Why Free EV Charging Sounds Good, But Shared Sites Still Need Cost Recovery

Free EV charging is easy to like. It feels generous for drivers, simple for guests, and attractive for residents who are trying to make the shift to an electric car.

The problem is that the power is not free to the hardware owner. In apartments, accommodation, workplaces, and other shared parking sites, every charging session lands somewhere: on a common-area electricity account, a host’s power bill, a body corporate budget, or a business operating cost. If nobody measures and recovers that usage, the cost gets socialised across people who may not use the charger at all.

That is where “free charging” often stops being simple. The question is not whether free charging sounds good. The question is whether the site can keep offering it fairly once usage becomes normal.

Why this matters in New Zealand

New Zealand’s charging conversation often focuses on public fast chargers, but most routine charging still happens where people park for long periods. EECA’s 2025 EV charging research says home charging is the most common charging method for EV owners, and 3-pin charging is still widely used, especially by PHEV drivers.

That matters for shared sites because many people do not control a private garage or dedicated meter. A resident in an apartment car park, a guest at a motel, or an employee in a shared workplace bay may be charging from power that belongs to the site rather than directly to them.

At low usage, the cost can look harmless. One or two early EV drivers may not move the budget enough to trigger concern. But as usage grows, three things change:

• the electricity bill becomes visible
• non-EV users start asking why they are subsidising EV users
• the hardware owner needs a way to fund maintenance, support, connectivity, and future expansion

That is why cost recovery is not a hostile idea. In shared charging, it is often what lets the site keep charging available.

What the evidence says

• EECA’s 2025 EV charging research says cost is a major barrier for some New Zealand drivers who avoid public charging, and cheaper charging is one of the top improvements public charging users want.
• MBIE’s smart EV charging work says unmanaged EV charging can increase peak demand and drive higher infrastructure costs and power bills, while smart charging can shift charging to cheaper, lower-demand periods.
• NSW’s residential strata EV guidance treats usage billing and infrastructure cost recovery as explicit planning choices for shared residential buildings. That is Australian guidance, but the operating problem is highly relevant to New Zealand apartments and body corporate style sites: shared power needs a fair recovery model.
• Australia’s National Measurement Institute says EVSE used to measure electricity and charge customers must correctly measure the active electrical energy supplied and must not misrepresent the calculated cost. EVSE made on or after 1 April 2026 must comply with the general certificate of approval for EVSE, NMI 14/4/0.

Free charging looks simple until usage scales

The fair answer is not always the same. A hotel may choose to include a small amount of charging in the room rate as a guest amenity. A workplace may subsidise charging as an employee benefit. A body corporate may decide to recover the actual electricity cost from the resident who used it.

The important part is that the decision is explicit. “Free” should be a chosen commercial policy, not the accidental result of having no way to measure and recover usage.

Why certified metering matters

Once a site charges for electricity, the metering fidelity has to be high. The plain-English promise is simple: what you consume is what you get charged for.

That matters because shared-site billing is not just a payment flow. It is a trust system. If the numbers are vague, residents can argue they are subsidising someone else. Drivers can argue they were overcharged. Operators can struggle to explain the difference between electricity cost, service fees, and recovery of site infrastructure.

Certified metering turns that argument into a standard-backed process. In Australia, NMI 14/4/0 is the EVSE-specific certificate for equipment that measures electricity for charging customers. It sets accuracy classes, marking requirements, and sealing requirements for equipment that is used for trade measurement. The strongest public framing is not metrology jargon for its own sake. It is billing confidence: the energy record should be accurate enough that a user is charged for their own consumption, not an estimate, allocation, or hidden cross-subsidy.

For a hardware owner, that standard matters commercially because it makes the usage charge easier to defend:

• the session is attributable to a user and bay
• the energy measurement is tied to a recognised metering target
• the price can be explained against a measured kWh record
• disputes can be handled from records instead of guesswork

Why the hardware owner needs to monetise power usage

The hardware owner carries costs the driver often does not see.

First, there is the electricity itself. Even modest long-dwell charging becomes material when many users repeat it every week. A charger that feels small in one session can become a line item across a car park.

Second, there is operating cost. Shared charging needs support, connectivity, software, reporting, billing workflows, and someone to answer questions when a driver disputes a session or a committee asks for usage data.

Third, there is future capacity. If a site gives away charging without a recovery mechanism, the first group of users can consume the easiest capacity while leaving no obvious funding path for more bays later. That can turn an amenity into a bottleneck.

For a hardware owner, monetising power usage does not have to mean maximising margin on every kilowatt-hour. It can mean something more practical:

This is especially important in shared buildings. Charging projects often fail commercially before they fail electrically, because the committee or operator does not trust how the costs will be recovered.

What usually solves this

The general solution is measured, attributable charging.

That means the site can answer basic questions without manual reconstruction:

For some sites, a higher-power wallbox with managed billing is the right answer. That can suit locations where faster turnaround matters, where the electrical infrastructure is already available, or where the site wants a more conventional EVSE experience.

For many long-dwell shared sites, the better question is different: how many parking bays can be covered affordably, and can each session be billed or settled clearly enough that the owner is not left carrying the cost?

That is why the billing model matters as much as the plug. A charger that is technically available but financially awkward will be hard to scale.

Where WattSpot fits

WattSpot is built around the long-dwell charging problem: places where cars sit for hours and the operator needs coverage, cost recovery, and trust more than a headline charging speed.

For shared sites, WattSpot’s fit is not “make charging expensive.” It is to make routine charging financially legible:

• users should be charged for their own usage rather than hidden common costs
• operators should have session records they can understand and export
• hosts should be able to recover power costs without turning charging into an admin job
• rollout decisions should be based on real usage, not guesswork

The practical point is simple: free charging may be a good launch offer, guest perk, or deliberate subsidy. It should not be the only model a shared site can support. Once EV charging becomes normal, the hardware owner needs a way to monetise power usage so the service remains fair, funded, and expandable.

Sources

• EECA EV charging research 2025
• MBIE: Supporting the uptake of Smart Electric Vehicle charging in New Zealand
• NSW residential strata EV-ready guidance
• NMI: Electric vehicle supply equipment
• NMI certificate 14/4/0: Electric vehicle supply equipment