Is Dynamic EV Charging Pricing Unfair to Drivers?

The moment you run time based pricing on a charge point, the question arrives on its own. Why does the same kilowatt hour cost more on Saturday afternoon than on Tuesday morning? There is rarely a calculation behind that question. There is a feeling behind it, and the feeling is that the price moves exactly when the driver can no longer avoid it.

Waving that objection away does not work. It is the most common question about any tariff that does not show the same number all year, and the answer decides whether your pricing model survives its first quarter.

Why does a moving price feel unfair?

Because people never judge a price in isolation. They judge it against a reference they already carry. Daniel Kahneman, Jack Knetsch and Richard Thaler described that mechanism in the American Economic Review in 1986. They asked respondents about a hardware store that raised the price of snow shovels from fifteen to twenty dollars the morning after a heavy snowstorm. 82 percent called that increase unfair. When the same increase followed a rise in the store's own costs, a majority accepted it. Their conclusion: a seller may pass on costs, but may not take extra margin purely because the buyer is stuck at that moment.

For a charging site that is a useful compass. A price that rises purely because it is busy lands in the category people reject. A price that is fixed per time block in advance, and that a driver can plan around, does not. The difference is not the size of the amount but who held the information when the choice was made.

Figures from other sectors point the same way. In a YouGov survey across seventeen markets, fielded in spring 2023, 33 percent of adults considered dynamic pricing for concert tickets fair and 49 percent considered it unfair. For cinema tickets acceptance stood at 40 percent, for theme parks at 38 percent. Same technique, different acceptance. What differs is how well the customer knows the rule beforehand and how easily they can go elsewhere.

Is dynamic charging pricing unfair?

No, not by itself. A dynamic charging tariff becomes unfair when the driver only learns the price after the fact, when the price can climb during a running session, or when there is no ceiling and no cheaper alternative. It is fair when the rule is published in advance, the price locks at the moment the session starts, a known ceiling applies, and the driver can pick a cheaper window or a member rate. A fair dynamic tariff is one whose pricing rule is knowable in advance and whose amount is fixed from the second the connector locks. Fairness is therefore about predictability and choice, not about a number that never moves.

That is also the line between this and surge pricing. Surge raises the price during the scarcity itself, with no ceiling and no announcement. Demand aware pricing moves inside a published grid, between a floor and a ceiling you set yourself. Confuse the two and you end up defending the wrong model.

What does regulation already require?

The law covers precisely the predictability part, and not the movement part. AFIR, Regulation (EU) 2023/1804, has applied since 13 April 2024. It requires that all price components are known to the end user before a charging session starts, that prices are reasonable and non discriminatory, and that the ad hoc price at recharging points of 50 kW and above is based on the price per kilowatt hour. Components are shown in a fixed order, with the price per kilowatt hour first.

In the Netherlands the consumer authority ACM adds a layer for consumers. The provider of the charge point or the charging card has to state in advance what someone pays per kilowatt hour, including taxes and every mandatory cost. How that is communicated is up to the provider: a sign or screen at the unit, the website, or the app.

Note what is absent. No rule requires the amount to stay the same throughout the year. Transparent and static are two different things. The regulator asks that the driver knows where they stand at the moment they plug in, and that is exactly what a well designed dynamic tariff delivers.

Which design choices make the difference?

Four choices decide whether the same price curve reads as reasonable or as exploitation. They cost no revenue, only design attention.

The fourth row matters most and is skipped most often. A price difference without an alternative is a penalty. The same price difference next to an off peak window is a choice. On our own charge points that is where the discussion turns: not when we explain how the model calculates, but when someone sees that a cheaper moment sits next to it and that the price is on the screen before they start.

Underneath all of this sits plain engineering. The price has to be right on your own screen and at every eMSP and roaming hub that passes it on, because sent and applied are two different events. That is why tariff deviation in the CDR deserves its own monitoring. A driver who later sees a different amount than the screen showed is right to call it unfair, however careful your model is.

Why is an energy price tracking tariff not a fair base rate?

Because it exposes the driver to volatility they cannot predict and you to a margin you do not control. A tariff that passes on the spot price plus a fixed margin looks fair, since it follows costs. That is exactly why it appeals. But it is not demand aware: it can sit low during the busiest hour of the week and high at a moment when your unit stands empty anyway. For a passing driver who does not track day ahead energy markets, it is not predictable either.

Where such a tariff does belong is as a discount layer on top of a demand aware base rate, for members and subscribers who choose that rule deliberately and shift their charging to suit it. That group wants precisely that signal. As a recommended base or roaming rate for everyone driving past, it is a weaker product than it looks. There is more on that in the explainer on what dynamic pricing on charge points actually means.

What would you do differently on Monday?

Do not start with the model, start with the display. First check that the amount a driver sees before plugging in is exactly the amount on the invoice, in your app, on the unit and at every roaming partner. Then publish your ceiling, even if you rarely reach it. Finally, put one cheaper window next to it, visible in the same view as the expensive one. Those three steps cost no kilowatt hours of revenue and remove most of the fairness objection.

Want to know what demand aware pricing would yield on your own points before you change anything? The free potential analysis runs the numbers on your own utilisation, and the platform walkthrough shows how the price locks at the start of a session.