To discourage people from slow charging to 100% at a DC charger, I think an idle fee (or “top charge fee”) should start at 80% when charging rate typically slows dramatically. Combined with regular idle fees, I think this could significantly enhance charger utilization at busy sites by discouraging charging above 80%.
For example, let’s say the regular no-charging idle fee is $1.00/min. Once a vehicle reaches 80%, a reduced fee of $0.50/min begins (after a 5-minute grace period) while still charging, in addition to the normal per kWh rate. If charging stops (at 100% presumably), then the fee jumps to the regular $1.00/min.
In a more prohibitive scheme, the fee above 80% could be inversely proportional to the charging rate. In other words, the slower you charge, the more expensive the fee gets per minute. Such as (100 - current kW rate)/100*$1.00 = Fee.
Obviously this would suit a station that charges per kWh better than a station that charges by the minute (you’re already getting penalized from charging slowly at a per minute station). Specifics could be worked out such as if the 80% fee is charged all the time or only when the station is busy, exceptions, dynamic pricing, etc.
To pair with this, I think automakers that offer free charging plans (ahem…VW) should automatically stop charging at 80% and charge idle fees. If the customer wants to charge more than 80%, then they would have to start another session and pay for it themselves.
In all these schemes, the idea is to modify behavior through financial disincentives for the greater good. It still allows charging past 80% if you needed the extra range, but you would have to pay extra for the privilege of staying and occupying a charger. The point is to improve overall throughput of a busy charging station.
Thoughts? Good or bad idea?
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I’ve been screwed like this. I needed 15 minutes to make my next stop. I had to wait 50 minutes for the guy already at a single vehicle dcfc to try and fail to charge to 100%. After he timed out, he finally let me have it. When I need to hit a high %, I lurk by the charger and would let someone only needing a little to grab some.
Let’s not solve infrastructure problems with additional billing.
They just need to install larger banks of better chargers that do dynamic load sharing like Tesla chargers and some others do. Have the right amount of capacity in the first places and you don’t need to charge the customers extra for nothing.
tesla doesn’t charge idle fees unless the chargers are pretty packed. its not like EA where you can get an idle fee being the only car at the charger.
May be if all chargers are full and people are waiting at charger. if no one waiting no need to charge. I think Tesla is planning to do in busy supercharging places
I actually think penalizing charging above 80% makes sense IF the charger provider has adjacent AC chargers on-site. That way you move off the DCFC once you hit 80, and have the option to charge on AC for the remaining 20%.
Yes, that is another idea that might work since top charging is not much faster than Level 2 charging, so might as well just use a Level 2 instead.
Gas stations don’t do this. They just built enough gas stations that it isn’t an issue.
The number of EV chargers needed to make this not an issue is even less than the number of gas stations due to the amount of charging happening at home and work.
I agree that this is an issue today. But if each of those scenarios you are thinking about where one person is taking a long time to charge to 100% had 16+ chargers that dynamically shared power between the chargers, and each town had several of those charging stations, it wouldn’t be an issue.
No.
Also the charge rate depends on the car. Not all cars do poor over 80%.
First, no. Bad idea. You’re clearly just an inconvenienced ass hole that wants other people to pay for your inconvenience. Second, prices for charging are already rising and it won’t be too long that the mostly DC charging folks will lament about the days of “only” paying $4/gallon.
why expect electricity to get more expensive when electricity sources are continuing to drop in price?
Bad idea, there are routes you will need to charge to close to 100%, don’t punish people for that, its not their fault, maybe these charge networks need to back fill in more stops?
sure, do it with the increased revenue.
better yet let’s punitively punish battery capacity over 20kwh or 60 or 200 or maybe we just need to build more charging stations so people don’t feel like they have to rush out as soon as they are at 80% charged! there is a range difference from a leaf to a long-range tesla! and some people do need 100% to get to the next stop!
Can confirm, having charged to 100% in my Leaf yesterday to make it home. It was the middle of the day in an area with other empty chargers, so no one else was impacted.
Good point about other time intensive factors that people tend to overlook. Charging my Leaf to 100% on a 50kW charger takes much less time than charging a 150 or 200kWh to 80%.
They already do this in norway, i think its 1 kroner(0.1 dollar) extra every minutes after 80% charge is reached. It works really well, but we also have a very developed charging infrastructure built.
If this makes people charge only till 80% then they will go to charging stations more often, this means more side time of connecting to charger, starting it, etc.
Bad idea. It further complicates already too complicated EV charging (Gas stations do not change their price based on time of day), and would deter EV adoption. To many edge cases like the EQV that doesn’t slow down much until 87%, or an Outlander PHEV driver that can CHAdeMO that needs to charge to 100%. If vehicles on road trips have to make more frequent but shorter stops I’m not sure how much that would actually help charger congestion during busy holidays as time is lost during the changeover and it’s an inconvenience to drivers to make extra stops.
my gas stations charge more on the weekends, lol
Maybe it is not the right solution but the problem is definetly there.
Talking from my own experience, last time I was on a vacation in Italy, I rented a fully electric car and sometimes I just charged it so I had free parking in the historic centers. Although there it isn’t such a big problem because in southern Italy there’s not a lot of electric cars but still I can imagine someone doing the same in busy places.
In general I don’t have a problem with having both a parking/occupancy fee and an energy-based fee while charging, but I think having the parking fee only kick in at a particular SoC would be obnoxious, particularly at low utilization sites.
Having said that, fast DC charging networks do need to start billing at rates that are eventually going to be profitable and allow for network expansion and to encourage drivers to use slower charging when they’re parked for extended periods anyway.
I think that’s not fair for those of us with limited range who need near 100% to get to our next charger while on vacation. Its also not our fault that cars charge at different speeds and some are really slow thus taking a long charge time…