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Comment by akouri | Hacker News Reader

I am the founder of Starlight Charging[1]. We are working on crazy-low-cost L2 chargers for multifamily apartments. Plug-and-charge is a sine-qua-non for us.

One still major unsolved problem is the lack of agreement on a standard for payment/powerline communication from the EVSE to the vehicle. OCPP 2.0.1 and ISO 15118 is supposed to bring "Plug and Charge" capabilities -- this, in theory, would allow drivers to simply pull up to a station, plug in, and charging start right away. i.e. No more fiddling with multiple different manufacturer's apps, no more being SOL if your phone battery is dead.

While we're seeing agreement on the physical standard for the shape and size of the conductors, there's still progress to be made on the protocol between vehicles and charger. Tesla refuses to implement OCPP because they have a great walled garden right now and don't want to release the stranglehold on the payments.

[1] https://www.starlightcharging.com

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Some feedback: I only barely realized "plug-and-charge" means something specific. [1] Generally speaking, I wouldn't expect people to know what you mean by the phrase. The problem is that people think they know because it sounds so obvious. The phrase comes across more like: "obviously, yeah, I plug it in and it charges". That understanding leaves vague the number of steps required between "plug" and "charge".

[1] e.g. "The Plug and Charge protocol tells the charging station what kind of EV you're plugging in and conveniently bills you." from https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a35044132/plug-and-charge-...

Aah wait so it's Plug-And-Supply-Currency rather than Plug-And-Supply-Current?

It’s both. Plug and charge (sometimes referred to as P&C) is the full stack of systems and interactions involved in driving up to a charging station, plugging in your vehicle, transferring electrons, and getting charged for it, all without having to open an app or present a payment instrument at time of charge.

Electrify America has supported P&C for DC fast charging on Ford vehicles, for example, but it required setup beforehand, and came with downsides (like not supporting EA’s member-discount charge rate).

This is helpful. Generally the customers that land on our website are people who are researching which EV charging solution to install in their apartment complex, so I assumed that they already knew the term. But I guess it's helpful to spell it out.

further: EV user and have also have been involved (lightly) in some public(ish) EV Charging projects -- this is the first time I've come across the term "Plug And Charge" in reference to a protocol!

Upside: Every day is a school day and now I have something fun to read in to!

The phrase seems like it's charge as in billing, not charge as in electricity. Not sure if that is intentional or a happy pun. Anyone that has only experienced Tesla may even assume that superchargers are what everyone else experiences too. Just plug it in and get charged... and billed.

Can you explain why you feel plug-and-charge is so important? I have used chargers with and without it and while it is slightly more convenient to just plug in and go, it doesn't feel like such a huge improvement that I absolutely need it.

I agree that having a different app for every brand of charging station would be annoying, but what about just accepting a credit card the way we do with gas stations now?

Have you done any road tripping in an EV? my experience of the app-based charging landscape has been complete horror; apps don’t work, chargers don’t start, payments don’t through..

Just last month was a new app at McDonalds in Sweden, that one asks me to, in the freezing cold, scan a dirty QR code sticker, which takes me to a website I’ve never heard of that wants me to manually enter credit card info, like a phishing attack smorgasbord.

It’s the one thing I miss from a gas car: just let me fill up.

IMO that would be better solved by mandating tap and pay payment at EV charging spots. Integrating payments into the charging standard feels like a wild overcomplication by comparison.

Not only that, how do you even propose to do it?

If you just send the payment info via the charging plug, now you have to worry about the payment info being stored in the car and potentially stolen if the car has any security vulnerabilities, including in the charging port.

If you use some kind of tokenization or similar then you're inserting third party payment processors into the system and they'll be wanting a cut.

Just put a card reader on the charger and be done with it.

Another reason for a card reader is that it easily handles the case of a borrowed EV.

It is customary when borrowing someone's ICE car to pay for the gas used by returning the car with as much gas as it had when you borrowed it, or even with a full tank. I'd expect people will want to continue that custom when the car is an EV.

