EV charging is costly in Texas
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Electric vehicle drivers in Texas face some of the highest charging rates at public stations.
By the numbers: It costs an average of 50 cents per kilowatt-hour to charge an electric car at a public charging station in Texas, Axios' Alan Neuhauser reports.
- That's compared with the national average of 45 cents per kWh, according to data from Stable Auto, an EV charger software developer.
Context: A typical EV with 300 miles of range usually takes about 75-100 kWh to go from empty to full.
Why it matters: Charging an EV at a public charging site in Texas costs about three times as much as in Nebraska — a gap that suggests EV charging companies are still figuring out how to price a top-off.
Yes, but: At least we've got it better than other states, like West Virginia, Connecticut, Arizona, Massachusetts and Kentucky, where prices range from 52 to 54 cents per kWh, according to Stable's survey of about 9,000 Level 3 fast-charging stations in January.
What's happening: Charging networks such as Electrify America, EVgo and ChargePoint consider a host of factors in setting their charging price — not least the local electricity rate.
- Cheap electricity in the Midwest, for example, may explain the discounts in Nebraska, Iowa, North Dakota and Kansas, which aren't exactly hotbeds of EV adoption.
Yes, but: The big gap in prices suggests something is amiss, Stable argues.
- The older a charging location, for example, the closer it hews to 40 to 50 cents per kWh.
- Gasoline prices also differ across state lines, of course, but not as greatly as EV charging rates.
What they're saying: "Prices are probably set incorrectly and don't reflect underlying supply-demand," Stable CEO Rohan Puri tells Axios.
- "There is still a lot of price herding in the industry with players, by and large, setting their prices based on what other nearby chargers have set their prices at."
What we're watching: More networks in the past six months have started adopting Tesla's variable pricing model, which accounts for the site location, time of day, and amount of power a station is delivering.