Shell will charge blocking costs after four hours of occupying certain charging points

From December 21, Shell will charge blocking fees for keeping Road and EVBox charging points in the roaming network occupied for more than four hours. The costs are 5 euro cents per minute with a maximum of 12 euros per charging session.

The blocking costs are according to Shell introduced to ‘encourage EV drivers to leave the charging location once the charging session has ended’. This should improve the availability of public charging points and applies to users of the Shell Recharge charging card. On his website Shell reports Incidentally, the blocking costs can be avoided by stopping and restarting a session, or by moving an electric car when the battery is full.

Shell is not the only one that charges such a rate. Tesla, for example, charges a similar ‘idle rate’ in the Benelux, which is applied when a vehicle is fully charged. The ANWB writes that in Germany, for example, many charging point providers charge blocking rates.