EVs could potentially handle that scenario even better than how it works with ICE cars. With ICE there’s always the error associated with how much gas was in the car to start as well as how much should you fill up when returning it. (Yes I know it’s customary to always just return a friend’s car filled to 100% regardless of the original tank state).

Nonetheless with an EV you could just hit a button saying “friend has taken possession” or “loaner mode” similar to valet mode. Upon returning the car and disabling that mode the car could present you with an accurate dollar amount of exactly what to pay your friend.

All the car needs to store is some private key corresponding to yourself, to prove it's that car. On modern hardware you can make these really hard to steal, short of taking the entire chip with you.

Worse case, if someone steals that key (or the hardware that stores it), they can steal electricity with it. Which also means they'll be caught approximately tomorrow.

If you have that level of access/capability, there's better things to do than using it to get 50 dollars worth of electricity and probably being picked up by police as you siphon it.

Besides, there's easier and stealthier ways to get free electricity.

Particularly in a world where every new phone and smartwatch integrates tap-to-pay, seems like a no-brainer to just integrate at that point.

Cars don’t need to have credit card details onboard.

Hypothetical standard: Charger lets car open a low bandwidth internet connection. Car uses it (or cellular) to open an encrypted channel to a 3rd part service (Tesla/Visa/whatever) saying it’s VIN, password, and the charger’s ID. Charger gets payment from 3rd party.

PS: I would rather chargers just had working credit card readers, but individual chargers don’t do many transactions per day so apps are a cost saving thing.

You're getting at the root of the problem here, which is that Visa doesn't actually support anything like that and "whatever" is going to add another grubby middle man to the transaction, which is the thing that most needs to be prevented.

You're fundamentally trying to transfer your money to the operator of the charger, but they aren't standing around to give cash to, so you want something digital. Alright, so your bank should do this -- you authorize your car's private key to make withdrawals from your bank account at charging points and we're all set. Except that banks suck at this sort of thing, which is why we have the credit/debit network to create some kind of standard. Except the standard is credit cards, not public key cryptography.

You wanted to give your money to the charging point operator but instead you have to give it to your bank to give it to Visa to give it to the charging point operator. Now we're going to add "Tesla/whatever" to the chain? This needs to stop. You stick with the card reader until you figure out how to get banks, using some kind of standard, to support the public/private key thing and we can remove a middle man instead of adding one.

Visa et al are going to charge a minimum transaction fee for small-value transactions, which covers the typical charging session. Third party services are an advantage, because they can bundle small transactions together and take advantage of their economies of scale and their own fraud models. There is a world where Visa and the payment card industry looked forward in the year 2005 and said “IoT devices like EVs will need payment capability, let’s think about how to be essential to this ecosystem in a way that removes the need for third party services and saves everyone money” but that kind of technical innovation seems to be outside of their core competency.

The transactions are of higher value than many public transport tickets, and those are already common — either as normal purchases from a ticket machine, or with the special transaction type used when the payment card is touched to the reader on the ticket barrier.

Following a recent trip I had a bunch of ~1€ transactions from buying single bus/metro tickets from machines.

Visa charges a 5-10 cent fixed fee plus a percentage for those 1 Euro transactions. Presumably public transport just eats those costs, but in a commodity business like electricity I imagine it’s a noticeable chunk of the profit margin.

1 cent fixed fee + percentage seems to be the standard where I am. It might be difficult in other EU countries but IIRC the fixed fee is capped at 5cents.

The only public information I can find is this, which is from 2013 in London:

Visa credit 0.65%, debit 1 pence. Mastercard credit 0.80%, debit 1 pence + 0.5%.

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/costs_to_tfl_for_cont...

> of ~1€ transactions

In Europe, sure because the fees are capped. In the US you pay a fixed fee + x% which makes small transactions like this prohibitively expensive

I agree, except Visa and Mastercard are willing to innovate. Apple Pay/Google Wallet for cars isn’t an unrealistic goal.

