I made a few enquiries re the above and discovered the following. The chargers are owned by a private company who maintain them.A.T. aka Auckland Council supply the power but do not charge for it.The upshot is the Council pays for the cost of power and does not oncharge for it as well as losing the revenue for the parking places that are mostly empty but only EV,s are permitted to use them. !
sw20,
Feb 18, 9:33pm
That’s nice dear.
gazzat22,
Feb 18, 9:38pm
Yes it is Duckie isnt it. ?
sw20,
Feb 18, 9:42pm
Maybe you can run for council and change it if it upsets you so much.
alowishes,
Feb 18, 9:45pm
EVs are getting the soft touch from all kinds of authorities and government agencies, gee I wonder why?
gazzat22,
Feb 18, 9:53pm
Doesnt upset me at all ! The company is NZ wide and even has chargers in your city. If I ever get an EV it will be charged at home.!
curlcrown,
Feb 18, 10:38pm
Maybe you could pay my rates if it doesn't bother you.
sw20,
Feb 18, 11:07pm
If it doesn't upset you, why would you bother posting?
kazbanz,
Feb 18, 11:19pm
HMMM--Yea I'm not keen on this plan at all. Every other Aucklander is paying the running costs for those using EV's . That's not particularly fair.
gazzat22,
Feb 19, 12:36am
To inform people isnt that what this MB is for.Note I didnt offer an opinion just stated the facts. Considering that most Councils are struggling for money i would think they would be trying to get money from wherever they can and not subsidising private enterprise.
casualobserver,
Feb 19, 12:53am
In your enquiries, did you miss the part where AT was given a $160,000 grant towards the EV charging infrastructure?
s_nz,
Feb 19, 12:57am
LOL.
At the Victoria st, Downtown & Victoria park carpark's the EV charging spaces are well utilized, so it is a bit rich to claim the council is missing out on parking revenue.
Last time I went into the CBD, I was going to plug in at the victoria street carpark, but all three spaces were in use.
You can check the current status of these charge points at the below link. As of 1:42pm, all three are in use. (despite the carpark having 532 vacant car parking spaces)
Time limits (240min) have also been put on them to manage demand.
Re payment, please note that this is a paid park. Standard rates are $4/hr rounded up to a whole hour (i.e. 1:01 of parking costs $8), with a daily cap of $24.
My EV draws a max of 16A (3.7kW). at 16c/kWh, an hours charging would cost 60c. Given the hourly cost of parking I think giving away a little power for free is not a big issue.
Should note that the council is trying to do it's part to reduce emission's, flicking a dollar or two of free power here or there to encourage EV uptake does contribute towards this goal.
If you want something to get upset with, Look into vector (Auckland regulated monopoly lines company) providing 50kW fast chargers for free. These machines cost $50k each and car capable of pumping cia $8/h of power (at 16c/kWh) into an ev. Essentially paid for by all Auckland power users.
And opposed by many EV owners for the following reasons: - Local's charging here rather than at home to save $$ clog up the fast chargers for those who actually need to charge. (Odd given the max of $8/h that the chargers can pump out. most peoples time is worth more than that). - Undercuts networks (like charge.net) which are investing a lot of private money into a charging network, which obviously requires charging fees to make their business model work.
s_nz,
Feb 19, 1:01am
This has had a bit of controversy around it too. AT took the money expressly to install publicly accessible EV chargers.
Subsequently they have reserved some of the charging spaces for the cityhop car scheme (who pays them a lease), thereby prevent public access to those spaces. Despite the express purpose of the funds being for publicly accessible charging spaces, they have not to my knowledge given the EECA grant money back.
harm_less,
Feb 19, 3:44am
If you ever get an EV you will discover very quickly that home charging is by far the cheapest and most convenient.
gazzat22,
Feb 19, 4:03am
Chargenett are doing well by this arrangement then.How much did they pay for the chargers and installation as they dont pay a bean for the Electricity, thats down to Vector and AC
gazzat22,
Feb 19, 4:22am
Post#13?
s_nz,
Feb 19, 4:34am
Chargenet doesn't charge for use of these chargers.
And vector dosn't use the chargenet platform (they have their own app, and are yet to add any billing functionality)
3tomany,
Feb 19, 10:13pm
Unless you are on a long road trip, why on earth would an EV owner need to use a public charging station? If you charge it at night then surely it has enough energy to get through a days shopping. This is why they call Leaf owners the parasites' of the EV world. They are to cheap to buy a proper EV then carry that on using all the free or cheap charge stations even though they could have filled at home. We are in a faze of throwing coins into the basket for anyone who feels they deserve free everything.
aredwood,
Feb 20, 10:53am
Not all of us Leaf owners are like that. Since the leaf doesn't have active battery cooling, too much fast charging overheats the battery and reduces its lifespan. Those cheapskates will be complaining about failed batteries soon. Have also seen plenty of larger capacity EVs using the free chargers. And an unmarked van, driven by someone who was wearing a Bunnings uniform. Surely Bunnings have enough money that they can install their own chargers.
Remember that the Leaf created the demand to get these chargers built in the first place. And they acted as a cheap way of introducing lots of people to owning EVs.
Myself, I have to drive a van for my job. Not much point in me spending $70K or so to replace my Leaf with a Tesla Model 3. When most of my driving will still be in my diesel van. I only use the fast chargers on average once per month, even though I live only 5 min away from a free Vector charger. And I signed up for a Charge Net account before I took delivery of my Leaf.
bryshaw,
Feb 21, 8:17am
Electricity charging is cheaper at home, except when the power cuts arrive, and they will as soon as oil and coal are stopped completely by certain interest groups. Then you can use buses, which is the object of the exercise.
s_nz,
Feb 21, 11:10am
? This tread is about free (or at least included with paid carparking) EV charging. Much cheaper to use these than charge at home.
There is no way we are going to phase out coal and oil from the power grid in a way that will compromise security of supply. You can look at iceland as an example of a country with approximately 100% renewable electricity.
Obvious answer is to overbuild renewable's (we have heaps consented at the moment, just not enough demand to justify their construction), and keep some oil / gas / coal plants mothballed so we can spin them up to get us through a 1 in 50 dry year.
It's not like having coal / gas / oil power station prevented the need for a major power saving campaign back in 2001.
gazzat22,
Feb 22, 10:02pm
Seems that Chargenet are on a winner.They paid for the chargers but Auckland Council and ratepayers pay for everything else not counting the loss of revenue from parking that only EV/Chargenet cusomers can use.
bitsnpieces2020,
Sep 11, 5:15am
3 parks out of 500 + ? its not a big deal. And I think EV's are a rort, environmentally.
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