Ask an operator about pricing and you will hear a single number: ₹18, ₹22, ₹24 per unit. It is the only lever most networks use, and it is the one with the least headroom — bounded below by your energy cost plus demand charges, and above by what the driver would pay at home.
The operators with the best realisation are not charging more per unit. They are charging differently.
Idle fees are a throughput instrument
A DC bay occupied by a fully-charged car earns nothing and blocks someone who would pay. An idle fee after a grace period — typically 10 to 15 minutes — is not a revenue line; it is a mechanism for turning the bay over. The measure of a well-set idle fee is that almost nobody pays it.
- Set the grace period long enough to be fair — a driver walking back from a restaurant needs time.
- Show the terms before the session starts, not in a receipt afterwards. An unexpected idle fee produces a complaint; a disclosed one produces a returning driver.
- Consider waiving it overnight at sites where nobody is waiting. An idle fee at 3am is a penalty with no purpose.
Time of day: pass through what you actually pay
Most Indian commercial tariffs already vary by time of day, and many states apply peak surcharges and off-peak rebates. Operators who charge one flat rate absorb that variance themselves — subsidising peak charging out of off-peak margin, which is precisely backwards.
Passing it through does two things at once: it protects your margin during peak, and it gives price-sensitive drivers a reason to charge when your marginal cost is lowest. Fleets in particular will move entirely to your cheap window if you give them one, which converts your worst-utilised hours into your most profitable.
Charge different audiences differently
The same connector can serve a walk-up driver who will never return, a society resident charging overnight, a fleet with a monthly commitment and your own staff. Charging all four the same rate is a decision to lose money on some and business on others.
| Audience | What they value | Pricing shape |
|---|---|---|
| Walk-up public | Availability and speed | Full retail ₹/kWh, idle fee, no commitment |
| Repeat local drivers | Predictability | Slight discount via a wallet or membership |
| Fleets | Cost per km and guaranteed access | Committed volume rate, post-paid monthly invoice |
| Residents / tenants | Cost recovery, convenience | Near-cost ₹/kWh, billed monthly |
| Staff / internal | Nothing — it is a benefit | Zero or nominal, tracked for accounting |
Per-minute pricing has a narrow but real place
On slow AC, the scarce resource is the socket and the parking bay, not the energy. Per-minute pricing aligns the charge with the scarcity, and it removes the perverse outcome where a car that accepts only 3.3kW occupies a 7.4kW socket for six hours and pays almost nothing.
On DC it is usually the wrong instrument, because the taper is a property of the vehicle rather than a choice by the driver. Charging by the minute means a car with a poor charging curve pays a penalty for its own battery chemistry, which drivers experience as unfair — correctly.
What to do about promotions
Launch promotions are worth running and worth ending. Their job is to create the first visit at a new site; once a driver has charged twice, the habit is doing the work and the discount is pure margin loss.
- 01Cap total redemptions, not just the discount rate. An uncapped code will find its way onto a forum.
- 02Restrict to the sites that need demand. A network-wide discount subsidises your best sites for no reason.
- 03Target off-peak hours where possible — you are buying demand where you have spare capacity, not where you are already full.
- 04Set an end date at launch. Promotions that are ended reactively always run months too long.
Repricing without breaking trust
Prices will need to move as energy tariffs move. Two rules keep that from costing you drivers: never change the price of a session that has already started, and always show the current price before the driver commits. Both sound obvious; both are violated regularly by networks that resolve pricing at billing time rather than at session start.