Wouldn't presence of the key address most of this?

Sure, they can steal the car AND the key, but more often, it's the car alone.

The tap-and-pay RF people need to get their act together. The average number of tries needed to get a good read is > 1. For Veriphone units, > 2.

Please make it clear where, exactly, the near-field antenna is. Behind the screen? Behind the logo that looks like WiFi? Somewhere inside a separate hockey-puck device? And indicate when the reader is active, too. Light up something.

One place I visit regularly had a POS system which worked perfectly. They recently switched it out for a Clover unit with much lower read reliability and a worse customer-facing UI.

For what it's worth, contactless is ubiquitous in the UK – the experience is almost always seamless. The only exception being the odd reader with the antenna in a stupid place (these have gotten less common over time) or when your bank decides to force a pin check.

How would paying for an EV charge work like this? Would you select an amount of credit in currency (presumably via buttons on the charger?) then tap-to-pay for that amount?

(I believe there are some limitations on tap-to-pay transactions to prevent a merchant presenting the transaction with a different value after actually tapping the card.)

I think a lot of "pay at pump" fuel stations require a full insertion of the card to pre-authorize a large amount, then release it as a partial refund once the amount of fuel dispensed is known.

Would this be a barrier to EV charging, if you need a way to communicate this upfront, or have to effectively replicate out EMV infrastructure on totally unmonitored terminals with PIN readers (and likely the next card skimming scandal brewing)?

Also, how would contactless-only work for cards that get soft locked to be inserted for a PIN check? Would there be a way for EV chargers to be exempted from this? Or would people end up stuck and unable to charge as there's no available place with a PIN reader they can use to unlock their contactless payments?

Pay-at-pump is ubiquitous here in New Zealand, I don't think I've seen a station without it for years. This may be because around 90% of all retail transactions are done with payment cards here.

It's easy. You select the max amount (up to NZ$200), tap your card, and it's done. Pick up the right fuel nozzle, refuel, and go. Exactly the same can be done on EV chargers.

The process card-side is not a charge-and-refund as refunds have fees to the merchant. Rather it's a pre-authentication and finalisation. Pre-auth holds the funds for a set time (determined by the merchant agreement with the bank) and the vendor can finalise the charge up to the pre-authentication amount. Most hotels and car rental places do this for security deposits as well, if they don't charge or explicitly cancel your bank will release the fund hold at the end of the holding period.

They generally pre-auth for either £20 or £40 and then update the amount post-transaction.

In terms of PIN check, the card is just declined with an appropriate error message because you can’t insert it and the next time you use a contactless machine it asks for the card to be inserted and a PIN entered.

For petrol (gas) pumps in the UK it generally auths either £1 or £99.

Makes sense and matched my understanding of the pay at pump preauth for a fixed amount.

I guess the issue then becomes relying on contactless (only) without the hardware for full EMV with PIN, as then someone whose card has been used contactless one too many times can't charge, and potentially ends up stuck there.

It does feel like contactless is a good convenience measure, but probably isn't ideal as the only mechanism on a reader for charging infrastructure.

Unrelated to this, but not being able to initiate charging without internet access (for online auth of cards, and the ones that can only be used online) also is likely to become an issue in rural areas, as well as give quite a few resilience issues if cloud infrastructure isn't available, or internet backhaul from the area is disrupted. Even once power is restored after a storm, if comms are down (like with Storm Arwen), this doesn't sound ideal for EV charging...

I only have experience with Shell, Morrisons, and Tesco pay-at-pump stations. In all of those, you have to physically insert your card and type in your PIN; contactless does not exist.

What's a large amount? I haven't inserted my card at Costco for a very long time now. Just tap.

If the pump pre-authorizes an amount (many non-Costco gas stations I go to make you choose an amount to authorize) it simply never captures more than was actually used.

Now why would any of this be fundamentally different for EVs? You have a rough gauge for how much "fuel" i.e. "juice" you need, pre-authorize enough money but only capture what actually got used. Done. Why do EVs need to be special?

