"Pay by the minute" EV charging prohibited in California

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eNate

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This is great news to anyone confounded by cost-per-minute electricity at public charging stations.

I saw the article on https://electrek.co/2019/12/24/california-bans-per-minute-billing-tesla-superchargers-will-need-displays/

...electricity is considered a type of motor vehicle fuel. ... fuel dispensed from EVSE shall be measured by — either the kWh or the megajoule (MJ). ...the primary commodity delivered by EVSE is electricity, not (the) parking space ...time is not an acceptable unit of measure for dispensing and billing electricity as motor vehicle fuel

My recollection is Electrify America changed away from per-minute billing just recently, like September, after consumer complaints. It was big news on the Kia Niro forum because their cars would indicate to the EVSE that they would take a high rate of charge, so get billed at the higher per-minute tier, but then the car would only accept a lower rate of charge.

The article says we can still be assessed ancillary service fees, as long as they are disclosed. It appears this change is effective January 1, with dates in the future when EVSEs must display pricing data to the user.
 
THat's good for the EV owner, bad for the EVSE supplier. Cars can accept a higher charge while their pack has a lower SOC, but it tapers off to almost nothing as it reaches full. That taper point varies depending on several factors, some of which are the battery temperature and the chemistry.

Having a car sit on the EVSE until full ties it up for others that could be getting a quicker charge up to say 80%. Or, if the thing charged fully in say a couple of hours, but was parked there all day, preventing maybe another 4-5 vehicles from topping off or regaining a substantial portion of their charge.

So, paying for the Kwhr is good for the EV owner rather than just by time. Not sure what that will do to the incentive to install them for the vendors, though. What you might find is that they charge a larger fee per Kw to offset the guys that just leave the vehicle there all day.
 
The crux of the change is that we're paying for a commodity, not for time. I agree with your point in that time needs to be managed. The law seems written in such a way to allow the provider to charge both a delivery-based rate and an excess time penalty.

Ancillary service fees can cover this, in addition to the electrical delivery fee. And it looks like there's room to play with this. For instance, charge for parking after the first 45 minutes, or perhaps a higher tier electrical rate after 80% state of charge.
 
Tiered rates based on time would work, but the EVSE or CCS unit has no way to know what the vehicle's SOC is...all it knows is what voltage (in the case of CCS) or if the car is asking for power (via EVSE interlock signal), but not how much. The device's monitoring of the actual power being delivered and the rate could sort of estimate how fully charged the vehicle is, but that can vary based on the temperatures. In fact, especially on a CCS unit, that device will throttle back its power delivery if IT gets too hot as will the vehicle, so time may not be a good factor there, either. You might get one result if the CCS unit hadn't been used for hours (or it's cold out), and a very different one if the filters or fans are not working properly, or someone just finished charging theirs up just before you hooked up. SOme of the units need to scale back the power delivery if there's more than one vehicle attached. Lots of variables, some out of control, so pricing fairly could be an issue, regardless.

Most of the charging infrastructure, at least those not Tesla, is not heavily, if at all, subsidized, so to make it a viable business venture, there has to be a way to make some money, or at least not lose any. Some businesses are putting them in and not charging, with the thought that it would drive up patronage to their stores. That might be true, but hard to estimate accurately.

Charging infrastructure is part of the classic chicken or egg...which needs to come first. EVs need places to charge. Will people buy them if they can't, or at least drive places where they'd need to charge to get back home?
 
jadnashuanh said:
...the EVSE or CCS unit has no way to know what the vehicle's SOC is...all it knows is what voltage

I don't know whether this image will stick, but this is similar to what the EVGo displays when I plug my i3 in at their CCS unit — state of charge.

Chevy-Bolt-4-before-Doug.jpg


Ultimately, I see this as being fair to us consumers by charging us for what we consume, but also being fair to us consumers by allowing for the necessary disincentives to be used to encourage the guy ahead of me not to hog the charger. Nobody is denying profit from the billing arrangement.

I can easily measure time, and I can pretty effortlessly do some of that head math stuff to figure how many kWhs my i3 will need. With that I can accurately estimate what a charging session will cost me, and what SOC I'll be driving away with.

On a time-based EVSE, I can figure the cost to charge for an hour, but not have a feel for the state of charge I'll be leaving with or, for that matter, what I'm ultimately paying per kWh.
 
Some people are going to find themselves siding against this rule just because it's coming out of California. Very enlightened opinion you've contributed. So much "socialist" about everybody paying a known fixed price per unit of commodity. Good sounding line though.

Because this makes sense:
If you’re fueling up at Electrify America’s middle price-tier, you’ll pay approximately $22 for 30 minutes which would fuel the typical EV with 22-30 kWh, paying upwards of $1.00/kWh. That’s $22 to drive 90 miles in your EV, more expensive than driving a Chevy Tahoe (~$16 in gas at $3.00 per gallon).


Pay-by-minute charging seemed to be a top complaint of the various EV forums I visited while searching for my next car (spent a bit of times on a couple of Kia and general EV forums). Didn't really read any complaints about pay-per-kWh, although some brought up the points Jim makes about managing dwell times.

Electrek summed it up nicely with this article they published at the end of summer. It's worth a read. https://electrek.co/2019/08/12/kwh-pricing-ev-drivers-miss-benefits/

If anything, it's indicating that other states are leaning in same direction.

BTW, California is host to more electric vehicles than any other state, both per capita and in total registered EVs. I expect my government to be actively managing this, not sitting on their hands and letting these companies dictate shifty billing schemes. Haters gonna hate.
 
