Open Letter to Coulomb Technologies

A reasonable fee is one that provides a reasonable ROI.

Electricity probably doesn't compare much to the real estate, installation and maintenance costs so the primary cost should be the "connection fee" and the electricity use should just be covered.

I think it's relatively simple in principle:
- pick a rate of return
- estimate the usage pattern
- set the connection fee at a rate that provides the rate of return, varying it during the day as required.
- charge the actual rate of the electricity: if it varies during the day, the rate changes.
- charge extra for leaving a car in a bay that isn't charging: this is important because space is limited and you want as many people to have a charging opportunity as possible. Chargers are not gas stations or coffee shops, they're restaurants: you want to keep it full, but if you fail to turn over tables you lose custom.

Because they think Starbucks coffee is overpriced and their wife thinks it's way too strong.

 

I went to the coulomb site and finally cancelled out. Too many unanswered questions. They want a deposit up front. Looks like they want a credit card. No information on refunded money. I do not mind giving CC info, however I like to know all the rules of the game upfront, otherwise I don't play!

 

That's the magic question here. You can't set an ROI without knowing the demand curve. Right now, only someone inside Coulomb or other charging networks would be able to formulate a demand curve that would then allow the prospective charge station owner to even calculate if it would break even, let alone meet a target ROI. Even so, since the PIP is new to the scene, there is not really enough information yet, and the beginning of this thread is a good example of inadvertent mispricings that are bound to exist.

I was hoping that more PIP owners would chime in with, "I'd be willing to pay $x.xx per charge," rather than "This equates to $40/gallon." Come on people! You have someone at the highest level of a charging network asking for feedback. Do you not think that they are aware that PIP will be a very common user for the near future? Tell the man what you are/are not willing to pay, so that this information can be passed to station owners, who have the option to change their pricing accordingly.

I personally don't think it is unreasonable to pay $1.50 - $3.00 to get a full charge on a PIP. I think it is extremely unreasonable to think about this in terms of $/kWh only.

 

I think that this is the key. The cost from what understand is 4-6K per unit (two vehicles) so roughly 2.3k per car.
There are different 'reasons' to install chargers. One is for businesses to accomodate their employees. In this case, I suspect the way to go would be a time limit so that many employees could take advantage. In other words, maybe free for the first 3 or 4 hours or so and then $.50/hour after that to discourage someone from 'camping' all day.
Another reason is for businesses to attract consumers to their stores, places of business, etc. In this case, again, a connect fee would discourage users from plugging in. Most people might spend 1-2 hours in a location, shopping, etc so again, I'd tend to think that a connect charge would be a bad thing. Free for 1-2 hours and then .50 or even up to $2.00/per hour would encourage patrons to 'stop "buy"' but not camp out.

 

Good point. So, I've started a new thread asking specifically how much, how and how often people would pay:

http://priuschat.com/forums/toyota-prius-plug-in/106776-what-would-you-pay-use-public-charger.html

 

The PiP does not need to charge. When it does, it takes a tiny amount of electricity. And it takes it from a charger that cost a LOT to buy and install. You are paying more for the time you occupy that expensive charger than for the electricity you buy. And you are free to use gasoline instead. The driver of a Leaf or Tesla will buy a lot more electricity, so proportionally less of her/his fee is for the electricity. Instead of figuring the cost of the electricity you actually get, figure the cost of the electricity you would have gotten if you had charged at the charger's maximum capacity for the entire hour. Because for the owner of the charger, that's what he could get if a real EV parked in the spot.

It's unreasonable to expect a fancy, expensive, and busy restaurant to seat you if you're going to order nothing but a cup of tea and take an hour drinking it.

It's also unreasonable to expect free electricity or free parking just because you own a car with a plug. The government already gave you a big tax break.

 

Here's the biggest issue with charging by the hour. The best example is using two cars, the PIP and the Ford Focus EV. The pip has a 3.3KW charger which gives it about 10 miles per hour of charge. The Ford Focus EV has a 6.6KW charger which gives it about 20 miles per charge (both of these are a little optimistic but close enough). So, if we look at the alternative, use gas or use electric then at $2 a charge the cost is around $10 a gallon for a PIP. The focus is harder to predict because since it is all electric it will depend on what car you use if you take the ICE instead of the Focus. Just for equivalency lets say your alternative car is a Prius, then the equivalent gas price is $5 per gallon so just a bit more expensive than Focus, if the car is a 30mpg gas guzzler then it become more economical to take the Focus.

I wrote an article about this whole mess for EV World Insider a few months ago.
http://evworld.com/insider.cfm?archyr=2012&nextedition=352#evse

Noel

 

The city of Beverly Hills just installed a bunch of chargepoint charging station at city lots. Currently these chargers are free but the one installed at the public library is capable of charging two EVs at a time, one at 220V and the other at 110V. These chargers are currently free but if you charged for them on an hourly basis then the guy who got the 110V side would effective be paying twice what the guy on the 220V side way paying because he would only get half the miles for the same price.

The nice thing about having 110V is that almost EV be it PEV, NEV, or Conversion can use the public charging station. Unfortunately most times I have been to the library both chargers have been ICED, although I have seen a Leaf charging there on one occasion.

Icing is another issue that is going to have to be dealt with eventually. Right now with most chargers being underutilized the owners are typically not enforcing EV charging laws, with a few exceptions like most of the Santa Monica owned lots. As owners start to look for the chargers to provide a revenue stream they are going to be much less tollerant of folks parked in these spots and not charging.

Noel

 

tell you what, since you are all so nice, if by any chance you pass by my farm (yeah I known it's kind of hard for that to happen, but it's good to known anyway) I'll let you all charge for just 0.15$ / hour. Just bring your cable and plug in.