I'm not sure how it works at the protocol level, but I've been using contactless payments at gas stations here in the US for years now. You just tap to pay before you start pumping, then after you're finished you get charged for the amount of fuel dispensed.

Public transport transactions (where the reader is directly on the ticket gate) are exempted from the soft lock, so maybe EV chargers could be too. At least for small amounts.

That makes good sense to exempt those kinds of readers from the soft lock. And given that's possible, it would likely make sense for some similar kind of leeway on EV charging.

Not that there's likely to be any real repercussions in many places given a lack of criminal enforcement around theft/fraud, but EV charging requires the user of the stolen card to stick around in a given area to charge the car, so it's likely lower risk than other places where a stolen card can be used for a large transaction in a short period of time.

I imagine you'd eventually get some people going around offering people "cheap" EV charges for free (for cash), and then tapping a stolen card on the reader, but there's always going to be someone trying to exploit stolen cards in innovative ways.

It’s ubiquitous in Australia as well. I haven’t carried a wallet in almost 5 years. My credit card, driver’s license, and other important cards are all digital.

I'm increasingly finding that my phone is detected while I'm still moving it towards the scanner, and it complains that my phone moved too fast. Then I have to wait like a schmuck until something resets and I can do it again.

I want to echo this. When contactless is ubiquitous there are pretty much no problems.

I don’t know if I agree. It’s exceedingly rare now to find a place which doesn’t accept contactless in America, but we have these problems still.

Besides dumb inconsistent terminals, the main thing holding it back is (A) customers don’t use it because they either don’t know it’s much faster than our garbage chip readers, or they have been burned by hunting for the right spot to tap. And (B) even the clerks don’t use it because until about this year there was a significant fraction of cards out there without NFC and who wants to hunt for the logo instead of just always shoving it in the (stupid slow) chip reader. There still might be plenty if you count debit cards which I never use but are very popular.

> It’s exceedingly rare now to find a place which doesn’t accept contactless in America...

Lowe's and Home Depot? Walmart, still?

Companies still hoping to silo people into their own apps or antiquated payment method, which might give them a slight cc processing fee reduction that boosts their margins... at the cost of being a usability nightmare for anyone who doesn't shop there frequently. I expect that frequent shoppers will live with whatever a store does, and set up a custom app, if any, or accept using a physical card.

It's easy to see that their approach is petty, because Costco, which has fanatical customers and is members-only—there are no casual infrequent shoppers—got on board with nfc (card and smartphone) payments years ago. If any business could've gotten away with having their own app and special payment processing deals to save money, it's Costco.

It's very odd, as this has been working smoothly in the EU for around a decade, depending on the country. It's so reliable that you can pay for bus/metro/train tickets in London (since 2014) and many other cities directly at the ticket barrier [1 for photo], which would cause problems if cards were failing or slow.

The only time I'm confused is when there's an unusual card reader, usually a low-budget all-in-one type with a touchscreen, as it's not always clear where the NFC reader is. This is maybe 1-2% of transactions.

Every so often a machine makes the "dur dur" noise and I have to use the chip and my PIN. I'm not sure if this is every Nth transaction, or after spending ¤X. Either way, it's to avoid a lot of contactless payments being made if the card is stolen. (And maybe this is irrelevant in the USA, without PINs?)

"8 out of 10 card payments now contactless in the Nordics" [2]. 54% in the whole EU [3], only 34% in the USA [4].

[1] https://www.intelligenttransport.com/transport-articles/1153...

[2] https://www.nets.eu/Media-and-press/news/Pages/8-out-of-10-c...

[3] https://data.ecb.europa.eu/blog/blog-posts/contactless-payme...

[4] https://ktvz.com/stacker-money/2023/08/01/american-consumers...

Ah, you're right. I forgot about HD which surprises me every time I visit. TBH I have knuckled under for Walmart, which I shop frequently, by using Walmart Pay on their app. I agree that for frequent shoppers it's well worth it, but useless to someone off the street who isn't used to it.

