Public charging costs: "Hosts" shoulder some of the costs of charging, when they benefit from customers attending their business
Pod Point Solo units at a development in St James' Quarter
Prior to the 2022 spike in electricity prices that followed the Russian invasion of Ukraine, free AC charging was not uncommon. Indeed, at Pod Point, where we'd allow our "hosts" (those who (usually) owned the chargepoints and car parks) to set the fee for using their chargepoints, the majority of our AC chargers were free to use. Once electricity prices more than tripled, understandably, almost no host was willing to take this risk - and, indeed, most now wanted their costs at least fully covered.
Today, essentially all public charging infrastructure that is being deployed is self-funded by CPOs who must set a fee that recoups all the associated costs of the charging infrastructure, and a margin. This has changed the mindset of the host from an enabler (and beneficiary) of the EV transition, to a market participant with an asset (a parking space that can be a charging bay) to seek an income from. The public tariff you are paying must cover the following costs:
The charging hardware
Installation
Electricity
Operational costs (grid fees, maintenance, insurance)
Rent to the site owner
VAT @ 20% (and potentially business rates in the near future)
Margin for the CPO
There are circumstances where this makes sense. E.g. high powered charging infrastructure is extremely expensive. It is not reasonable to expect hosts to take on risky investments of £100ks on top of their core business models. But it's a pretty mad way to operate in - e.g. hotels.
As long-stay destinations, hotels do not require high powered DC charging infrastructure. You want lots of overnight AC chargers - cheap, easy to provide, easy to load balance to max out provision (N.B. 1 x three-phase 100A supply can power 1 x 50kW DC unit or 27(!) x 7kW load balanced sockets - DC wastes precious grid in these locations).
Hotels spend plenty on their amenities to attract customers. We expect to be charged an amount that covers its costs - water, laundry, disposables, electricity. I do not see that access to an overnight charger need be materially different to a plumbed bathroom. It would be utter insanity to put a contactless reader on the door to your hotel bathroom that takes a payment each time you want to use this amenity, allowing the hotel owner to outsource the refit of its bathrooms to an infrastructure fund that pays them a rent. If you found that system you would not stay there again - I believe the same should be true for hotel charging.
But it's not just hotels. Lots of other businesses spend on their amenities to attract custom. Hell, councils do in town centres to bring footfall to their towns. At some point we are going to get wise again to the idea that having customers visit is an end in itself, chargers encourage these visits, and it will become necessary to invest in provision.
