Our charging provider went bankrupt. We can no longer charge our car at home. It’s a plugin hybrid with an electric range of about 50 km which has been enough for our daily driving needs (school and shopping). I'm back at the fuel pump.
Thanks, SD for cheap fuel at the pump (sarcasm). Lowering the reduction from 10 to 5 percent saved the inflation but killed the transition to renewable energy for private transportation. I now have a very expensive charging station without power.
It took more than two years to get the charging infrastructure in place and I had it for less than a year. Return on investment was two years. For unknown reasons, in exactly our case, no state subsidies applied. So financially the transition is not green yet.
You need more than a good technical solution to stay in business. You need a viable business model. And luck. Maybe someone else will take over the customer base. Maybe some other solution can be found. I’m optimistic that it will happen, but also that it will take a long, long time. So Sweden, this is what lagom means.
Charging away from home
Charging away from home is not feasible. I tested it again today. Even if I had charged at this place before, I needed to install a new app, share my social security number, and register a credit card for payment (which failed the first two times after which the app replied “you have added a payment option” in spite of the process failing). After a 40 minute visit, I returned to the car for a micropayment of 7 sek which will take me another 12 km electric. Enough to get home.
Clearly this problem has not been solved yet. My conclusion remains the same: Having an electric car requires infrastructure for charging at home. We are not there yet. Enjoy the warm summer. I better go buy an air condition unit.