I as a frequent shopper just like the way I can scan my code at any point and then push one button to check out, and that they allow credit cards to back it. For a while before its launch I think it was rumored that Walmart Pay would require an ACH or debit, which would have made it a hard no for me.

I still think that we've seen major progress. For instance, the huge Kroger chain got on board sometime in the past 2 years after being NFC or Apple Pay laggards. CVS a couple years before that, I remember them being particularly prickly about never taking Apple Pay and they came around.

Sometimes I try to use the tap-to-pay. When I try, more often than not, I cannot get it to work, and then I use the chip anyway.

So usually, I just use the chip to save time.

Yes, this is precisely what I think many people do. Because they are frequently punished for trying it by being made to look foolish. We all roll our eyes when someone in front of us can't seem to master the trivial task of completing a purchase, and in that moment, we are dismayed to realize WE are that person right now!

It also brings that part of the charging experience to parity with gas, which is really simple for non-tech savvy switchers to understand.

The process for EV and gas refuelling is then identical:

Lift thingamabob -> tap card -> plug into car -> leave

Easy.

Okay, hear me out here. What's stopping us from just having payments be out of band, like with petrol?

Is being able to ask your car to make a long drive across long distances on its own actually something people want to do? Or is it a solution in search of a problem?

(Disclaimer, I live in the UK and not the US. It's possible there are cultural reasons I've missed.)

I saw that Norway is now mandating tap and pay at all new EV charging spots.

I agree, that's the way to go. Charging an EV has to be just as easy as filling up a gas car. Pull up, tap you card, plug in. There's zero reason for having to fiddle with apps and memberships and qr codes and whatever else bullshit.

If I may ask what seems like an obvious question… why can’t they just use credit card terminals like gas stations have been using for many decades?

They could, and many do, but the difference is that those types of interfaces are mandated/regulated while EV charging is not. Guess what's slightly cheaper when amortized across tens of thousands of customers in the products lifetime? Not to mention the amount of data that could be mined from those customers by having yet another app on their phone with bullshit location permissions "for the best user experience."

Every gas pump has looked/functioned largely the same since the widespread adoption of cashless payments around the world. Until governments mandate a standard payment interface, I think it's more likely that companies will continue to find ways to mine data from consumers through shitty apps.

Oh, and that's not even to mention the companies that include some amount of "free charging" credits with the purchase of the vehicle. Not only is that cost baked into the cost of the car, you're also disincentivized from using the network at all because of how crappy it is. /tinfoilhat

IIRC the federal infrastructure bill required chargers to accept via CC reader or plug and charge. So I'm sure we will be seeing more chargers with it shortly.

Yep: https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2023-03500/p-48 https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2023-03500/p-370

> This final rule establishes a requirement that charging stations must provide a contactless payment method that accepts major credit and debit cards and accept payment through either an automated toll-free phone number or a short message/messaging system (commonly abbreviated as SMS). Payment methods must be accessible to persons with disabilities, not require a membership, not affect the power flow to vehicles, and provide access for those that are limited English proficient.

Yeah that just seems like a poor decision on the part of these charger owners. I feel like there’s an opportunity for a company called “EZCharge - we take credit cards”. People will seek it out when looking for a charging station because they know they won’t need to download a BS app.

Or maybe another solution would be like WeChat Pay in China, something that’s so ubiquitous that all stores just have a QR code you scan to pay for anything nowadays. I’m surprised nothing like that has taken off in the US, it’s crazy convenient.

There is no way to communicate when you are charged up that way, maybe via an SMS that you add with your phone number. Also, you have to communicate your charging preference somehow. It’s not like pumping gas, you rarely want it to stop at 100%, although the charging standard might at least be able to control that from the car.

True I see what you mean, but that would seem to be an easy function to build into the car’s charging controller. I’m not sure how it works today but I would imagine most cars have a “stop charging at x%” function already without depending on the charger for that.

