Blink QC charging fees

Hello,
I consider it a deterrent, It basically makes it cost more than my Prius so I will not be using Blink unless it's an emergency. Also, AV is priced at $2.50 per session but when I used the AV units going to the coast my card was not debited.

mbender said:

I'm actually unconvinced that quick-charging couldn't or shouldn't be free to the users all the time (a la the "internet model"). That is, unless I'm doing the math wrong, it doesn't seem like it would be that difficult to subsidize the electricity and maintenance solely through advertising and partnerships (with the property owners, utilities &or governments).

Here are some simple calculations, with fairly generous assumptions.

- Each QC delivers 20kWh every 30 minutes in each hour of a day = 480kWh/day
- @ $0.20/kWh = $96/day per charger

Call it $100 per day per charger for the electricity -- probably on the high end, given the $0.20/kWhr rate used and the estimate of 12 hours per day an average unit would be in use.

Now I'm no pricing expert for advertising, but it seems to me that with the big screens on most of these chargers + the captive, well-defined and well-inclined audience, it would be very easy to cover the $100 per day. Wouldn't it? And I'm guessing much more than that could be commanded (adding in cost-sharing with property owners for increased traffic and visibility), which would ideally cover hardware, installation and overhead.

Or am I "way off"? It just seems that if the yahoos, googles and facebooks of this world can swing it, so should the blinks.

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I see that you live in California, so I'll point out a big factor that you didn't take into account...

The electrical usage costs (kWh consumed) is not what drives the electric bill in California for these charging stations. The biggest component that Blink or any other DC Fast Charge operator has to pay in the big 3 utility areas in California is the demand charge for the highest peak kW demand that the station draws in a month's time. Think of it as a high water mark of usage for the month in a 15 minute window.

Given the 48 kW output for the Blink initially in a charging session then tapers off as the charge progresses, that peak over a given 15 minute window could be 30-35 kW (I haven't measured it, just an educated guess)...It's not unusual to have demand charges for a station like this be MANY hundreds of dollars per month (especially if there are additional L2 stations in use at the same location). So the actual cost per session does depend on the number of sessions per month, but the real-world figures I'm seeing put the total cost well over $15 per session, sometimes much more than that (depends on how many sessions occur per month. $5 per session represents a bargain as compared to the actual cost for the electric bill (not to mention what the station cost to install at that location).

Of course, we'd all like the cost of a DC Fast Charge session to be less than the cost of gasoline...But in the real world, we don't use them that much so it becomes a convenience factor or a range extension that can be used once in awhile.

Here's another factoid, and this was pointed out by another MNL forum user a long time ago. The first time you use the DC Fast Charge port on the car, the cost will be $700 for the port and $5 for the charge ($705 total). The second time will be $710 total, etc. Don't forget the $700 that the port costs. Even if you never use a DC FC, you've already spent $700 for the port (on the 2011 LEAF at least) You'd have to use the DC Fast Charge port a large number of times at $5 per session to even equal what you or the EV Project paid for the port itself...

drees said:

vsaphill said:

Looks like I will just be using the free L2 at the park-n-ride next to my house at night

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And this is why public charging should always have some nominal fee close to the cost of electricity...

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Yep. Fees work. It makes people move along, and makes it available for the next driver. And actually pays at token amount of what the taxpayer already invested in.

aftabu said:

Agreed. Flat $5 rate is going to cause people to charge upto 100% and will create bottleneck.
Better strategy should have been

1) 20-30 cent a minute with a minimum fee of $2.
2) Put a upper time limit on how long you can charge ( like 30 or 40 minutes.. This can also vary with capacity). OR no charging allowed beyond 80%.

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You may not realize that the '13 QC charges differently from '11-'12s. The '13 will charge to 90% in 30 minutes or less, so time restrictions are good, but not the 80% restriction.

davewill said:

It sounds like a good deal to me. I was expecting $7-10. I kinda wish they would charge extra for people who choose to charge >80%. That really ties up the station.

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Don't worry. It's an "introductory" rate. I'm sure they'll raise it to $1.00 per minute soon enough. When that happens we need to boycott ALL Blink charging stations, even the Level 2 stations.

These people have always been more about extracting money than providing quality service.

aftabu said:

Agreed. Flat $5 rate is going to cause people to charge upto 100% and will create bottleneck.
Better strategy should have been

1) 20-30 cent a minute with a minimum fee of $2.
2) Put a upper time limit on how long you can charge ( like 30 or 40 minutes.. This can also vary with capacity). OR no charging allowed beyond 80%.

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I don't think most people are going to wait almost an extra hour to get 20% more charge. Some people will but not most. The lower the cost the more likely the average Joe is not going to think that an extra 20% charge is worth another 40 minutes of his/her life.

