For years, the story of EV adoption was range anxiety: will I make it there, is there a charger when I need one. McKinsey's Mobility Consumer Pulse 2026 survey found something that should matter more to operators than to carmakers: affordability has now overtaken range as the biggest obstacle to buying an EV. Industry researchers have started calling the successor condition "charge anxiety," and cost is one of its five named components, alongside hardware, software, location and time.
That is not a vague sentiment. You can see it in a single public number. In the UK, InstaVolt's standard ad-hoc rate sits at 92p/kWh, the highest headline price of any major network in the country, according to Zapmap's rapid charging price tracker. Its off-peak, in-app rate is 55p/kWh for eleven hours a day. That is a 40% gap between what a driver pays tapping a card at the charger and what a driver pays who has the app open and happens to be charging between 8pm and 7am.
Why the ad-hoc number is the one that sticks
Most operators would point out, correctly, that regular users actually pay closer to the lower figure. Off-peak windows are wide, apps are free, and plenty of drivers already route around the expensive hours out of habit. From an operator's revenue model, the ad-hoc rate is often closer to a ceiling than a typical transaction price.
But that is not how the number travels. The ad-hoc rate is the one that ends up in price-comparison articles, in "cheapest and most expensive charging networks" roundups, in the moment a driver without the app pulls up because it is the only charger on their route. It is also the rate a first-time EV owner, still deciding whether the car was a good idea, experiences before they have learned which app unlocks which discount. Charge anxiety is not built from your average transaction. It is built from the worst experience someone remembers, and for a lot of drivers that is the sticker price on the screen the one time they did not have a workaround.
The gap is a design choice, not a footnote
A two-tier structure, ad-hoc versus app or off-peak, is common and defensible. It rewards planning, it manages load, and for operators experimenting with dynamic or membership pricing it is often exactly the right shape: a smarter, demand-aware base tariff for regular users, with a simpler discount layer for members rather than a flat rate everyone pays regardless of when they show up.
Where it becomes a liability is when the gap between the two numbers gets treated as a pricing afterthought instead of something actively managed. A 92p versus 55p spread is a deliberate structure with a headline consequence attached, whether or not that consequence was priced in. Operators who never sit down and ask what their highest published number looks like to someone who has never charged with them before are letting a number get set by accident that a comparison site or a frustrated post on a driver forum will happily amplify for them.
What this means in practice
None of this argues for collapsing the gap and pricing everyone the same. A driver who charges at 3am off-peak is genuinely cheaper to serve than one who shows up at the exact moment your local grid and your local demand both peak, and pricing should reflect that. The argument is narrower: know your own gap, know your own ad-hoc ceiling, and treat both as a conscious choice rather than whatever the tariff table happened to default to. If affordability is now the thing standing between a driver and their next EV, the price the industry gets judged on is not the smart, demand-aware number your pricing engine landed on for a regular user at 2am. It is the number on the screen for someone who just needed a charge and did not know there was a cheaper way.
We run our own charging network and price it ourselves, ad-hoc rate included, which is exactly where a gap like this stops being theoretical. What does your own ad-hoc-to-discounted spread actually look like, and would you be comfortable with it showing up in a comparison article tomorrow?
Frequently asked questions
Why did affordability overtake range anxiety as the top EV adoption barrier?
According to McKinsey's Mobility Consumer Pulse 2026 survey, cost has become a bigger obstacle to EV adoption than range for the first time in recent tracking. Researchers describe the successor to range anxiety as charge anxiety, made up of five factors: hardware, software, location, time and price.
What does the InstaVolt example actually show?
InstaVolt's UK ad-hoc rate is 92p/kWh, its off-peak in-app rate is 55p/kWh for 11 hours a day. That is roughly a 40% gap between the walk-up price and the discounted price, and it illustrates how a two-tier tariff structure can create a headline number very different from what most regular users pay.
Is a two-tier ad-hoc versus discounted pricing structure a bad idea?
No. Rewarding off-peak charging or app usage is a common and often sensible way to manage load and reward planning. The issue isn't having two tiers, it's whether the size of the gap between them was ever a deliberate decision rather than a byproduct of the tariff table.
What should an operator actually check?
Look at your own ad-hoc-to-discounted spread the way an outsider would: what does a first-time driver without your app see, and would that number hold up in a price-comparison article? Then decide consciously whether that gap reflects your actual cost-to-serve difference or just accumulated defaults.