I don't get it? Why? Electricity is already priced. If it's about recovering the cost of installing the charger, why is this better than either a fixed cost part of the price or charging some adder on the market rate?
They'll need to periodically change the price to match the market anyway. Why not do it continuously?
These businesses always start with someone noticing that the average person wants to do something that an expert can do something very easily. For example, flipping a burger and handing it to you. Anyone can make a burger, but an expert can spend a few days and a few hundred bucks figuring out how to finish a hundred an hour including prep and cleanup for $x.xx per unit.
Next, they rent a space and train cheap labor to do whatever it is they want, and start advertising. Maybe it doesn't catch on, maybe people would have said, "A goofy looking building where teenagers just make burgers all day? I'm not going to that, I feel stupid, and I won't tell my friends to meet me there. Undignified", but actually in this timeline it caught on. No problem.
Since it worked in one place, it worked everywhere, so now there are hundreds of thousands of burger joints, and what makes the successful ones successful are marketing and logistics. There's a building somewhere where Wendy's executives get together and figure out how to secure access to cheap beef and potatoes and how much to bid for some children's entertainer to lend buzz to the products.
But what eventually happens, is that the original conditions that made the idea possible no longer exist. In the case of burgers, it is a lack of cheap beef and cheap labor that no longer exists. So Wendys has to struggle, and be seen struggling. They come up with ideas like "surge pricing" for burgers and get roasted in the press for being out of touch. The ideas seem sensible from their offices because they don't want to give up their executive salaries and go flip burgers for a living.
So investors are always looking for the next turn-key get-rich-quick scheme. Here, it's "charge your car for $15". Simple to say, simple to implement, and sounds like you might be able to sit in a big office building pretending to work: why, we could charge a little less or a little more! We're experts!
The problem that you've pointed out is: it's an illusion. They're not selling expertise. They're mentally skipping ahead to the part just before they start realizing that. Since you're not invested in the idea that only an expert can provide people with the electricity they need to get around, it seems dumb to you.
Feels weird when some people have a little 70kWh compact and joe over there has a 220kWh Silverado.
But man EV charging prices have gotten totally out of control. And the US is walking backwards shutting down amazing green energy wins that should have been helping us through this crisis.
The $15 is not in isolation. It may be less of a value to someone with that 70kWh EV (not a small battery) but compared to the other charging networks, that price is 1/2 to 1/3 of the price so its still a good deal.
I don't get it? Why? Electricity is already priced. If it's about recovering the cost of installing the charger, why is this better than either a fixed cost part of the price or charging some adder on the market rate?
They'll need to periodically change the price to match the market anyway. Why not do it continuously?
I can answer that with a comparison to burgers.
These businesses always start with someone noticing that the average person wants to do something that an expert can do something very easily. For example, flipping a burger and handing it to you. Anyone can make a burger, but an expert can spend a few days and a few hundred bucks figuring out how to finish a hundred an hour including prep and cleanup for $x.xx per unit.
Next, they rent a space and train cheap labor to do whatever it is they want, and start advertising. Maybe it doesn't catch on, maybe people would have said, "A goofy looking building where teenagers just make burgers all day? I'm not going to that, I feel stupid, and I won't tell my friends to meet me there. Undignified", but actually in this timeline it caught on. No problem.
Since it worked in one place, it worked everywhere, so now there are hundreds of thousands of burger joints, and what makes the successful ones successful are marketing and logistics. There's a building somewhere where Wendy's executives get together and figure out how to secure access to cheap beef and potatoes and how much to bid for some children's entertainer to lend buzz to the products.
But what eventually happens, is that the original conditions that made the idea possible no longer exist. In the case of burgers, it is a lack of cheap beef and cheap labor that no longer exists. So Wendys has to struggle, and be seen struggling. They come up with ideas like "surge pricing" for burgers and get roasted in the press for being out of touch. The ideas seem sensible from their offices because they don't want to give up their executive salaries and go flip burgers for a living.
So investors are always looking for the next turn-key get-rich-quick scheme. Here, it's "charge your car for $15". Simple to say, simple to implement, and sounds like you might be able to sit in a big office building pretending to work: why, we could charge a little less or a little more! We're experts!
The problem that you've pointed out is: it's an illusion. They're not selling expertise. They're mentally skipping ahead to the part just before they start realizing that. Since you're not invested in the idea that only an expert can provide people with the electricity they need to get around, it seems dumb to you.
Feels weird when some people have a little 70kWh compact and joe over there has a 220kWh Silverado.
But man EV charging prices have gotten totally out of control. And the US is walking backwards shutting down amazing green energy wins that should have been helping us through this crisis.
The $15 is not in isolation. It may be less of a value to someone with that 70kWh EV (not a small battery) but compared to the other charging networks, that price is 1/2 to 1/3 of the price so its still a good deal.
If the compact is occupying a space that could otherwise be serving Joe then it will be priced as such.