 

I think the bottom line is that the PiP simply doesn't consume enough KWH to make it worth anyone's effort/money to install a charger targeted at the PiP. Volt and Leaf maybe, but the PiP? I can see an extra spigot or two on a bank designed for Telsas, Leafs and Volts where these guys amortize the bulk of the overhead, and the PiP gets to plug in almost as a courtesy. But I don't see that happening as I believe the majority of cars out there would be PiPs.

Gas @ $4/gal and 50 mpg ~ $1 per 12 miles. battery recharge @ 10cents/KWH ~$0.50 per 12 miles. If you had to pay 20cents per KWH, then gas cost = battery cost, but the battery charge is more of a hassle - maybe you even crowd someone out with a leaf/tesla/volt and do more harm than good. Its a haggle over 50 cents or so. I can't see a business making money off of PiP people.

 

Garage owners are trying, $2.99 per hour in San Francisco. The expense, scarcity of chargers, and length of charging is for me a disincentive to buy a plug-in.
Plug-ins, bev's and hybrids only make sense for municipalities who control the charging themselves and use these vehicles in low speed start and stop city driving where they work best. Buyers of prius c are going on fuelly and post their mostly highway miles. It is a fundamental misunderstanding of what these cars do best. A regular ice car with a huge overdrive gear will do almost the same as a hybrid at 65 mph. I am thankful for hybrid owners because of the greatly reduced emissions which benefit us all.

 

Depends on your idea of what "makes sense." If total cost of ownership per mile is all you care about, then the only thing that makes sense is a used car. A junker if you can fix it yourself, or a used reliable econobox otherwise.

For many of us, it "makes sense" to reduce or eliminate our use of gas, even if the cost to drive is more than, say, a seven-year-old Honda Civic. My car makes sense to me because it's fun to drive, it's clean, it's quiet, it runs on hydro power electricity 100% of the time, it has so much range that I never need to plug in away from home, and it blows away just about every other car on the road.

For me, it does not make sense to trade in my second car (2004 Prius) for a PiP because my Prius is only for long road trips, and few total miles per year. But for someone I know who likes Prius reliability and quality, but doesn't like to start the ICE unless he's going to drive far enough for it to warm up completely, the PiP makes perfect sense. And for someone who normally drives under 35 miles and wants to burn less gas, but who still needs the security blanket of an ICE, the Volt makes sense, if they trust GM quality (which, personally, I don't).

So for a LOT of people, plug-ins make a lot of sense.

It may take a few years for public charging to become generally available, and for the market to sort out pricing, and the community to settle on rules and practices such as ICEing, plug hogging, and charging priorities.

 

I believe you are the one with the fundamental misunderstanding. At 65 mph, a hybrid will get 50 MPG, while your typical 4 door sedan with a "huge overdrive" i..e top gear ratio of 0.75 or so will get maybe 30 MPG. Toyota hybrid ICE motors run on a different cycle, Atkinson, and are much more efficient at cruising. Overdrive does help, but you need other technology like cylinder deactivation and direct injection to make incremental improvements. Meanwhile, hybrids will add more battery capacity so as to be plugged in and their MPG will improve even more.

 

Check out chevrolet sonic forums. There are screenshots of >50 mpg highway. Other mags like popular mechanics got mid 40's from elantra and focus on the highway. Not 30.

 

Not sure about your point.
Check out fuely for what people really get on average.
Sonics are mid to hight 30's
Elantra's average 29-30
Elantra touring 26-28
Focus 31-33
Prius 49-50
prius PHV 55

Not all miles are highway. HEV, BEVs, and PHEVs can do much much better than your average car. One thing about a PHEV is it can use the battery for the low-efficiency miles and save the ICE for the more efficient highway mode.

 

The original post of this thread was to complain to coulomb about its rates. I researched it myself and found even worse rates than the first poster. I am still on the fence about a plugin. A great deal of coulomb installations are restricted or costly in my area. Free unrestricted ones are scarce and subject to ICE cars parking there. You have to work for google msft or another generous tech company to get this as a perk.

Two members took offence to some of my other points and I just put up a few of my sources. I tested a sonic myself and was getting over 40 on the expressway on a cold car with a salesman in the car with me.

 

cool, 1 data point at 10 minutes a shot. wow me. i'm ditching my 110,000 miles @ 47 avg for a chevy. wake me when ANYTHING approaches Prius numbers...on average. please...

 

Wake up call :mod: The Volt average gas usage is not approachin the Prius, its way better it unless you are doing > 120 miles every day (or daily average is < 10miles per trip + a few long trips)

A number of cars, including the Sonic and Volt, can get 40mpg in gas on highways, but the killer is that most trips are short and overall that kills them. The Prius/Hybrid advantage was using regen and the electric motor to improve its efficiency. The Volt may only get 40 highway and 35 cit, which on gas, but since it is only using gas 30% time for the average user, 5Million miles over 800 users have an average MPG of 120. Yes there is electricity energy there too, but for many states that is already cleaner than gas, and if not you can get renewable energy in almost every state.

The OP's post was later redirected as the Coulomb is NOT the one setting the rates, the owner/installer does.

 

Wake up call. Some Volt owners like to intermix plug & no-plug models of Prius without regard to the context of what they are actually replying. Let's at least try to be constructive...

And where the heck did the 120 come from? For those like my mom, who only has a 3-mile commute, the PHV is ideal.

So with regard to my mom, it would be interesting to see her seek out recharge opportunities. For example, the lake/park where she grew up and we still walk around from time to time just introduced 2 new ChargePoint stations, which are both free.
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