Electricity tariffs at the public charging infrastructure: roaming stress

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There is actually a lot of good news when it comes to public charging infrastructure: the number of DC charging parks and AC points is steadily increasing. Several providers are now competing for electric car drivers at freeway service stations or in front of shopping centers. Instead of many charging cards, just one is formally sufficient. Drivers of other brands can charge at Tesla's Superchargers if they want to. Even traction current has become cheaper. Nevertheless, there is a new problem: the market only works to a limited extent because low driving energy prices are often linked to a monthly basic fee. The charging infrastructure operators want to retain customers and are fighting each other with non-transparent roaming charges. Statistically, a car in Germany is driven 12,545 km per year, according to the Federal Motor Transport Authority for the year 2022. That's a good 1000 km per month. On average, mind you. The reality offers a broad spectrum, from the pensioner who occasionally drives to the supermarket to the long-distance driver who covers 50,000 km or more a year.

90 euros for 1000 km

For general consideration, 1000 km per month is still suitable. This is also the view of electric car rental company Nextmove, which regularly publishes a rate comparison of the public charging infrastructure. For example, after a price reduction at Ionity, a basic fee of 11.99 euros, 39 cents per kWh and an assumed electricity consumption of 20 kWh/100 km result in driving energy costs of 90 euros per month.

EnBW's frequent driver tariff costs 96 euros (17.99 euros basic fee at 39 cents per kWh), and at Tesla's Superchargers, owners of non-branded electric cars pay 86 to 104 euros (9.99 euros at 38 to 47 cents per kWh), depending on the time of day. Aral Pulse will also have to make an offer shortly: Aral Pulse is the new partner of ADAC e-charge and replaces EnBW. The many ADAC e-charge customers will receive the changeover on August 1; it can therefore be assumed that the prices will be announced in July at the latest.

So far, so good, you could say. Even lamppost parkers, who are completely dependent on the public charging infrastructure, can get away with an electric car: for 90 euros, you can currently get 48.6 liters of premium gasoline or 53.6 liters of diesel fuel in Hamburg. So there is price parity if a car with a petrol engine consumes 4.9 liters and one with a diesel engine 5.4 liters.

Contractual commitment undermines the market

The problem is that these charging prices only apply at the DC charging points of the respective operator and only with a contract. Anyone who feels reminded of the era before flat rates for cell phone use is basically right. The operators (industry abbreviation CPO for Charge Point Operator) want the high investments - now largely without subsidies - to pay off. The aim is therefore to bind customers to their own infrastructure in order to increase capacity utilization.

And preferably on the fast DC side (for direct current or direct current), because so much more kWh of electricity can be sold here per unit of time that AC (for alternating current or alternating current) becomes increasingly unattractive, although the initial investment is significantly lower depending on the location. The result is a completely unacceptable margin for electric car drivers at the public charging infrastructure, with 89  cents per kWh being charged at the AC pillar in individual cases.

Roaming charges as an instrument of power

The most expensive tariffs are usually the so-called "ad hoc tariffs". This refers to the price per kWh when there is neither a contract nor payment by app. CPOs often even offer a discount for this. Outrageous prices are the outwardly visible sign of the nasty battle for roaming, i.e. the question of how many cents are negotiated between the respective CPOs. This happens frequently, namely when the contract customers of operator A charge at operator B's charging stations. There is cut-throat competition here, in which small and regional CPOs have a weaker position than large providers, and MSPs(Mobility Service Providers), who do not invest in infrastructure at all but only sell the service, have little chance. One initial way of breaking up this structure could be to make price transparency mandatory. This concerns both a listing of price components by the CPO vis-à-vis the consumer and vis-à-vis other CPOs or MSPs.

AFIR could create transparency

Industry experts hope that AFIR, which came into force on April 13, 2024, will provide a legal basis for price transparency. AFIR stands for Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Regulation. This is a European Union regulation (2023/1804) that is directly binding. The situation is different with framework directives, which still have to be transposed into national law.

The AFIR is very, very broad and deals with a number of fuels and individual topics. Regarding the car charging infrastructure, for example, a network with a maximum distance between points is prescribed for the national states. In addition, a card reader is mandatory for newly installed charging points with a capacity of 50 kW or more (i.e. for virtually all future DC locations), as is comprehensible pricing. This may not look the same as at a conventional filling station because there are different tariffs from a wide range of providers. Nevertheless, the user must know in advance what he is paying. Unfortunately, the AFIR is not yet specific enough to bring about an immediate improvement.

The charging infrastructure therefore remains a work in progress. Much has improved. Currently, however, user-friendliness is regressing to the era of multi-card nonsense due to the obligation to sign a contract with a basic fee. Either you use the charging infrastructure of one (or perhaps three) providers or you are confronted with different apps and sometimes absurdly high prices.

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