. But with that being said...

I'd pay it as a convenience to drive my Leaf somewhere I normally couldn't on the weekends. For instance, I can't drive to Palo Alto (Bay Area) and back from where I live (Walnut Creek) - it's 104 all highway miles... not to mention any additional places I want to go once I'm in Palo Alto (without spending SIGNIFICANT time at an L2 somewhere). However, if I could QC in Palo Alto or around that area upon my arrival or before my departure, I could easily make it home once I'm done visiting my friends.

True, it costs me WAY less to charge my LEAF at home (off-peak, partial-peak or on-peak), however, my alternative is a 24mpg ICE that requires premium: (104mi / 24mpg) * $4.65/gal = $20.15... vs $0.75 (pre-charge at home) + 12.50qc = $13.25 for smooth and quite driving... I'd gladly take the LEAF if I could QC for $12.50.

 

[DaveEV]

I think a lot of you are missing the fact that there are a lot of costs that have to be recuperated on-top of the cost of electricity.

Let's say you charge at home for $0.10 / kWh. At a minimum, you've already paid $1000 for an EVSE and installation. You've probably paid somewhere between $1200-$2000. Let's assume it cost you $1500 for example.

Next question - how long do you expect to amortize the cost of the EVSE? As a business - you're going to have a hard time justifying the purchase for anything less than 3 years to break even given that it's quite possible you'll have some repair costs. But let's use that as a starting point.

Public charging stations will not have very high utilization rates. If you're lucky, you can keep it in use 6 hours a day, 365 days/year.

So $1500 / 3 (years) / 365 (days/year) / 6 (hours/day) = $0.23 / hour.

So $0.23/hour is the absolute best case scenario one might expect to break even on a L2 EVSE installation after 3 years. This is in addition to electricity - add $0.38/hour for a LEAF assuming $0.10/kWh so already you're looking at $0.51/hour.

Now consider that you're installing a DC QC station which currently costs around $50k minimum to install. Assuming the same scenario - you wish to break even in 3 years and it will be used 6 hours/day. Now we're looking at $7.61/hour just to break even on the install. Assume that the typical person plugs in for 30 minutes to charge - that's $4 + electricity and we're probably talking $6 minimum. Just to break even. And that's a best case scenario.

Now consider that the quick charge station is going to be used far less, electricity costs more (don't forget demand charges and people will tend to use these during peak times, not the middle of the night) and you want to make a decent profit...

All of a sudden $10 / QC seems quite fair.

At current levels of EV adoption, there's simply no easy way to make money. That's the primary reason there are very few DCQC stations except where companies have taken a large risk (Cracker Barrel, for example) and/or have a lot of government money to help make it happen. And even then - it's a very difficult business decision to make given the uncertainty of the market.

 

[smkettner]

Business pricing is rarely cost based but rather demand based.
If the retail pricing is too high there will be too few customers to sustain the business.
Currently I cannot imagine there are enough EVs rolling to make a go of it.
I hope they can hang on 3 to 5 years with minimal use.

I will wave to them as I go by in my 8 mpg RV.

 

[sirenbrian]

I agree with those saying this is a fair price. You're paying for being able to use expensive equipment in the middle of nowhere. Comparing it to how cheap your home electricity is -- well, that's not the same thing at all.

However, I think these facilities will quickly find a new business model based on advertising or offering services. After all, you now have a captive audience with nothing much to do for 10-30 minutes. You might make more money by renting space to food vendors, or video game rentals, or internet service instead of charging for the electricity. My guess is they'll keep lowering the price of a quick charge until they get a large enough flow of users, then sell the right to be physically near you and offer services/goods.

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

it is like any "pay per use" rate. it will be used only by the uninformed.

i am sure they will announce subscription pricing. "save up to 75%" (easy to do when your prices are reduced from "ridiculous")

this reminds me of my Disney trip. as we were driving thru Central CA at 1 am we stopped at the this place (only stop for a long stretch)

it was at least 5 miles off the freeway and it was just a little gas station convenience store. we were there about 10 minutes and in that time at least a dozen cars pulled in and out of this place which was no bigger than your standard 7-11 if you did not count the "feed and grain" section of the store which was closed at the that time of night.

gas was about $4.80 a gallon (we had a Prius filled up in Medford for $3.60) regular gas on the CA freeway was running about $3.80-90 or so.

