Electrify America plans to raise the price of EV charging in March, with regular users seeing the biggest price increase.
Members of the company’s regular-fee Pass+ program will see rates rise to $0.36 per kWh, while non-members will pay $0.48 per kWh. Both rates add $0.05 kwh, but Pass+ members also pay a $4.00 a month fee (no change) and they will actually see a 15% increase in the fee are counted in.
The price-per-minute rate is also increasing. Customers will now be billed at $0.15 per minute when charging at up to 90 kw ($0.03) and $0.29 per minute for up to 350 kw (additional $0.05 per minute).
American power charger
“Electrify America has been able to maintain consistent and uniform rates since September 2020; however, growing energy and operating costs make our price adjustments necessary,” one A spokesperson for Electrify America told Green Car Reports. “Our focus remains on meeting the needs of electric vehicle drivers today and tomorrow by investing in expanding the network and enhancing the customer experience.”
According to the Energy Information Administration, the national average price of electricity is just 11.1 cents per kWh, and specifically for the commercial electricity a charging station can use, electricity costs have increased by nearly 11 percent compared to last year. So the price increase of the EA can be guaranteed on a simple cost basis.
Electrification of America price restart last in 2020—a controversial change that has effectively raised prices for some models that don’t charge at the top for their charging power tier.
Although the price increase for public electric vehicle charging is unlikely to affect driving petrol price increase willit deletes some operating cost advantage that electric cars have.
Electrify America charging station at Love’s Travel Stop
Demand-based charges—usually issued by utilities when electricity demand spikes from other types of businesses—can dramatically increase the cost that charging networks have to pay per kWh, and only some states, such as Massachusetts, is addressing why. Demand-based charges are primarily aimed at industrial power users, but charging networks have been impacted by them.
In this case, the price increase can be driven by profits, as Electrify America has repeatedly sought additional investment in an attempt to scale up its network.
