New parking rules could see electric car drivers fined for charging EV

Electric cars: Man reveals how he was fined after charging car

Electric vehicle drivers may be confronted with fines and extra fees in the near future if they are found to have stayed too long charging their cars. From the start of April, a new £30 fine will be charged for those EV drivers who stay for more than an hour in the Scottish city of Aberdeen.

Similarly, motorists in Sheffield will be exposed to a £20 charge from April 1, if they stay at a public charging point for too long.

Charges have slowly been introduced in recent months, with chargepoint operators looking to manage the strain on their network.

In one instance, a driver left his vehicle charging overnight, expecting to pay £26, but was aghast to find a fine of £123 for overstaying, the Times reported.

One of the most popular chargepoint operators, Tesla, also charges an “idle fee” on its worldwide Supercharger network.

For every additional minute a car remains connected to the Supercharger, it will incur an idle fee.

In the UK, drivers are charged 50p per minute as an idle fee. This rises to £1 per minute when the station is 100 percent occupied.

The Tesla app allows owners to remotely monitor the vehicle, alerting them when their car is nearly charged and again when it is fully charged.

If the car is moved within five minutes, the fee is waived. These fees will only apply when a Supercharger station is at 50 percent capacity or more.

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ESB Energy charges an overstay fee of £8 after an hour, while Geniepoint, which has more than 870 chargers across the UK, charges £10 after 90 minutes and £10 for every hour and a half after that.

At the end of February 2023, there was 38,982 electric vehicle charging points across the UK, across 23,066 charging locations. 

This resulted in a 33 percent rise in the total number of charging devices since February last year, according to Zap-Map data.

It is feared these new fines, as well as the rising price of electricity and expensive up-front cost of the vehicles, may put drivers off from switching to electric.

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New data from the AA EV Recharge Report has found that the fastest EV charging rate is cheaper than petrol for the first time ever, although this only applies at off-peak times.

There has been an 8p/kWh reduction in off-peak ultra-rapid charging, meaning it is cheaper to charge than fill up with petrol for the first time.

However, that does depend on the time of day a person wants to charge their car and which operator owns the charging device.

Some off-peak ultra-rapid charging is cheaper outside of 6pm and 8pm, while others switch to off-peak only after 8pm.

The AA also believes that the Government missed a perfect opportunity to boost the transition to electric vehicles by cutting the so-called “pavement tax” or “kerb tax”.

Public charging attracts a VAT rate of 20 percent, compared to the five percent rate attributed to domestic energy use.

Jack Cousens, head of roads policy at the AA, said: “With new EV sales only increasing, the Budget was the moment to significantly invest in the public charging network while correcting the ‘kerb tax’ of mismatched VAT rates.

“Meanwhile, we were keen to see the government be more ambitious in expanding the EV charging network. 

“With around 40,000 devices currently in the ground, we will need to see a monumental shift in installations over the coming years.”

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