everyone stopped to get gas except us. no one complained. it probably boiled down to buy it or walk. it was a very long walk to anything from where this station was located.

now, we ended up getting some junk food a few pops, etc. so we got away with only spending about $14 for $4 of food...not bad

 

[Luft]

"GoE3 is working with multiple partners to install charging stations and benefit local communities along interstate highways I-40, I-10, I-20 and I-70 with a station located every 50-75 miles. For Level 3 chargers, the costs will be $12.50 for a full charge and take 10 to 45 minutes, depending on how depleted the battery is. The company will roll out the route of its first 50 planned locations by April 21 with the remaining 450 in the next 18-36 months. A complete route from Flagstaff to Tucson has been secured."

Unless my arithmetic is wrong, at $12.50 for 50 miles, this is 25 cents per mile, the cost of an SUV gas guzzler. How could they ever do enough business to justify the investment?

I just have to shake my head. These people seem to think that everyone is going to throw buckets of money at them!

These stations will rarely get used and the greedy SOBs will go out of business. Sure, installing charging stations isn't cheap but neither is installing gas tanks and pumps.

I will be thumbing my nose at these stations as I drive by in my Prius.

 

[davewill]

... Unless my arithmetic is wrong, at $12.50 for 50 miles, this is 25 cents per mile, the cost of an SUV gas guzzler. How could they ever do enough business to justify the investment?

I just have to shake my head. These people seem to think that everyone is going to throw buckets of money at them!

These stations will rarely get used and the greedy SOBs will go out of business. Sure, installing charging stations isn't cheap but neither is installing gas tanks and pumps.

I will be thumbing my nose at these stations as I drive by in my Prius.

I just have to shake my head. Just how much use do you think these stations are going to get at ANY price? There's a substantial investment in putting them in, and if they can't be operated at a profit* within a reasonable period of time, the whole EV charging business is going to collapse.

* $12.50 per charge probably isn't enough to be profitable for a number of years, either.

 

[lpickup]

There's a substantial investment in putting them in, and if they can't be operated at a profit* within a reasonable period of time, the whole EV charging business is going to collapse.

* $12.50 per charge probably isn't enough to be profitable for a number of years, either.

Depends on if they are tapping into grant monies or not for the charging stations/installations. If those items are already paid for (or heavily subsidized) then it would be relatively easy to make a profit at that price point. But who knows. It's pretty sad when the company's web site contains almost NO information and you have to get information from an external source.

Speaking of which, here's an interesting tidbit from Arizona-based GoE3 to Become First Provider of Cross-Country Interstate-based Level 2 and Level 3 (which appears to be the original source of the quote in this post):

While metropolitan charging stations for electric vehicles already exist, many are Level Two 30 Amp. Those being planned by GoE3 will be Level Two, 70 Amp or higher, will be the most fully functional on the market, support all modern electric vehicles and will be the first to be installed on interstates, supporting long range travel. GoE3 will introduce the first installment of the total 500 charging stations planned in conjunction with a road rally and reality TV show being produced this summer.

So 70A L2 will WORK with all modern electric vehicles, but as we know just because it supports 70A doesn't mean there are any vehicles that will actually draw that much. The road rally/reality TV show mentioned is probably THIS which will feature the Ford Focus Electric.

Just to be clear, the $12.50 IS for what they are calling Level 3 charging.

Personally I suspect that the management doesn't really understand the technology or the market and is approaching this from the gas station paradigm.

 

[Luft]

... Unless my arithmetic is wrong, at $12.50 for 50 miles, this is 25 cents per mile, the cost of an SUV gas guzzler. How could they ever do enough business to justify the investment?

I just have to shake my head. These people seem to think that everyone is going to throw buckets of money at them!

These stations will rarely get used and the greedy SOBs will go out of business. Sure, installing charging stations isn't cheap but neither is installing gas tanks and pumps.

I will be thumbing my nose at these stations as I drive by in my Prius.

I just have to shake my head. Just how much use do you think these stations are going to get at ANY price? There's a substantial investment in putting them in, and if they can't be operated at a profit* within a reasonable period of time, the whole EV charging business is going to collapse.

* $12.50 per charge probably isn't enough to be profitable for a number of years, either.

