Glasgow will become the latest UK city to start billing the public for the use of electric vehicle charging points after costs leapt to £215,000 over the last 12 months.
Regular readers of our newsletter will have seen we recently lobbied the Government to give detail on how EVs will be taxed, and it seems the notion of free public charging and no tax is now about to take another hit.
Councillors in Glasgow will be asked to back plans to introduce charges on the public network with rates varying depending on the speed of charge. Glasgow Live is reporting these to be 16p per kilowatt-hour (kWh) for slow (7kW) and fast (22kW) chargers and 20p per kWh for rapid (50kW) units.
The total bill for running the 218 public charge points in Scotland’s second city has seemingly taken many in the council by surprise, after around 4,0000 drivers used the charging points with the electricity alone costing £93,000.
The rest of the cost was consumed by maintenance.
An overstay fee of £1 per minute, charged once a driver is over 15 minutes late returning to their car, is also proposed.
A council report states transport accounts for around 25% of the city’s CO2 emissions and with Glasgow targeting becoming a carbon neutral city by 2030 – it’s becoming a little difficult to see why these charges are being introduced.
Do you currently pay for public charge stations or are you against this added cost? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