Ya, I think they even get status otherwise I’m not sure how electrify America’s app works in the first place.

I once charged at an L2 in Canada that involved a QR code, and then payment via a web form. In that case, a POS would make the setup too expensive compared to just putting power out there with a networked microcontroller.

> There is no way to communicate when you are charged up that way

Cant' the car do it?

Or ya know.. the pump, like has existed for decades..

I thought the problem was that it takes long enough that you aren't by the "pump" during process. Also that the chargepoints are likely less infrastructure than a pump. So something has to contact you (SMS/email/whatever)

Yeah... cars come with internet connections these days, I'd say it's the car's job.

So solving this problem would be as simple as mandating/regulating it? Sounds like a no-brainer to end this debate, standardize things, and allow the build out to happen in a quick and standard way across companies.

With all the EV goals that various countries are making, this seems like a foundational part of it. Consumers aren't going to buy into EVs in mass until charging in a solved problem.

The epic solution is free charging financed by gasoline taxes.

That would be quite effective IF it were tenable, but this is a solution in search of a revolution, lol (speaking strictly for the US). I wish I were joking, but politically you would have an easier time abolishing Christmas than something like this. Pitchforks would be wielded by 2 groups:

1. numbskulls who hate EVs because they believe that being able to add 400 miles of range in their F150 in 5 minutes (ie gasoline) is the only okay way to do energy for every vehicle.

2. People with a good point that EVs are very expensive and why should poorer people subsidize the rich when the poors can’t even afford an EV.

That second point is personally the sticking point for me. No reason the less-well-off should subsidize those who have the ability to purchase a new vehicle.

Most of the tax revenue does not come from the poor though. They could still be given EVs regardless.

> Not to mention the amount of data that could be mined from those customers

That was my cynical take on it.

RV charging has much smaller installations than gas. Instead of gas stations, the most common SV charging will eventually be thick poles on the footpath so you can charge wherever you park, or small one or two bay charging facilities at various businesses. That's the sort of charging infrastructure you want and seamless payment solutions is an enabling tech.

What's RV and SV charging?

S and R are on either side of E, so I'm guessing I meant EV.

Yeah I agree having a different app for each station sucks, but I don't really understand how plug-and-charge would solve this. For anything that does support plug-and-charge, don't you still need to register the payment method somewhere in advance?

Unless we have some universal payment processor which all the charging networks agree to use I will still need register through an app or something when I encounter a new brand of charger on a road trip.

It seems like the real solution is a law which requires the stations to accept a more universal payment system like credit cards. I think there is already a law like this in California IIRC.

Tap & Pay still requires you to fiddle with a station and slows you down. If you are plugging in at home (which is our target market), the fewer interactions needed the better. Imagine every time you get home you need to take your wallet out, tap the machine, wait for some 3rd party api to talk to the charger in the dimly lit basement, and then and only then you can leave. This is like 30 seconds of your day wasted.

Plus, ultimately we want to make charging as cheap as possible and having to pay the $.30 interchange fee each time a user plugs in would add a ton of overhead to our cost model.

It takes something like half of a second for my Apple Pay Amex/Visa to let me through the barrier in the London Underground, and the complexity they have to deal with for fare calculations is quite something too.

The fare isn’t calculated on the spot though, a base amount is authorized and then only charged later. Not that the plug needs to figure that out immediately but it’s worth noting.

This is true. Apple Pay has been something we're keen on adding

Surely the interchange fee can be negotiated for volume? Or even mandated by law. When I tap my credit card to buy a 1$ bus ticket I doubt the interchange is keeping 30 cents?

There are transit systems that have made this work smoothly, you just walk up to a gate, tap your card as you walk through, so I can't imagine the barrier is technological unachievable. Seems like similar frequency and $.

> It seems like the real solution is a law which requires the stations to accept a more universal payment system like credit cards.

