Electric vehicle (EV) users in or visiting Knox will now face a new fee for overstaying their welcome at local charging stations.
An ‘idle fee’ was approved at the Monday 14 July council meeting which will aim to ensure that electric vehicle owners don’t leave their cars in a charging station for extended periods of time and will free them up for other EV owners.
Dinsdale Ward councillor Robert Williams said he really does think it has been a considered approach as a hybrid user vehicle himself, though not an electric vehicle user.
“At the current moment, we are spending 20,000 a year on providing the service to anyone that wants to use it, it doesn’t have to be a resident of Knox, so I am excited that we are changing that to make sure that we are going to save that $20,000 a year,” he said.
“I think it is vital that council adopts this change, I think the fees and charges that we have outlined here are quite reasonable in comparison to what else is out there on the market, I believe that we have done the right research there as well as prepare some opportunities for further EV points within Knox.”
In the adoption of the recent Knox City Council Annual Budget and Fees and Charges for 2025-2026, the council had adopted a $0.25 per kilowatt hour charging rate but not the idle fee.
EV owners who leave their vehicles in the charging station over 2.25 hours will be charged $1 per minute they are over. The idle fee will be capped at $100.
Taylor Ward councillor Susan Pearce said after the last time they talked about the EV policy, she sat back and spoke to a number of her residents and after consulting with them, really thinks this is a good policy.
“It would be nice to see a few more charging points being expanded by private operators into Rowville and Lysterfield, we sort of have a big black spot there where you could do with a few more,” she said.
“I think it’s fantastic that we’re now having a user pay service so that people who use the facility pay for it, that’s fantastic and I love the fact the we’ve got the idle fee so we’ve got that turnover, cars aren’t just sitting there.”
Knox City Council’s Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Policy was adopted at the 10 June council meeting and established a user-pays system for the use of the council-owned EV charging stations, which prior to that were free to use. It also provided a framework should private charging station providers approach the council to install charging stations on council-owned land.
