The price of topping up electrical automobiles at council-owned charging factors is about to rise after it was revealed present costs are half these at some filling stations.
Transport convener Scott Arthur mentioned the council was successfully subsidising electrical automobile drivers and its charging community was working at a loss due to the soaring cost of electrical energy.
Now he’s proposing a movement at Thursday’s transport and setting committee to finish the subsidy and herald a charging construction that may be quickly adjusted to replicate altering market pressures.
The council recently rolled out 81 new chargers, serving 141 charging bays throughout town, funded by £2.three million from Transport Scotland, as a part of the drive to encourage the take-up of cleaner, low emission transport.
Cllr Arthur mentioned: “Electrical automobiles are a part of the longer term however the value at which the council is promoting electrical energy to folks with electrical automobiles is decrease than you may get electrical energy for inside your own home. I don’t suppose the council must be promoting reduced-price electrical energy to folks, notably simply now when many cannot afford to modify their heating on inside their home.”
He mentioned Shell petrol stations had the costliest costs for EV charging, at double the quantity the council offered electrical energy for. “Someone mentioned to me they had been fed up with the council’s EV chargers as a result of there have been all the time queues. I feel there can be queues at petrol stations in the event that they had been giving freely petrol at half value.
“Hopefully we’ll change the costs so the service pays for itself. We nonetheless need exterior cash to come back in to assist us put money into the community, however when it comes to employees, enforcement and energy we anticipate all that to be self-financing.”
The council charges 35p per kiloWatt-hour (kWh) for its fast chargers, 30p per kWh for quick chargers and 25p per kWh for traditional chargers. Cllr Scott mentioned another native authorities charged about the identical as Edinburgh, some charged much less and others extra.
“We need to deliver the worth as much as replicate the price of us working the community, so we break even There’s lot of issues the council might select to subsidise and I don’t suppose electrical automobiles is considered one of them.”