AVDC the EV Charger Scam Continues
On clean air day, the government released stats(1) on the usage stats on Rapid Chargers that have been at least partly funded by grants from the Office of Low Emission Vehicles (OLEV) and it was no surprise to find that the trio of rapid chargers at Aylesbury Vale District councils (AVDC) offices are woefully underutilised.

Installed with public funds in the form of an OLEV grant of £112,500 and the balance of the £150k installation cost being made up by Nissan UK
The data release by OLEV shows that these chargers were used by the public a total of 85 times in the 12 months from January 17 to December 17.
Those 85 charges delivered a total of 1337.2kWh and generated an income of £666.50 which averages out at £0.50 per kWh which is comparable to other suppliers on cost per kWh model.
However, this is not how AVDC charging fee model works as they use a flat £8 per charge model regardless of the amount of power delivered.
On one occasion some poor soul was charged £8 for just 0.7kwH delivered in 4 minutes or £11.43 per kWh!
So each charger is used, on average, by the public just once per fortnight.
How has this happened?
AVDC will claim there is no demand however if there is no demand then why have ChargeMaster installed an Ultracharger in two locations on the outskirts of the town?
The real reason is that AVDC want to keep them for there “fleet” of Nissan Leafs that each travel less than a 100 miles a week(2) thus may need a maximum of one “full” charge per week which could easily be routinely achieved by using the fast chargers in the car park overnight and not the Rapids.
There is also the matter of access; the UltraChargers are available 24/7 not during office hours Monday to Friday. It is clear that the powers that be don’t want the public using the rapid chargers.
Within the council there has even acknowledgement that they do not want the public using the chargers — in an email seen by State of Charge from AVDC’s Sustainability and Energy Manager Alan Asbury which clearly states:
We charge £8/charge (6.5 to 8p per mile) which is still significantly cheaper than diesel (at minimum 11p/mile). Not least because we don’t want to encourage the general use of these chargers to a great extent. Most users charge slowly overnight at home for 2–4p (depending on ones energy tariff) and most people will do this for 90+% of the time. At present, our chargers are there as a public fall back and to give confidence to those that fear range might get them unstuck. Our fleet needs to be fully operational and the public use needs to be seen as a backstop for them in the event that they are running low on fuel, not a place to got for a cheap top up.
If we change this, we will not be able to operate our electric fleet viably. This could change if we had more chargers (as discussed earlier). Milton Keynes are charging payment rates equivalent to home charging but that’s because they won one of 6 Cities grants (that we also bid for and didn’t get … because we’re not a city) — Consequently they have £9m to spend on this agenda.
This article has already proved that the whole thing about not being able to operate their electric fleet is nonsense. With the 2 UltraChargers, this point about being a backstop is ridiculous as well.
AVDC have taken £150k of public funding to provide a sustainable service and then made it so unavailable that so they can charge their cars once a week!
Bet that if AVDC were to give someone even a £15k grant and they misused similarly, AVDC would have something to say about it.
Sources:
(1) OLEV Report : Electric Chargepoint Analysis 2017: Local Authority Rapids — GOV.UK
(2) Twitter thread: #Aylesbury on Twitter: “Another EPIC case of AVDC wasting public money.”