Destination charging operator Powerdot and energy provider Octopus Energy have merged home and public charging into a single €49.99 monthly subscription. It’s a real first in the sector, aiming to democratize and facilitate charging. The most important caveat for now is that it is only available in France.
To get it out of the way first: flat-rate EV charging is not new. Octopus Energy has been selling unlimited home charging in the UK for £30 a month since last year. Competitor Electra offers discounted per-kWh rates on its public network for less than five euros a month. But the difference here is that no one has bundled both sides of the charging game – home and public – into one fixed fee. Until now.
€50 per month
Powerdot and Octopus Energy France announce the Drive Pack, which combines unlimited smart home charging plus unlimited access to Powerdot’s French public network for a flat €49.99 per month.
On the home side, charging is managed via the Octopus Energy app: set a target charge level and a “ready by” time, and the platform schedules the session during low-demand or high-renewable periods. All scheduled home charging is included, without usage caps.
On the public side, the subscription uses Octopus’s roaming platform Electroverse to authenticate sessions on the Powerdot network. Plug in, and the session starts without a separate app or additional payment.
Compatible vehicles include Renault, Tesla, Ford, Volkswagen, Skoda, Cupra, Audi, and Porsche models. This covers close to 50% of the BEV fleet already on French roads, or roughly half a million drivers eligible from day one.
The small print
Some small print remains. The ‘unlimited’ home charging covers only smart-scheduled sessions; manual top-ups outside the app are billed separately. And the subscription requires switching to Octopus Energy as your home electricity provider. Neither is a dealbreaker, but both are conditions worth considering for interested customers.
According to the companies, with €600 per year, the bundle sits well below the €1,200 threshhold a typical French combustion-engine driver spends on fuel annually. But the more relevant benchmark is what an EV driver would otherwise pay using existing products.
Well, a 60 kWh battery, charged three times a week at home, already costs around €50-€65 per month at standard French residential rates. That’s before any single public session, let alone fast charging, which is included in the proposed bundle. Add a few of these latter charges (at the going rate of roughly €0.50/kWh), and the Drive Pack easily becomes competitive for moderate-to-heavy users.
From rollout to pricing strategy
Powerdot is a Portuguese-founded charge point operator with an unusual business model. Rather than building motorway stops, it focuses entirely on destination charging, installing it at places where people already park: supermarkets, shopping centers, petrol stations, and business parks. The retailer pays nothing; Powerdot invests, installs, and operates the infrastructure itself. They have a little over 50 charging points in Belgium and aim to scale to 1,000 in a second phase.
Subscription products are already available, but none cover both sides of the charging experience. The Drive Pack is the first product to do so. It shows how the energy market for EV charging is slowly shifting from infrastructure rollout to pricing strategies. In Belgium, Elektra has launched a pilot off-peak tariff for fast charging at selected locations around the capital, Brussels.