Luft said:

davewill said:

It sounds like a good deal to me. I was expecting $7-10. I kinda wish they would charge extra for people who choose to charge >80%. That really ties up the station.

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Don't worry. It's an "introductory" rate. I'm sure they'll raise it to $1.00 per minute soon enough. When that happens we need to boycott ALL Blink charging stations, even the Level 2 stations.

These people have always been more about extracting money than providing quality service.

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Vote with your wallet folks, it is very effective. You are giving them far too much credit.

EVDRIVER said:

Luft said:

davewill said:

It sounds like a good deal to me. I was expecting $7-10. I kinda wish they would charge extra for people who choose to charge >80%. That really ties up the station.

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Don't worry. It's an "introductory" rate. I'm sure they'll raise it to $1.00 per minute soon enough. When that happens we need to boycott ALL Blink charging stations, even the Level 2 stations.

These people have always been more about extracting money than providing quality service.

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Vote with your wallet folks, it is very effective. You are giving them far too much credit.

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I completely agree with voting with our wallets and that was the exact point of my post. These people are floating a trial balloon right now. They want to start the bidding at an introductory rate of $5.00 per session. They put out a report to their investors stating that they plan on charging $2.00 per 2 minutes. I guess that means they want to charge $1.00 per minute in two minute increments. I won't pay that much. It's just not going to happen.

ECOtality, being the greedy people that they are, will jack the price up as far as they can. That's the free market and that's fine. But it is our job to let them know that we understand that just because the oil companies have people by the short hairs that's not the case here. Just because oil companies can extract extreme profits from helpless customers that's not the case here. This is just freaking electricity. Period. We have a source in our homes and many of us have a second car such as a Prius.

We also have to be reasonable and understand that DC QC stations are not cheap to install or maintain. ECOtality made the decision to install unreliable monster chargers equipped with giant plasma screens. Okay that was their choice but I as a potential customer do not feel obligated to subsidize their bad choice of equipment.

We need to vote with our wallets. We need to pressure our government to remove excessive demand charges these sites may be forced to pay so that it is possible to for them to provide inexpensive electricity for EVs. If government officials won't do that we need to vote them out and vote someone in who will.

We need to ensure that multiple e-fuel providers cover our cities and highways so that there are real free market forces at work.

EVDRIVER said:

Vote with your wallet folks, it is very effective. You are giving them far too much credit.

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That works where there is competition. For many, Blink QC's are literally the only game in town.

ITestStuff said:

EVDRIVER said:

Vote with your wallet folks, it is very effective. You are giving them far too much credit.

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That works where there is competition. For many, Blink QC's are literally the only game in town.

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Yep, and that has got to change.

dm33 said:

Seems too high. If getting a 50% charge, say 12kwh at 0.15/kwh thats $1.80 for the cost of electricity. (Our rates are 0.09/kwh). Yet charging $8. That will choke the EV market before it gets going.

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Ah yes. Ignore the costs of installation, maintenance, etc and only look at the incremental cost of electricity. Like it or not, installing and maintaining public charging infrastructure is expensive. Do you also complain that the $2 soda you buy at the restaurant could have bought you 4 liters of soda from Walmart?

Volusiano said:

It seems ironic that the success of BEV depends on the availability of public charging stations, but now the fees imposed on these stations make it costly prohibitive for BEV owners to justify using them unless as a last resort.

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Public charging infrastructure is rarely designed to be a primary means of fueling EVs at this point in the game. Perhaps some L2 charging, but certainly not QC.

davewill said:

klapauzius said:

Its a mystery to me why they cannot come up with a reasonably consumption based price structure.
A price per kWH used would make much more sense. ...

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In the case of L2, you aren't just using the electricity, you are also tying the station down while you're there. A busy station should only make half the money because your car charges slowly?

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Good point. There should be some minimum cost for plugging in and incrementally higher costs for pulling more power. In the case of comparing L2 charging at 15A vs 30A should the cost difference be exactly double? Probably not, but I think most would agree that there should be some difference considering that at least in California a cost $1/hour and pulling 240V/30A ($0.14 / kWh) might barely be enough to recoup energy costs let alone costs of installation and maintenance.

bowthom said:

I consider it a deterrent, It basically makes it cost more than my Prius so I will not be using Blink unless it's an emergency.

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The classic "I'll just drive the Prius" argument. Sure, ignore the fact that most public charging does not significantly change your average cost to charge and that the Prius has other downsides (noisy, jerky power delivery, pollutes like crazy). Face it - you're not going to charge in public anyway unless you need it anyway - it takes too long. If it costs less to charge in public than at home, then of course people will be all over it like flies on poo, but as soon as it costs more than either charging at home or the Prius - people won't charge. Screw it, "I'll just ride my bike".

drees said:

bowthom said:

I consider it a deterrent, It basically makes it cost more than my Prius so I will not be using Blink unless it's an emergency.