Many of the plug-in hybrids can only charge at about a 3-4Kw rate, so while they're not consuming all that many Kw, it can take as much time to charge one as an EV with a much larger battery that can charge more quickly. While the current i3, at least in the US, is limited to 7.4Kw there are some vehicles out there that can charge quicker, assuming the EVSE can support it (many can't).

So, while paying only for the Kw consumed is 'fair', it may not be all that efficient in the scheme of things.

My suggestion would be to give the vehicle charging maybe a grace period of maybe 15-minutes after the vehicle disconnects, but if they don't free up the spot after that period, start charging them a loitering fee. That would discourage people just hogging the charger. That grace period might vary based on typical usage rates. At least the i3 now unlocks the plug...the original software only did that once the vehicle was unlocked. Now, it unlocks the plug once it shuts off the charging. If there was space for another vehicle, they could remove the plug and start their own charging session...then, you'd only be hogging a parking space, not the EVSE.
 
I'm a bit torn. In general I'm simply against gov't interference in businesses beyond protection (employees, consumers, environment). You can make a compelling argument that this is consumer protection - general public do not understand charging speeds, Ahs, KWs, etc. AND some vehicles charge faster than others creating an unfair situation. Of course solving the possible consumer protection issue, as mentioned, opens up the abuse issue. People using charging stations as a parking space for hours and hours.

As much as I dislike laws like this (not because it's from California, although CA is continually pumping out ridiculous laws I completely disagree with), this one sounds reasonable as long as they allow for time based fees or penalties for those people using charging spots for parking.

It might not matter much in the long run. Once charging stations are "everywhere" and enough competition lets supply and demand set prices, I would expect prices to naturally gravitate toward something fair and equitable.
 
A friend remarked on this - at his place of work there are four charging spots for a fairly large office complex. After complaints about the spots being either used by ICE vehicles as convenient close-in parking, or by EV vehicles being parked in the same spots all day, management posted signage something like: "This is not a parking spot. It is to be used by Electric Vehicles during charging only. Non-electric vehicles found parked here are subject to immediate towing. Electric Vehicles parked here for extended periods of time and not charging, or with charging completed, are required to be moved to free up the charger for others. Failure to do so may result in the vehicle being towed. If you parked your car here, and it was towed, please call XYZ towing service at (XXX)-XXX-XXXX to arrange to retrieve your vehicle. There will be a $300 towing fee due and payable to the towing company at that time."

And they monitored the spots via camera and security patrols. He said ICE vehicles were usually towed within an hour, and EV owners, who were registered with the building management for charging access, were called and warned to move their cars, before they were gong to be towed.
 
That sounds like an entirely reasonable policy, to me at least!

The original software on the i3 didn't unlock the plug until you unlocked the car, which was a problem where the plug could reach more than one spot. In some other places in the world, the cable is not tethered to the EVSE, and then, unlocking the car might mean your cable could be stolen! Not sure how that works out there, as in the USA, all of the cables are tethered to the EVSE and BMWUSA doesn't supply a charging cable either as stock or as an option, since it's not needed.
 
I'm really torn over this one.
The issue for the providers is that they have 2 factors to consider. #1 of course is the energy, but #2 is also time. Is it fair to charge the same for, say 5kWh of energy if the equipment being used to supply this energy is tied up for 20 minutes vs 2 hours? The charging providers have to make money on this, and the way they will do it is to jack the price/kWh. It's simple business.
While I applaud the legislature in attempting to address the issue, I think they may have oversimplified the problem and come up with a sub-optimal solution that will ultimately cost us more $$$.
 
graememwl said:
The issue for the providers is that they have 2 factors to consider. #1 of course is the energy, but #2 is also time. Is it fair to charge the same for, say 5kWh of energy if the equipment being used to supply this energy is tied up for 20 minutes vs 2 hours?
Maybe the best solution would be to charge a per kWh rate when the charging power exceeds a certain limit and a per minute charge when the charging power drops to less than this limit. Charge a driver of an EV with a 50 kW DC fast charging power limit a significant per minute charge when using a 250 kW charger to encourage this driver to use a 50 kW charger.

This would be similar to the rate taxis charge which is based on a per-distance charge above a certain average speed but a per-minute charge at slower speeds.
 
alohart said:
This would be similar to the rate taxis charge ...


Taxis are an excellent analogy!

With a taxi there is often a "drop charge" which is a flat fee just for getting in the cab, the per-mile rate, and the per-minute rate. If the cab is picking up from an airport, there is often an additional location-based flat fee.

Under this new rule, EV charging can be structured similarly: session fee, time-based charge (similar to a per-hour parking garage), and the charge per kWh.

There is nothing in this law that says the provider can't employ a time-based structure. It only stipulates that the electricity needs to be billed on consumption, and that all costs must be disclosed up front.

In fact, there is no reason a provider can't pre-determine "peak congestion" periods and bill at a higher rate when it's expected demand would be at its highest.

With all of these components in place, and with our EVs being relatively well-known entities, it would be trivial to build a calculator (either into the charger, or into an app) that would predict either (a) a time-based cost (what will it cost me to plug in here for 2 hours 30 minutes?) or (b) charge-based cost (what will it cost me and how much time will it take to get from 25% SOC to 80% SOC?). There would be some variability, obviously, if the chargers de-rate their output if multiple vehicles are plugged in, but that wouldn't prevent a high/low cost range from being provided.
 
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