In The Old Days of e-mobility (I mean, two years ago) cheap or sometimes even free fast charging wasn’t very unusual in Europe. I remember Telekom & Maingau, offering rates of 2 or 5 cent/minute at 50kW and up (of course there weren’t that many “and up” back then).
Fast Forward to 2022
The tables have turned. E-mobility is growing up. Fast charging is everywhere (in a country like Germany). And it can be expensive, depending on your vehicle, charging card and point of view. What I mean is, if you have solar at home, Fastned might feel like a crazy expense.
Maybe you live around the corner from an IONITY station and your neighborhood doesn’t offer any local AC infrastructure.
In any case, today was one of those days. One WhatsApp-message and one tweet later, I was downloading a brand-new app that offered a world of pleasure:
Fast charging at 35p/kWh
Welcome to England, the land of pounds. The following is not an advert, it’s just a good idea if you sometimes top-up at Fastned and or Allego to head over to the website of Bonnet and download their app right away.
Now of course, their idea is to get you into a monthly payment plan. The higher your monthly payment, the better your rate as long as you don’t run out of kWh. Only time will tell if these offers hold, and if fair-usage policies might come into play and so on, if you go traveling like a true monster.
Rates as published by Bonnet on Jan, 21st ‘22:
35p/kWh (Pay as you go).
£15/Month: 50kWh (30p/kWh).
£35/Month: 120kWh (29p/kWh)
£50/Month: 200kWh (25p/kWh)
Thanks to Maarten (laadpastop10.nl) (and Fully Charged) there are a couple of incredible discount codes.
Your first charging session completely free: FIRSTCHARGE
Your first monthly payment for free (worth fifty(!) pounds): FULLYCHARGED
£15 discount, my referral code: RD4BD
By now, (April ‘22) there are more codes around the web to be found including:
FREECHARGE1 & ONEFREE
Bonnet is aiming for: Great Britain
It’s important to realize you’re dealing with a company from the UK. Pricing will be in pounds, and their “roaming” focuses on adding UK companies to their offer. If you can ever use “Bonnet” at EnBW in Germany, or Circle K in Sweden, I doubt it. But never say never!
I’ve listed the biggest players where the Bonnet app should work: Osprey (UK), Shell (UK), ESB Energy (UK), RAW (UK), EVBox (EU?), Allego (EU) & Fastned (EU). See this tweet for more info.
This is a screenshot with a CCS filter enabled for Europe.
