GridServe on Porsche charging service

[Scandinavian]

The distinction is that public charging remains unnecessarily high and apparently the more time you spend charging (which you can't control or pre-determine with any degree of accuracy) the more expensive it tends to become.

Yes in this is vey evident in the UK! We have much lower charging costs here in France with PCS! Ionity at 0.39 Euro, which is the same in all of Europe it seems, but other providers in the service are charged at a reasonable 0.49 Euro per kWh.
’UK charges 0.39 GBP and 074 GBP! And the exchange rate now is 1 GBP nearly 1.20 Euro! Hmmmm?

Per minute is charged with many of the providers signed up to the Porsche Charging Service - Gridserve being the topical one today. Only Ionity waives this.

Not on the new PCS once you are out of the initial 3 year free service. There is no per minute charge any more, only a fair kWh price!

’And to be fair, my car on a long road trip with battery precondition, has consistently charged at rates from 260 kw at low state of charge and never dropped below 150 kw util about 70-75% SoC. Mostly at Ionity , but also at Aral Pulse and a few more. And at 150 kW chargers I have noticed it stays at 150 kW even a bit over 70% SoC. I need to find a way to record the charging sessions, because they are very quick. One espresso and facility visit is all it takes!

I find it most interesting that the difference between home charging and Ionity charging, is so huge in the UK. here in France my cheapest rate at night time is about 0.17 Euro per kWh, so Ionity is only a factor of just over 2! In the UK between 0.07 and 0.39 GBP is huge, not to mention the normal PCS charge of 0.74GBP.

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[Throb]

Yes in this is vey evident in the UK! We have much lower charging costs here in France with PCS! Ionity at 0.39 Euro, which is the same in all of Europe it seems, but other providers in the service are charged at a reasonable 0.49 Euro per kWh.
’UK charges 0.39 GBP and 074 GBP! And the exchange rate now is 1 GBP nearly 1.20 Euro! Hmmmm?

Not on the new PCS once you are out of the initial 3 year free service. There is no per minute charge any more, only a fair kWh price!

It's only fair in France. A lot of other EU countries are too high on the new PCS (called "Plus"). Austria is €0.79 per kWh, NL is €0.69 per kWh, Ireland is €0.79.

Whichever way you look at it, the new PCS is awful compared to the legacy one. Thankfully I'm paying the old prices until 2026.

I do wonder if it's because France seems to have a lot of competition when it comes to charging. I certainly get the impression it does, anyway, from places like Lidl and Aldi.

 

[Scandinavian]

Maybe it is the competition?? No idea. But there seems to be a lot of competing networks in Netherlands as well, when I was there last time. Not sure about the price levels though.
’And if you like Ionity and can get by with using only them here, it pays off to subscribe to Ionity passport. 0.33 Euro per kWh plus about 12 Euro per month. I know the PCS has many thousands of charge points more, but it is a djungle! Compare Ionity per kWh pricing at 0.39 Euro at 6 Euro per month to PCS at 24.99 Euro. RIP off!!!

If we ever are going to see EV use on a large scale, the charging industry needs a good clean up. We need to get to transparent pricing, advertised along the routes and payment by credit cards. Whoever came up with idea on apps, subscription, dongles etc should be called out and xxxxxxx!!

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[W1NGE]

Yes in this is vey evident in the UK! We have much lower charging costs here in France with PCS! Ionity at 0.39 Euro, which is the same in all of Europe it seems, but other providers in the service are charged at a reasonable 0.49 Euro per kWh.
’UK charges 0.39 GBP and 074 GBP! And the exchange rate now is 1 GBP nearly 1.20 Euro! Hmmmm?



Not on the new PCS once you are out of the initial 3 year free service. There is no per minute charge any more, only a fair kWh price!

