EV Charging At Apartments & Condos To Increase With New ChargePoint Solution
The company behind one of the largest electric vehicle (EV) charging networks in the world, ChargePoint, will now be offering a new service program designed specifically for those living in apartments and condos, according to a press release sent to CleanTechnica.
Given the common issues with regard to EV charging for those living in apartments or condos, the new program is certainly quite welcome — and can potentially go a long way toward improving the EV owning/leasing experience of those living in such places.
“ChargePoint is a trusted network with the most expansive collection of publicly available stations in North America and the largest community of drivers. Now, drivers living in apartments and condos will have access to the same network they use at work and around town with a personal charging station at their individual parking spot,” stated ChargePoint CEO Pasquale Romano. “With no long-term commitment, 24/7 support, and a charging station provided to the resident at no cost, we’re making it even easier for property owners to offer EV charging.”
Property managers that choose to participate will be responsible for prepping the individual parking spots with appropriate wiring, as well as setting a price for electricity. ChargePoint will then bill the resident a one-time activation fee and a continuing monthly subscription fee for EV charging services for as long as the resident uses it. As there are no long-term contracts involved, everything is done on a month-to-month basis. When a resident moves out, the charging station will simply be deactivated until a new resident subscribes.
As part of the new program, the users of the service will be able to pay the property owner of their apartment/condo for electricity usage through their ChargePoint account — rather than through separate means.
“Electric vehicles are here to stay and gaining in popularity. The competitive nature of the multi-family industry lends itself to adapting to consumer needs and allowing EV owners access to charging in the apartment environment seems a natural evolution. EV owners represent high quality residents and facilitating EV use helps us with our sustainability goals. It’s a win-win scenario,” stated Rod Standard Development Director at Sobrato. “The ChargePoint Multi-family Home Service has given us an affordable and scalable program to offer a top-of-the-line-amenity to our residents.”
Sobrato has been partnered with ChargePoint customer for over 4 years now, with EV charging stations now located at 8 of its differet property locations.
Image Credit: ChargePoint
It would be great if they could sort out the pricing on these as a typical chargepoint unit will charge 3.5x the normal “retail” residential electricity rate for power. If this applies at these units as well, the savings from cutting over to an EV won’t pan out (the tesla claim that the avg driver saves $10,000 over 5 years in fuel).
The real downfall of all these charging stations is the pricing per kWh. And not one of Cleantechnica’s articles have discussed this!!!
Apartment managers would want a piece of the pie, Chargepoint will of course tack in their service fees, all for the price of convenience. The result: the planet is the loser if the total charge is more expensive than your base rate at home and even more expensive than the cost of gasoline per mile! The managers and ChargePoint will have to recover their administrative overhead and billing costs plus the transaction costs. I can see no way this losing business is going to be cheaper than gasoline per mile. If you disagree, show me the current billing charges of ChargePoint.
Why not start with the cost spread between driving an EV and ICEV?
13,000 miles with a 35 MPG ICEV using $3/gallon fuel = $1,142/yr. $93/mo.
13,000 miles using 0.3/kWh at $0.12/kwh = $468/yr. $39/mo.
There’s some room in there for charging some fees. And if either the charging system or apartment owner gets greedy people will look elsewhere for their charge.
precisely Bob! Greediness will be the end of this. Now if they charge at the highest tier, at about $0.36/kWh plus monthly charges of $10/month for Charge point and $10/month for administration by Apartment managers plus 10% surcharge… That would be
13,000 miles @ 0.36/kWh plus $20/month service fees plus 10% surcharge = $1,808.40/year for EV or $237/month.
So what are Chargepoint’s fees and the average rate charged by Apartment managers?
The best scenario that I have been advocating for is that Utilities should install these charging stations for their additional revenues and do it according to their current programs for EV. It is impossibly viable for other businesses like ChargePoint to do so without exceeding the rate of the utilities.
I don’t think you understand how tiers work. First, just getting to e.g. 300% baseline would require driving like 40’000 miles/year.
