EVgo launches new pricing plans and a rewards program

EVgo is changing how it prices the electricity that gets doled out on its electric vehicle charging networ, and is launching a nationwide rewards program for its customers.

Starting in September, the company will start offering three ways to pay for charging on its network across the country. There’s the typical pay-as-you go option, which has the highest price-per-minute of charging and requires a $1.99 fee for each charging session. There’s a basic membership program that requires $4.99 per month of pre-payments toward charging, but which waives the session and (in most locations) offers per-minute rates that cost a few cents less. And now there’s a higher-tier $6.99 per-month subscription plan called EVgo Plus that drops the session fees and offers even more affordable pricing, and waives the $3 fee for reserving a charging stall.

In California, however, EVgo will no longer charge per minute of charging in order to comply with new state regulations. Instead, it will charge per kilowatt-hour (kWh). There will be three different pricing windows throughout the day: “early-bird” (12AM-8AM local time), “on-peak” (4PM-9PM), and “off-peak” (8AM-4PM and 9PM-12AM). The idea with these is to incentivize drivers to charge at hours when electricity is not only more affordable, but also when the grid is less stressed. EVgo says it may expand this windowed pricing structure to other states down the road.

“We want to make sure that we’re maximizing the positive impact of the grid and give customers choice,” EVgo’s chief commercial officer Jonathan Levy tells The Verge. “If you want to charge when it’s peak [hours] then that’s your choice, but there’s an economic reality.”

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