UK Study Says EV Charging Costs More When Done in Public Instead of at Home
In a shocking -- pun and sarcasm intended -- twist, an analysis performed in the UK suggests that it costs $1,800 USD more a year to charge an EV in public than at one's home.
Reuters reports via Autoblog that an analysis by pro-EV group FairCharge shows that it will cost less to charge your EV at home in the UK, in part because of lower overnight rates.
FairCharge isn't an unbiased group -- it is advocating for changes to how the Brits tax public charging so that consumers pay less and investment in public chargers is encouraged.
Home chargers, which are sometimes fully or partially subsidized by carmakers, can cost about $600 to $1,000 USD for installation.
Lots of Americans and Brits park in the street or in parking garages/lots. About 40 percent of British drivers street park when home, while about 40 percent of us Yanks don't live in a single-family home.
Obviously, if drivers don't have easy access to chargers, EV adoption will take longer.
Right now, the tax difference for Britons is 15 percent -- the government taxes public charging at 20 percent and home charging at 5 percent.
Not surprisingly, groups like FairCharge believe that in order for EVs to grow as part of the market in Britain, the public-charging tax needs to be lower.
[Image: wellphoto/Shutterstock.com]
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Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.
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Once 15 Minute Cities start to be rolled out, you won't be far enough away from home to worry about range anxiety.
"EV Charging Costs More When Done in Public Instead of at Home"
Of course it does; so does everything. Charging companies have to make money somehow.
At home, all I had to do was add a 40-Amp double breaker, a 25-ft run of 8 AWG wire, and some wall anchors for the charger. A public charger is much more involved.
Don't just assume that the power you can get at home is the same quality as what you pay for at a commercial charger.
One day one of the commercial charging companies is going to listen to me and pick a cutesy brand name for their particular flavor of electricity and make a fortune.
Source: Those of you paying big bucks for branded gasoline.
Shocking that using someone else's resources costs more than your own!
Last year I backed into the math on the charging of our two EVs to find that charging them at home costs roughly 20% of the price of gas. Charging my not very efficient Taycan on a public charger runs ~$40 for roughly 2/3s of a tank of "volts" for about 180 miles of range. Turning that into equivalent 'gas' on my prior car, an M5 getting about 13 mpg, is still a pretty good deal if you compare it to the price of premium.
I'm sure the equation is much more positively slanted for EVs designed to be efficient rather than...fast.