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The classic "I'll just drive the Prius" argument. Sure, ignore the fact that most public charging does not significantly change your average cost to charge and that the Prius has other downsides (noisy, jerky power delivery, pollutes like crazy). Face it - you're not going to charge in public anyway unless you need it anyway - it takes too long. If it costs less to charge in public than at home, then of course people will be all over it like flies on poo, but as soon as it costs more than either charging at home or the Prius - people won't charge. Screw it, "I'll just ride my bike".

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Quick charge is very useful when you're trying to extend your range beyond what you can easily achieve. At these prices though, its not worth it. Just take the ICE if you have one.

Elon Musk tonight announced that they're greatly accelerating the rollout of their supercharger network. Tesla owners will be able to travel from LA to NY for free hopping through supercharge stations along the way.

Thats the way to create a market. Even for those who can afford a $100k car, its a nice benefit to be able to quickly charge and not be nickeled and dimed. I wonder what his other tweet is about saying they can recharge faster than filling a tank of gas. Keep wondering if thats a battery swap or aluminum-air battery. I figure those will certainly not be free.

The model for free charging is advertising and driving customers to spend money at businesses not charging per Kw as a rule. Blink likely thought they would put ads on their crap screens but that was a fail. So were the 50" plasmas at the QC stations. Making a person watch a relative ad for some charging is an effective targeted use of ad money and will likely be a good model. So is free charging with a business purchase. There are many ways to make a profit while providing free charging and the opportunities are ripe, too bad some fools need to sour that roadmap while wasting public funds to create a crap charging network.

If the boobs were paying attention and wanted to charge for kw they should put stations along the coast where people need to charge and where businesses would love to have EV drivers hang out and spend money. That is if they actually could work for more than a month without service.

drees said:

dm33 said:

Seems too high. If getting a 50% charge, say 12kwh at 0.15/kwh thats $1.80 for the cost of electricity. (Our rates are 0.09/kwh). Yet charging $8. That will choke the EV market before it gets going.

Click to expand...

Ah yes. Ignore the costs of installation, maintenance, etc and only look at the incremental cost of electricity. Like it or not, installing and maintaining public charging infrastructure is expensive. Do you also complain that the $2 soda you buy at the restaurant could have bought you 4 liters of soda from Walmart?".

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Yes I generally stick to tap water based on price. I get home and enjoy my WM soda
Especially will not pay if they serve Pepsi :lol:

Same with the EV, I will fill up at home. My usage allows this 100% of the time so far. Otherwise I will take the Subaru.

dm33 said:

Tesla owners will be able to travel from LA to NY for free hopping through supercharge stations along the way.

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Perhaps the incremental cost is free, but you certainly pay for it. You pay $2,000 for the privilege of being able to use those supercharger stations - whether or not you ever actually use one. You can be sure that some portion of the $73,070-$119,170 one might pay Tesla for a Model S with SuperCharging access also goes towards the installation and maintenance of SuperChargers.

I heard that it costs Tesla $500k to install 2 120 kW SuperChargers which doesn't sound out of line compared to the $100k+ it can cost to install a single 50 kW CHAdeMO. Can you imagine trying to make a business model with some ROI on $500k for 2 SuperChargers where best case you might charge a couple dozen cars a day? Or even the $100k for a CHAdeMO which might charge a dozen cars a day?

I can tell you for sure, you sure aren't going to be able to charge regular retail electricity pricing (meaning zero net revenue) and expect to stay in business long paying the interest on a $100k business loan.

Yet it seems that everyone expects public charging to be ubiquitous and free.

When they get them installed along the interstates, I will gladly pay $5 for a 90% charge (30 min. or less) so I can travel to distant cities.

dm33 said:

Seems too high. If getting a 50% charge, say 12kwh at 0.15/kwh thats $1.80 for the cost of electricity. (Our rates are 0.09/kwh). Yet charging $8. That will choke the EV market before it gets going.
...
It should also be time based, ie a per minute charge. You want to encourage people to get off quickly. With this pricing, whats to stop someone from plugging in and leaving it there for hours. Same price as someone who wants a quick 5 minute boost.

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LOL! $0.09/kwh??? Even on a non-TOU plan in PG&E land, there's no way to even get electricity that cheap. On E-1 (non-TOU based), even if you stay within the 1st tier, it's a bit over $0.13/kwh.

Try putting in the 95136 zip code into http://www.pge.com/myhome/myaccount/charges/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; and select no for CARE (for low income people) along w/your monthly electricity use. Compare your bill to the calculator (which is a bit too low, since it doesn't include tax and fees). I'd be curious to hear some numbers.

