On October 7, 2013 my LEAF exceeded $1000 in fuel costs. I am certain that if public charging had still been free, I could have made it to November but oh well, not really complaining :) . However, I am just as certain that the next $1,000 will happen much faster.
For one thing; due to work/time demands, I had to pay $5 for a 24 minute fast charge at the Ecotality DC charger located in Fife, WA on Oct 9th. Now this is the 4th time charging there since Blink starting billing for fast charging but the other 3 times I was able to get what I needed at the much cheaper L2's. But the demands ofwork was paramount and I do have to log my time and being an honest person, I find it difficult to lie about it and feel good. (the lying part is easy, its the "feel good" part that is hard ;) )
So I charged my 24 minutes (Blink says 24 min and 44 secs but I only count the time the car is receiving power...) and got my 9.07 Kwh at a "wonderful" rate of 55 cents per Kwh (worse than Sema!!) while dreaming of the "good old days" like September 22, 2013 for example when I charged at the same Fife Market but this time it was the end of the work day and I only had to make the opening kickoff of the Seahawk game (which I did by about 10 minutes!) and paid a buck for 4.07 Kwh (yes, I took advantage of their grace period and charged one hour 4 minutes and 12 seconds!) at the much more acceptable rate of 24.5 cents per kwh. Now I have a 2011 LEAF which is a slow charger and my rates would be much better if I had a 2013 but hardware problems did cause Ecotality to turn down the charging rate of their L2's so not really sure how much of a bargain that would be. Might have to wait til Jan, 2014 to find out.
Now, fast charging is more expensive to the vendor and I should pay more for its services and if I had more choices, I probably would have elected to pay say...oh, I dont know lets use 55 cents per Kwh just for example's sake ok?
So, if having the choice; I would have elected to pay $2.20 for 4 kwh since that is all I really needed. Then, I could have not logged a 30 min lunch, probably finished my day a bit quicker and made the same amount of money. Now, it was a bit nice to be able to catch up on text, Facebook, etc and eat in leisure but I eat in the car nearly all the time so that is hardly much of a benefit and I couldnt help but notice that the same amount of time it took to go in, wash hands, heat up sandwich, pay for it and return to the car was probably nearly the same amount of time it took to get my 4 kwh...
But as much as I complain about Ecotality's billing on fast charge (their L2 is actually a bargain! if you have the time...) I fear that I will regret the "new management" even more.
As we all know, Ecotality is no more. They have been bought up by the entity called "CarCharging". Now what pricing they will charge is probably not really known yet. With the huge disparity in electricity rates around the country, a "one size fits all" scenario is not in best interests of anyone but if going by general info on their webpage They look to be matching Sema's rate at 49 cents/kwh or $2.49 to $2.99 per hour depending on the local laws concerning the sale of juice. They do have a disclaimer that Chargepoint station rates are set by the host so YMMV. Either way; if they are charging this much for L2, I shudder to think what the fast charge rates will be.
Only time will tell, but I think I maybe pining for the "good old days" when fast charging was only $5 per session
No comments:
Post a Comment