The mystery for me - why don't they all work on contactless payment? (like Instavolt does) That way, I don't need an app, account, tracking or anything else - just tap my card and start charging.
CCS just adopted a payment standard based on that and I hope it ends up killing the need to pull out your wallet to charge.
That's a lot simpler when you only have a few cars on the road and standardized charging hardware. But this will get figured out in time. I mean, look at fuel pumps.
The trick is getting current stations updated. I still can't tap and pay everywhere and that's somewhat frustrating.
Unless you were having the car actually pay on your behalf, I suppose, but that has other obvious problems.
The only way with obvious problems, to me, is a system that requires you to pull out a credit card. That is wide open for card skimmers.
They've got to get that marketing information!
It needs to be possible to just turn up, swipe your card and start charging (with some ability to limit how much you charge up). This needs to be as close to filling up at a petrol station as possible.
If we could charge up at home I think we'd only ever need to charge on route about three or four times a year, when going on holiday. If the car rental industry was a bit more consumer friendly (they seem mostly designed around business use), renting for the holidays would be very appealing.
It will be interesting to see if campsites will let you charge up from their electric hookups. I can see that being a thing in the future.