Well then by that standard maybe they should charge $1500.00 per usage. I mean more is better right?

My point is that the way to ensure that they don't make a profit is to charge so much that EV drivers avoid using them. That would not only cause the charging business to collapse but make selling EVs very difficult. They are already more expensive than ICE vehicles and have a limited range. If you relegate them to the niche intercity transportation market Nissan will have a very hard sell. Making the cost of cross country travel in an EV greater than driving in a gas guzzling SUV will do just that.

BTW, have you read this post? http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=8290&start=110#p185130

 

[TonyWilliams]

I just have to shake my head. These people seem to think that everyone is going to throw buckets of money at them!

These stations will rarely get used and the greedy SOBs will go out of business. Sure, installing charging stations isn't cheap but neither is installing gas tanks and pumps.

I will be thumbing my nose at these stations as I drive by in my Prius.

You are the poster child for why many of the installed locations of DC fast chargers will fail.

Let me gues; you'll be happy to pay the wholesale rate of electricity from $50k - $100k of equipment, with $5000 per year insurance, demand charges of $25+ per kW, and in San Diego, what can be $1 per kWh for peak commercial energy.

Of course, that equipment needs somebody to fix and maintain it, etc.

Yep, you are it. Mr. Poster Child. Driving your Prius, so those rich DC charger guys will fail.

 

[TonyWilliams]

BTW, have you read this post? http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=8290&start=110#p185130

Therefore, in your mind, $2.50 is the "correct" price (and maybe still too high, I'm sure).

Good luck with that. All hail government handouts!!!!

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

the debate over the high cost of public charging would be quickly resolved by simply paying the true cost of gasoline. since we pay subsidized price for gasoline, why should we pay the true cost of electricity?

i am against subsidizing either one. but we also need to move to EVs ASAP and we do need help with that on several different fronts and subsidizing the cost of the electricity is not really in the top needs.

i am not asking for a handout...only a level playing field. Obama went to Congress to eliminate 28 Billion in funding for oil companies via tax breaks, shelters etc and the reason is that the top 3 made several billion so a tax break is simply not required for them to maintain a valid business model. Congress turned him down.

so we have a 230 million budget devoted to building an EV infrastructure but we are hampered by BS regs on demand charges, etc.

we literally have nothing going for us other than a discount on the purchase price that we may or may not be able to take advantage of. so we all want massive widespread adoption of EVs but the advantages of EV ownership are weighted too far to a very small niche of the public.

that has to change.

 

[Randy3]

$12.50 per QC may not be out of line...

1) when you have limited alternatives -- for instance, right now several of us use RV parks for 3-4 hour 240 volt charges and pay the RV park an average of $10 per charge. We don't do this often, and we don't do it instead of charging at home. If a $12.50 QC we an alternative to a 3-4 hour sit at an RV park, I'd jump on it. (In my case, I use the RV park just west of Los Banos, CA and one in Oakhust, CA most often.)

2) when the alternative may be to rent an ICE car. Not all of us have a second ICE car to jump in when traveling further than our EV's will take us. The cost of a rental car, with gas included, would normally be more than 2-3 quick charges at $12.50 each.

3) when it will keep me in the HOV lane. An earlier post in this thread describes a trip from Walnut Creek, CA to Palo Alto, CA and return, that's 104 miles. It's also taking you right through some of the most congested traffic in the Bay Area. If this is a single driver and their LEAF has the required HOV stickers, the QC may save this driver a lot of time driving.

No, I won't use a $12.50 QC for daily use, but if it was available to me when I needed it, and it was competitive with alternatives, I'd pay without any bad feelings.

 

[KJD]

$12.50 per QC may not be out of line..

OK lets take the average USA gas guzzler gets about 25 MPG.
Now take the AAA average gas price of 3.92 per gallon and it looks like fuel cost is about 11.76 to go 75 miles.

So the quick charge cost is about 74 cents more to go that same 75 miles compared to your average gas guzzler.

OMG 74 cents....... I think I am gonna die :mrgreen:

And how much does gas cost you guys in So Cal ?

 

[neal77]

Just bought gas today for our Chevy Silverado at Sam's Club. Price was 4.13 a gal and it cost us $75.00 to fill up.
No Leaf for me yet but I am looking into getting one.