I recently signed up Octopus Electric Universe, and whilst I haven’t used it yet, it did give me an idea. The concept behind Electric Universe is that you tap your membership card and instead of your credit / debit bard being billed, instead Octopus pick up the tab and you pay at the end of the month via your energy bill. At least if you’re an Octopus customer, non Octopus customers can sign up too.
And the idea…. is that Rapid Chargers could supply “you” electricity at “your” suppliers rates. At the moment, Rapid Charger networks buy electricity at the market rates for business which is why Rapid EV charging costs have risen much faster than domestic electricity. But what if that charger was essentially just an extension lead from your house? Paying at YOUR unit rates? (plus a convenience fee to the charging network, which I would not begrudge, unless it was outrageous). For those of us on say Octopus Go, (40p / 7.5p) they could even introduce a third rate, equivalent to their normal non-time-of-use tariff (30p ish + the convenience fee?). And of course, this would solve in a stroke the problem of owning / leasing an EV but having no way to charge it at home.
I think this is more than feasible – Octopus have already demonstrated that EV charging can be billed directly to your energy account, and electricity is “virtual” anyway (You can pay extra for “green” tariffs but you get the same stuff as someone being powered by coal), so viewing a Rapid Charger merely as 50 mile long, 150kW extension lead from your property is not that preposterous. But…. (sigh), it would take an act of monumental political will to get something like this passed, especially in the current climate