EA price increase

[LUCI GT]

I just received an email from Electrify America stating effective March 6 they will be raising their rates. I find this absurd considering all the downtime issues they continue to face.

New pricing after price increases

 

[hmp10]

Given how many of their "customers" end up unable to use their "service", I guess the carrying costs of charging stations that don't generate much revenue are starting to take a toll.

 

[HC_79]

What a slap in the face! Raising prices when you can't even deliver a reliable charging experience.

 

[borski]

What a slap in the face! Raising prices when you can't even deliver a reliable charging experience.

Actually, I think this is great. Raising prices means potentially more investment in infrastructure and potentially fewer people using it, which actually leads to better results overall. It's still way cheaper than gas, but this will help prevent people from using it as their daily charger rather than installing home charging, too.

 

[Adnillien]

Actually, I think this is great. Raising prices means potentially more investment in infrastructure and potentially fewer people using it, which actually leads to better results overall. It's still way cheaper than gas, but this will help prevent people from using it as their daily charger rather than installing home charging, too.

I thought that I was the only one thinking that it is good for EA to price charging so they can make a profit and still maintain the infrastructure. I know that is a big leap of faith that EA will start maintaining their infrastructure but again I am an optimistic person.

 

[HC_79]

Actually, I think this is great. Raising prices means potentially more investment in infrastructure and potentially fewer people using it, which actually leads to better results overall. It's still way cheaper than gas, but this will help prevent people from using it as their daily charger rather than installing home charging, too.

I thought that I was the only one thinking that it is good for EA to price charging so they can make a profit and still maintain the infrastructure. I know that is a big leap of faith that EA will start maintaining their infrastructure but again I am an optimistic person.

Lol! “Ok”

If you think EA is going to put this money towards maintaining its network then you guys are dreaming.

I’ll be the first to eat my words but EA has done nothing to prove they care about fixing its issues. They took the most recent investment from Siemens and put it towards chargers that still have the same issues. Smart money management right there!

 

[joec]

I thought that I was the only one thinking that it is good for EA to price charging so they can make a profit and still maintain the infrastructure. I know that is a big leap of faith that EA will start maintaining their infrastructure but again I am an optimistic person.

It’s counter intuitive, unless you’ve run a business. When you can’t keep up with demand, you raise prices until you can support your remaining customers and still make a profit.

EA’s problem is they have promised years of “free” charging to too many customers at this point, so the higher pricing for paying customers might not help enough in the short term. They should end all deals for free charging on future customers immediately until they can massively improve supply and reliability.

My guess is that they make way too much from companies like Lucid on those deals to give them up easily, though. They want to have their cake and eat it, too. Which is why Lucid should be looking to offer something else as an alternative, since this relationship with EA is only tarnishing their brand. Offer free or discounted home chargers instead of free road trip miles. It’ll probably cost Lucid less, and it’ll move the incentive to charging at home, which is a better customer experience, anyway.

 

[borski]

It’s counter intuitive, unless you’ve run a business. When you can’t keep up with demand, you raise prices until you can support your remaining customers and still make a profit.

EA’s problem is they have promised years of “free” charging to too many customers at this point, so the higher pricing for paying customers might not help enough in the short term. They should end all deals for free charging on future customers immediately until they can massively improve supply and reliability.

My guess is that they make way too much from companies like Lucid on those deals to give them up easily, though. They want to have their cake and eat it, too. Which is why Lucid should be looking to offer something else as an alternative, since this relationship with EA is only tarnishing their brand. Offer free or discounted home chargers instead of free road trip miles. It’ll probably cost Lucid less, and it’ll move the incentive to charging at home, which is a better customer experience, anyway.

Yup. Raising prices results in fewer customers but often the same or increased revenue, which allows them to ramp up slower / more methodically.

Also, I’m optimistic because this is hard and at least I believe they want to not suck.

 

[Tesla2.0]

I have a 25 min Gear Guard video (Sentry Mode) recorded on R1S at Tucson, Arizona of EA maintenance technician actually opening up non-working stalls next to me to troubleshoot. I do think they care and put lots of work going around to fix them. I see them driving R1T truck juicing their own fuel came loaded tools in gear tunnel. The problem is it’s just a lot of manual labor to troubleshoot each one to get them back up running, and there are many stalls per station. They simply cannot keep up the demand, as I check now, that particular station still have 2 stalls down. The one close to my house is always 1 stall down and the wait list is long in outlet mill.

Being 350 kW monopoly and needed to curb demand while they are replacing old station, I believe raising price is good unpopular strategy.

 

[Tesla2.0]

Seeing Denver, Colorado having more EA stations than entire state of Texas brought me hope that Texas will get caught up in newer EA stations with these price increase.

 

[hmp10]

Electrify America received $2 billion in initial funding from VW in a settlement to avoid criminal prosecution for Dieselgate. That funding was slated for the 10-year buildout plan of its network, running from 2017 to 2027. In mid-2022 Siemans brought another $450 million to the table as EA's first external investor, with the funding earmarked for equipment upgrades.

My questions are:

- Is the $2 billion dollars already spent?

- If so, why has 10 years of funding been spent in only 5 years on an incomplete network that has been plagued with reliability problems from the outset?

- If not, why should EA be raising prices now to fund investment in infrastructure? That $2 billion settlement was in the nature of a penalty for committing fraud and should not be amortized by the rate structure.

If VW is arguing that EA needs to be able to amortize the $2 billion investment, then the settlement with the government was not a penalty but actually an inducement for VW to create a new profit center.

 

[austinlucid]

EA’s problem is they have promised years of “free” charging to too many customers at this point, so the higher pricing for paying customers might not help enough in the short term. They should end all deals for free charging on future customers immediately until they can massively improve supply and reliability.

Does anyone know the structure of EA's deal with Lucid and others? I would have thought that since EA knows exactly how much power is used by each customer for each car, they would just charge Lucid a (discounted) rate for each kWh used by Lucid owners.

Of course, since end customers pay nothing incrementally for usage they wouldn't have any incentives to not "overuse" EA, but if it were priced correctly to Lucid I would hope that higher usage results in more revenue to EA, as opposed to if EA just charged a flat rate per vehicle for the 3 "free" years.