Pricing Info

israndy

israndy

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Joined
Dec 28, 2021
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23
It would be great if there was some place on the internet that tracked the cost of EV charging. There are LOTS of ways to find the cost of gasoline and there are almost infinitely more gas stations that charge stations. If there was at least a FIELD to fill out with the cost it would make travel easier. People sitting at a charger might take the time to fill out the info they are observing during their charge session.
 
Definitely an interesting and popular idea, but in terms of practicality and data "freshness", very difficult to implement, especially at this stage.

Some of the issues that come to mind are the fact that there are so many different pricing schemes. Unlike gasoline which is charged by the gallon everywhere, with charging stations you have per kWh, per minute, tiered per minute, on/off-peak pricing, members-only pricing, free and discount programs (e.g. 3 years free charging at Electrify America; 1000 miles of free Supercharging from Tesla). Trying to capture all those variations in a concise and understandable fashion is definitely a task I'm not up to right now!

The other thing is that for many areas, it's not like there is a huge choice anyway. If you are on a road trip, you pretty much have to stop at such and such charging station, regardless of the cost. It's not like you exit the highway and can then shop around for the best deal among the 10 stations located at that exit.

That said, I think an interesting variation would be a simple $, $$, $$$, $$$$ rating. Subjective, yes, but I think it would be possible to assign a $ (free or almost free), $$$$ (clearly the site host doesn't want to encourage charging here--typical at car dealerships) rating to the extreme, and then be choose between $$ (below typical) and $$$ (above typical) to the remainder.

Expanding the idea even a bit more, maybe even have a 3 category rating system: size, cost, reliability

Probably a better idea for a site like Plugshare, but if they're not going to do such a thing, maybe I could try it here.
 
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I get that you don?t have control over stations cost collection, but you could encourage it: 

When I Check-In I could be presented with not only How Fast? but also How Much? Since you guys have ALL the chargers (hopefully) you should be able to see every scheme for charging for power. As you discover new schemes, you can add them to a pop up menu. Initially it would be Free or $/kWh or $/Min or Other, but you can add new ones as they come along. For example, Tesla now has Peak charging, add that to the pop up and people can confirm the total cost they were charged lines up with the math for whatever scheme the station uses. 

So, ?I got 10 kWhs? would be the other thing they enter next to which plug they used and how fast the connection was. The app could then calculate based on collected rate info what they should have paid, another box could be used to agree that?s what they paid. If they click ?Nope, not what I was charged? they are shown how to change the rate by editing that station, or the info is forwarded to the Network Agent responsible for keeping their info correct on Plugshare.

Would be nice if Tesla and them would put their rates in Plugshare, update them directly. But if they don?t provide the info then the above method would allow it to be rather quickly sourced from the crowd. That?s your raison de ?tre.
 
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