High standing charges facing EV charge point operators are one of the factors in the high relative cost of ultra-rapid public charging that need addressing, it has been said.
Zapmap co-founder and COO Melanie Shufflebotham said that according to Zapmap data, ultra-rapid charging was currently at around 75p per kWh on average, compared with around 7p per kWh for home charging.
Although Shufflebotham highlighted that most drivers of combustion-engined cars would still save money by switching to an EV given the relative cheapness of home charging, which most drivers mainly use, she said: “You can’t dispute the fact that it is quite expensive on ultra-rapid.
“I point you to a study by Charge UK, and what they found is, number one, high standing charges, so charge point operators actually have to pay a lot for their locations. Secondly, just the sheer wholesale price of electricity. I think those are the two key things.
“What can we do about it? [Reduce] VAT on public charging. [And] let’s reform the electricity market – OK that’s a bigger issue, but really also campaign about trying to get these standing charges down, because at the moment it’s based on capacity rather than actual usage. I think that would really help, because it’s really important to get these prices down.”
Shufflebotham was speaking at the Everything Electric Farnborough B2B EV Day, during a panel discussion on ‘Breaking Down B2B Barriers’.
This panel also featured Lorna McAtear, National Grid head of fleet and Association of Fleet Professionals vice chair, who said that fleet managers needed to be prepared for the issues around electrification to constantly change.
When asked about the barriers fleet EV drivers had faced, McAtear said: “I think one of the things we have to learn, and it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been doing this – every day, every year, there’s something new.
“We’re moving through this as a transition, so whatever problems we had five years ago, actually they’re not necessarily the same problems that we’ve got today, and we do sometimes get overly fixated on fixing a problem now because we think it’s there, when actually in two years’ time it disappears.
“I remember before Covid having a whiteboard up with a list of the cars, with a box around the one [with a range of] 200 miles. We’re now having cars that do 300 miles, and we’re starting to get vans that are doing 200 miles, so you can see how fast everything is shifting.”
