How Much Does It Cost to Charge an Electric Vehicle? (A comparison at home and on the road, with gasoline)::Few people know what a kilowatt-hour costs them, so they don’t realize how cheap EV home charging is versus gasoline. On the road, it’s more complicated.
There are a few similar things with “subscription discounts” on the CCS companies trying to stabilize income in the states.
Granted, charging installations are expensive as hell, and simple prices per kWh with regional electricity rates being all over the place truly isn’t a sustainable model.
Tesla’s infrastructure rollouts were certainly working as a loss leader because they had the cash to get it done, and subsequently ‘won’ in North America because any other charging experience outside of Tesla is awful. Other private startups just don’t have the resources to eat up-front costs, and I guess subscriptions are the easy way out, but just as you saying, they utterly suck for the consumer.
That’s why I think gigantic installs with mall-like facilities with higher-margin food/drinks and other amenities to kill time ala Buccees is where most will end up in the states. There is a similar, and much more elegant, setup in Germany with the “Sortimo Innovationspark” between Stuttgart and Munich I’ve seen in some videos.