’And to be fair, my car on a long road trip with battery precondition, has consistently charged at rates from 260 kw at low state of charge and never dropped below 150 kw util about 70-75% SoC. Mostly at Ionity , but also at Aral Pulse and a few more. And at 150 kW chargers I have noticed it stays at 150 kW even a bit over 70% SoC. I need to find a way to record the charging sessions, because they are very quick. One espresso and facility visit is all it takes!

I find it most interesting that the difference between home charging and Ionity charging, is so huge in the UK. here in France my cheapest rate at night time is about 0.17 Euro per kWh, so Ionity is only a factor of just over 2! In the UK between 0.07 and 0.39 GBP is huge, not to mention the normal PCS charge of 0.74GBP.

Is VAT / sales tax levied where you are, 20% in UK which inflates the prices.

 

[Scandinavian]

Is VAT / sales tax levied where you are, 20% in UK which inflates the prices.

Yes it is! Same 20%.

One difference to the UK as I have understood it is that for home charging you only pay 5% VAT while public charging attracts 20%. Is that correct?

we pay 20% Vat on both home charging as well as public charging.
So my rate at home is 0.18 Euro per kWh during night at 02.00 to 07.00 and between 14.00 to 17.00.
All other times we pay about 0.24 Euro per kWh.
plus some environmental charges plus subscription etc. Smaller amounts though.

 

[Scandinavian]

During the spring I drove quite a lot. About 10,000km in an M5 competion. Not the most frugal car and consumption was about 11 - 12 liters per 100 km. We drove through France, UK, Netherlands. Belgium, Germany. Denmark, Sweden and Norway. I added up all the receipts for my petrol use and have estimated what it would have cost me to do the same trip in the Taycan. I had to note the distance driven in each country and then estimate the consumption in each country by the Taycan overall consumption. So if I drove 1000 km in UK I had used 228 kWh ( 22,8 kWh/100 km in the Taycan). To me the result was quite eye opening. I did add the yearly fee to the different charging subscription, assuming I would not use any more public charging during the rest of the year, which is not quite true, but…. that was my comparison! And I only bothered to compare by using Ionity, no other roaming charging networks, which would have been much more expensive. We are very fortunate to have such good Ionity coverage on the routes that we normally travel!

Petrol costs were 2243 Euros and gave 0.22 Euro per km!

 

[anonymouse]

, it effectively reduces the price per kWh from 79p to between 42p and 52p.

The spreadsheet is very helpful but do be aware that we may see much slower speeds at the top end if the charging curve. On road trips we should all be stopping at 80-85% but if someone goes to 100%, has a cold battery, and/or uses a charger which is struggling to get full power, they could get a cost surprise (on the legacy PCS rates).

The pricing incentivises us to free up stalls as the speed drops; but also you pay more if the charger underperforms!

Basically as long as you average 55 kW or more, you will do better than the Gridserve native rate.

Here’s the table I use:

 

[Murph7355]

I think one of the big factors here is that the networks are tying into petrol costs.

They know/believe motorists are used to getting humped, and used to paying £1.30-£1.80 per litre for fuel. I don't think it's any coincidence whatsoever that public charging prices work out quite similarly (lots of factors around efficiency of course, but broadly).

 

[anonymouse]

I think one of the big factors here is that the networks are tying into petrol costs.

well people say that but I’ve not yet seen anyone actually expose the business case for installing, maintaining, and operating a sizeable charging station. It is possible that it genuinely needs pricing of 55-79p/kWh to generate adequate returns. I don’t know.

 

[Scandinavian]

well people say that but I’ve not yet seen anyone actually expose the business case for installing, maintaining, and operating a sizeable charging station. It is possible that it genuinely needs pricing of 55-79p/kWh to generate adequate returns. I don’t know.

Petrol prices in Europe vary quite a lot. The prices along the Autobahn in Germany have been Very expensive. Aral 100 at over 2.5 Euro! So I guess every country may adopt their charging prices depending on a lot of factors. Local rules and government policies, electricity supply and electrification goals etc.