I can't speak to commercial rates vs. residential, as there are many of the former, in addition to possible demand changes on the former. Per http://www.pge.com/myhome/customerservice/financialassistance/medicalbaseline/understand/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;, I'm in area X, so I get allocated 11.0/kwh day in "summer" and 11.7 in "winter".

I recently switched to E-6 that's TOU based. You can look at the rates at http://www.pge.com/tariffs/ERS.SHTML" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;. E-1 is the default non-TOU plan for residential.

There's got to be some charging losses when doing DCFC so if you only put in 12 kwh, more was consumed.

I agree that it should be per minute or per kwh.

drees said:

the Prius has other downsides (noisy, jerky power delivery, pollutes like crazy).

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Noisy, yes. Jerky power delivery... not really. Pollutes like crazy? No. CA and CARB-spec 04+ Priuses are AT-PZEV (http://www.driveclean.ca.gov/Know_the_Score/Understand_the_Smog_Score.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false. Since they get about the best FE of any ICEV, they have very low GHG emissions compared to all other ICEVs (http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=33324&id=22016&id=33558&id=32154&#tab2" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false. In order to get for an ICEV to get lower GHGs, it has to get better FE than the Prius. I know of 0 mass-market ICE cars currently sold as new in the US that do.

cwerdna said:

drees said:

the Prius has other downsides (noisy, jerky power delivery, pollutes like crazy).

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Noisy, yes. Jerky power delivery... not really. Pollutes like crazy? No.

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Uh, yeah, compared to the LEAF or any other EV:

Jerky power delivery: the Prius lurches off the line with an awful delay while you wait for the engine to turn over, the engine takes forever to spin up into it's peak power bank when you punch the accelerator even after it's running, and occasionally shudders when the engine shuts off as the car makes sure the engine is in the optimum position for restart.

Pollutes like crazy: Every time I start the thing up and I'm standing outside, the thing stinks nearly as bad as a 2-stroke lawn mower. Not to mention has at least double the CO2 emissions per mile of the LEAF on CA grid power never mind the solar panels on my roof.

But hey - maybe if you actually owned an EV instead of hanging out on all the EV forums you'd realize that. The Prius is really that bad to drive in comparison. As long as the range works for you, you never want to go back to driving a Prius after driving an EV.

So yeah - to avoid both of those issues I'll happily pay more than what it costs to fuel the Prius (about $0.09/mi) if it lets me drive the LEAF. Let's say I want to drive 100 miles - 60 miles on home EV juice and 40 miles on QC juice. Prius would cost about $9 in gas to drive 100 miles. Home EV juice costs me about $0.14 / kWh and I get about 3.5 mi/kWh from the wall, so 60 miles would cost me $2.40 leaving me $6.60 to pay for QC before I get to the point where driving the Prius is cheaper.

A $5 session fee would work out great in this scenario and even up to $7-8 / session would not be much different than driving the Prius.

And comparing to the Prius is a worst case scenario - say your other car only gets 35 mpg and uses 30% more fuel - then that 100 mi would cost about $12 in gas leaving me nearly $10 to pay for QC before it gets to the point where driving the econobox is cheaper. Assuming 40 miles, the QC incremental cost is $0.25 / mi or 3x the cost of driving the Prius and nearly 10x the cost of charging at home - but you can see that it's still worth it!

If charging fees gets us closer to the point where these companies will finally be able to start generating some revenue and accelerate the deployment of charging infrastructure which will enable more EVs to hit the roads and make public charging easier when you really do need it - yeah - I'm going to pay and I'll happily do it - even if the incremental costs are significantly more than driving the Prius. Now if only they'd install a few of these stations in spots where I can actually use them more often than once a month...

It's about time... this the first thing Blink has done right since its existence. Regardless of what price scheme you want to have, the fundamental problem with public DC3's in the NW is over crowding. This will fix that on day one. I'll take a "free ride" just as much as the next guy, but from a realistic long term sustaining view, it's the right move. The second fundamental problem is Iceing. Now Blink will have a vested interest in their revenue spot being Ice'ed. Now it will be Blinks problem too.

Public DC3 charging just got a whole lot better with fees.

drees said:

Pollutes like crazy: Every time I start the thing up and I'm standing outside, the thing stinks nearly as bad as a 2-stroke lawn mower.

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There's something wrong with your car. You should take it to the dealer.

If charging fees gets us closer to the point where these companies will finally be able to start generating some revenue and accelerate the deployment of charging infrastructure which will enable more EVs to hit the roads and make public charging easier when you really do need it - yeah - I'm going to pay and I'll happily do it

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What % of the current charging infrastructure has already been paid for with government grants? For the chargers that have been free, was the electric service also paid for with grants or via some other means (i.e. power companies/state/local govt footing the bill)?