Second, reaching this threshold means subsequent kW⋅h will be expensive, but doesn’t change the (lower) rate at which all the previous ones were consumed that month, so the average cost per kW⋅h remains much lower.
Finally, those charging stations will likely be on a commercial plan anyway, and none of the ones I know of are tiered.
And btw, yes, charging network operators obviously have to bill something on top of utility rates to make any money. If utilities enter that market, whatever discounted rates they grant themselves should IMHO be made available to other players as well so as to maintain competition.
It isn’t about tiers. Do you have actual numbers of typical charges or should you shut up?
Dial it back, please.
I was replying to @marionmeads:disqus, please read things in context.
I’ve been driving an EV for years and researching the topic well before that so I may be able to answer your question, if you could only formulate it a bit more clearly and politely.
nice to have some very civil people here. thanks, @disqus_Y8AXDz5LG0:disqus. and i would be curious to see some $ numbers.
GCO, I don’t think you know how it works. Before you install solar, you would have already known about tiers. There are variations amongst various utilities. There are differences in commercial and residential.
One of the things you don’t know about are the various other programs specifically for EV owners plus the TOU rates. The rates from the utilities for EV owners are a bargain, sometimes dipping to 25 to 40% less than the lowest base rate. This really made sense for home owners so that by owning an EV, you are not pushed into the higher tiers but rather charged on a different plan.
So there is no way in the world that ChargePoint service fees plus the Apartment Management fees piled on top of commercial utility rates would result in attractive rates per mile for EV owners living in apartments. The truth is that is a losing business proposition for all. If it is not, please show me the real (with reference) world numbers that it would be at par with homeowner’s EV rates or cheaper than gasoline.
Apartment are not allowed to sell electricity per the rules of the heavily regulated electrical biz.
Read the article spec9. They are allowed to set their rates. If not allowed for rates, there is always that service charge and other creatively crafted fee structures.
Nope! Apartment dwellers would be turned off from having an EV if their fuel cost per mile or per month would be more expensive than using gasoline for the regular cars! Especially that Apartment owners will set the rates on top of the monthly subscription fees of ChargePoint.
I used to spend well over 100$/month in gas (almost twice as much actually last time gas prices peaked). It should be easy for Chargepoint to offer subscriptions for significantly less.
As Chargepoint will want to have some chance to recoup its installations costs, it’ll probably require landlords to keep their fees low as well. Smart ones will surely understand that attracting more potential tenants with affordable charging is far more lucrative anyway.
charging points must be available everywhere, same as
parking slots to pay for parking,
does Chargepoint provide clean energy?
do they have contracts with Solar farms and Wind farms?
I’m sure Chargepoint will be supplying ordinary grid electricity. There’s some renewable component in even the dirtiest sub-grid, so it’s still cleaner than gasoline or diesel. If you want to know how clean or dirty your electric power is, go here: http://oaspub.epa.gov/powpro/ept_pack.charts
That is a great tool! Never saw that.
It might be new. I just ran across it a few days ago. I’m glad you like it.
What we really need is building codes that mandate all new parking spots for apartments to be pre-wired for EV chargers. All you really need is conduit (plastic tubing) that runs from the parking spots to the main circuit breaker or a large enough sub-breaker. It would be cheap and enable chargers to be added cheaply and easily later.
Agreed. Palo Alto passed such a law: http://cleantechnica.com/2013/10/02/palo-alto-requiring-new-homes-ready-electric-cars/
And then California as a whole: http://cleantechnica.com/2014/09/29/new-housing-in-california-to-be-ev-capable/
I think Shanghai did as well.
But need many more places to require this.
Initially this will be offered for free. It will be a loss leader.
Ultimately the rates are likely to be very attractive as most apartment charging will be at night, and as distributed resources unfold using excess capacity for peak shedding may end up being where Chargepoint makes its REAL dough.
Such agreements with car owners to use a small portion of their capacity to defray costs is well within imaginable opportunities.