The first Porsche Taycan test cars have started appearing at Electrify America charging stations across the country… and pricing is not looking pretty.
By doing some simple math on the above image, you can see that Volkswagen charges about $1.50 / kWh making a fast charging stop almost as expensive as filling gas. By contrast Tesla’s ubiquitous Superchargers cost just 28¢ / kWh –– over 5 times less than what Volkswagen is charging to fill up the Porsche.
Granted, it’s not exactly an apples to apples comparison as Electrify America charges per minute while Tesla charges based on the amount of electricity consumed. But even in the states where Tesla is required by law to charge per minute too, Electrify America prices are much higher than what Tesla is charging.
Personally, I think charging per minute makes no sense. If there’s something wrong and the charging takes longer, now I have to pay more? Talk about adding insult to injury. And the incentives are completely backwards. If there’s something wrong with the charging speed, why pay money to fix it or improve it if charging faster will cause your revenue to decline (unless you raise prices).
If Volkswagen is serious about transitioning to electric vehicles and doesn’t want to just make compliance cars, they need to stop price gouging their customers. Buying an EV needs to be a better experience than buying a polluting car in every way. If charging up your electric car takes much longer but costs the same as a tank of gas, people will end up thinking “my gas car was better”. Maybe that’s what Volkswagen wants.
After all, Volkswagen was forced to build Electrify America as a $2 billion penalty for the Dieselgate fraud. If this charging network was Volkswagen’s way of making up for polluting our air with toxic gasses and lying to us about it, isn’t the way they’re ripping off their customers here kind of absurd? Is Volkswagen paying the penalty, or are they forcing it onto their customers?
This image was taken from following tweets by longtime Tesla customer @Dennis_p, who spotted the car at a nearby charging station: