Oasis-style dynamic pricing for electric car charging “on the way”

Petrol-style regional cost variations and dynamic, grid-related pricing will come to public EV charge points within 12 months, according to the boss of one of Europe and North America’s largest charging-solution providers.

Joe Gorman, Head of Europe at Chargepoint, told Auto Express that he thinks we’ll see dynamic pricing “within the next 12 months, for sure”. The process, whereby individual sites can adjust their prices depending on demand and available grid capacity, would potentially allow drivers access to cheaper electricity during periods of low demand.

On the flip side, it would also allow these same sites to ramp up prices during busy periods, or when demand on the grid is particularly high. Gorman countered this with an anecdote from a German supermarket chain he works with, which, thanks to an extensive array of solar panels, has been known to offer loyalty-card customers free top-ups while they shop.

Some UK-based charge-point operators (CPOs) already implement peak and off-peak rates, but the majority are fixed rather than variable. InstaVolt, for example, recently announced cut-price charging between the hours of 10pm and 6am. Ubitricity, which runs a network of slower (AC) lamp-post and bollard chargers, offers an off-peak rate of 45p/kWh from 11pm to 6am.

As a so-called ‘charging-solution provider’, Chargepoint builds much of the hardware and software for companies like InstaVolt. Gorman told us the technology required to implement dynamic pricing is already embedded within its products, making the process relatively straightforward.

When asked why more CPOs don’t therefore use dynamic pricing to attract customers already, Gorman said it’s largely down to how these companies do business. Conventional petrol stations “make most of their money in the shop” he told us, whereas CPOs rely more heavily on selling the electricity. It simply isn’t in their interest to offer lower prices, even during off-peak periods.