ChargePoint

I went with my parents to Irvine Spectrum yesterday to pick up an Apple iPhone 14 Pro Max. My mom wanted a new phone, so I ended up buying it for her. I think I have purchased all my parents’ Apple devices over the past five years. We got the gold-colored phone with 256 GB of memory, and it cost $1,199 before tax.

Since it was early Saturday afternoon, the Spectrum was packed with people. After circling the parking lot then parking structure, I finally found an open spot, but it was for EV charging. No problem, I thought. I was driving my Tesla Model S. However, the charger was from ChargePoint. I set up a ChargePoint account when I got my Tesla in 2016 but have never used it to charge my car. Regardless, I put the card on the reader, and it said ready to charge.

Since I have never used ChargePoint before, I did not know how much it would cost to charge my car. At this point, I did not really care. I was simply happy to park somewhere. I then got a bunch of emails and text messages and saw this:

$0!? That is great. I thought Irvine Spectrum was paying the charge fees to attract shoppers. I also received an email saying the rate will go up from $0.00/hour to $3.00/hour after five hours. This was not the total cost.

This was a level 2 charger with output of 199 volts at 30 amps or about 6 kW. Since we were just picking up a purchase, I would not be parked long enough to get a meaningful charge.

In the end, I charged 25 minutes and received 2.16 kWh. I was still charged $0.63 for the electricity, but my card was charged $10 so I have some credits on my ChargePoint account. The charge cost works out to about $0.29/kWh, which is about the same as what it costs me at home. It appears that Irvine Spectrum adds a surcharge of $3.00/hour if you are parked for more than five hours to deter charger hogs?

It was a positive charging experience overall. If you are there less than five hours, the charging fees are reasonable. I still think Tesla should put an urban 72 kW Supercharger station in the parking structure.