There is also a wide variation of the pricing at Ionity. In some countries there is a much lower price directly with Ionity Passport Power than in the PCS.

Prices in France , Sweden, Denmark and Norway are quite a lot lower with Ionity directly!

Disadvantage of course is that you need more apps or subscriptions to get other charging networks.

 

[W1NGE]

Yes it is! Same 20%.

One difference to the UK as I have understood it is that for home charging you only pay 5% VAT while public charging attracts 20%. Is that correct?

we pay 20% Vat on both home charging as well as public charging.
So my rate at home is 0.18 Euro per kWh during night at 02.00 to 07.00 and between 14.00 to 17.00.
All other times we pay about 0.24 Euro per kWh.
plus some environmental charges plus subscription etc. Smaller amounts though.

5% VAT on domestic electricity is correct.

 

[Murph7355]

well people say that but I’ve not yet seen anyone actually expose the business case for installing, maintaining, and operating a sizeable charging station. It is possible that it genuinely needs pricing of 55-79p/kWh to generate adequate returns. I don’t know.

Possible. But am not sure I believe in coincidence on this stuff.

Businesses are there to make as much money as they can...if Ionity can give us charging at 30ppkWh and they are still making a profit on that (they will be - am not sure anyone treats Porsche owners as charity cases) then more than that is more pure profit....

Gridserve used to be 69ppkWh (or less) and then miraculously prices closed in on other networks (upwards of course) despite electricity costs coming down at the time.

 

[anonymouse]

.if Ionity can give us charging at 30ppkWh and they are still making a profit on that (they will be - am not sure anyone treats Porsche owners as charity cases)

IONITY is a special case, though, because it is part owned by Porsche - think of 30p as an in-house discount constructed to make EV driving cheaper for all the manufacturers in the club (and 74p for outsiders). They also got a lot of EU funding to accelerate growth (although recent funding for expansion is from Blackrock who will demand good returns).

 

[Throb]

The spreadsheet is very helpful but do be aware that we may see much slower speeds at the top end if the charging curve. On road trips we should all be stopping at 80-85% but if someone goes to 100%, has a cold battery, and/or uses a charger which is struggling to get full power, they could get a cost surprise (on the legacy PCS rates).

Yes, but I took it for granted that the people reading this thread would know that. Effectively the chart shows the cost to "buy" various volumes of energy. What I do think it shows well is that for a deep charge, it may be cheaper to use a 150 kW unit than a 350 kW unit, something which people wouldn't necessarily think to do, especially when you're being charged per minute. The argument being, over a 30 minute charge, you can sometimes achieve a higher average rate of charge by keeping the battery temperature lower on a 150 kW until than a 350 kW unit.

Basically as long as you average 55 kW or more, you will do better than the Gridserve native rate.

Here’s the table I use:

I think your chart is simpler, and probably better, than my chart.

IONITY is a special case, though, because it is part owned by Porsche - think of 30p as an in-house discount constructed to make EV driving cheaper for all the manufacturers in the club (and 74p for outsiders). They also got a lot of EU funding to accelerate growth (although recent funding for expansion is from Blackrock who will demand good returns).

I have both BMW and Porsche charging schemes, and Porsche's is clearly better than BMW's, so I assume Porsche pay more to subsidise their drivers than BMW (although having less people to subsidise means Porsche can offer bigger incentives). It helps these companies lower their average fleet emissions and ultimately sell more special models like 911 GT3 RSs, which have huge margins for Porsche.

As a comparison, my BMW NL subsidised price for Ionity is a €0.15 discount off the PAYG rate, which is still awfully expensive, and much more than just getting an IONITY Passport subscription. This is why I use my Porsche Charging Service to charge my BMW.

 

[tigerbalm]

Porsche Charging Plus charge for kWh in Norway is outrageous at NOK 4.39 (0.37€). I am currently getting it for NOK 1.85 (0.16€) with the Porsche Taycan legacy plan.

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