No shit, Sherlock? In the UK a lot of fuel pumps have credit/debit card readers built in, and if not cards are accepted everywhere for payment already. But yes electric charging companies here are still wierd about accepting such standardised payments, and we did just introduce a new law about it [0] promising "most" but not all chargers will accept cards.

[0] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-laws-to-make-charging...

I've done a fair amount of road tripping (~15k mi over 1.5yr) along the WA/OR/CA/NV corridors where Electrify America is dense enough to use solely, which is convenient since my car came with 2 years of free charging from them.

Ignoring their pervasive station reliability problems, their app is pretty bad and only barely functions.

* I've had to skip a perfectly functioning station because the app thought I was still charging from the previous time and wouldn't change its mind about it.

* Their Carplay app has literally never worked for me, not once (usually it shows me still charging from a session >1wk ago even when the regular app doesn't, sometimes it doesn't boot, sometimes it shows me as not logged in. The main screen has never once rendered.).

* One of their level 2 stations (which tend even less reliable) existed in the app on about 50% of refreshes.

* The app requires a pretty solid signal to work at all since it seems to consult their API to query for stations near where you are and then you guess at which one it is ("is this the target one or the mall one? it's the target that's in the mall?") which is pretty silly when you're parked at the station so it's in range of your hands and eyes.

* I eventually figured out that I can add the EA plan to my Apple Wallet and tap the phone instead of ever opening the app, but that seems to randomly select between the "free" plan (rather, included in the purchase price of my car) and the $10 balance that they make me maintain for god-knows-why when at California electricity prices no charge has ever been below $10.

* The stations have credit card readers which I've never tried to use but almost always when I see somebody having trouble at a station it's because they're fighting with that thing. I assume EA's response would be "just use the app, it's so much better"

That's all just one app, not a slew of them for every charging network in my area (which also includes at least evgo & chargepoint just to cover the big ones). The sooner this app bullshit can die the better.

Every time I use the app I have to force quit it at least once to get it to stop doing whatever backend query it's doing. Doesn't help that their chargers are barely compatible with my car (2014 i3) so the charging fails to start about half the time. The machine itself rejects the charge in about ten seconds so no big deal, but the app isn't built to handle this case and takes multiple minutes to realize something is wrong. So my charging cycle is to initiate via app, plug in, see a failed charge, force quit the app, find the station again, and repeat probably twice. Probably isn't this bad with newer cars, but I love my car otherwise. Made sure to get the one with the extra scooter engine in the back, so I can just drive around on gas if it comes down to it.

Some chargers have tap&pay on the machine like a gas pump. No app needed.

This should be mandated by law.

disagree. see my comment above

disagree, explain yourself rather than citing (without even providing a link)

Tap & Pay (Apple Pay, etc) are a great backup option -- and Starlight will implement those, but the primary modality of payment should require no user input. That's what we are hoping to accomplish. It's especially important when you are plugging in every night. Fiddling with your wallet or phone (battery dead??) is just one extra step that ultimately is not necessary if we are to design a system at scale.

This is a smaller use case—folks living in apartments without direct electricity connection. While the case exists and can be improved separately it shouldn't dictate requirements/costs to the rest of us.

Think I'd try to solve that by having the customer register the car/payment once at the kiosk and then handle plug-and-charge-and-bill though your service. Then you don't need to wait for an external solution and can advertise convenience as your added value in the meantime.

That is entirely the fault of that charging network for implementing a user-unfriendly and unfamiliar interface. How is grandma, who can't even manage a QR code, expected to switch to EVs like that. That company should fail because their business is bad.

So, I haven't got the money for an electric car... One just can't use the payment card at a bog standard self service payment terminal? I had assumed that, but apparently no? You seriously visit random websites and enter CC details?

Right, many or most don't have credit card terminals. You plug in, load an app, find you station, select a port number, tell it to start and hope it works. It doesn't sound that bad, but the chargers janky, the apps are janky and it takes a long time often with multiple attempts.

Installing random apps sounds janky as hell. I only install vetted apps from F droid. I wouldn't give a charging station access to my phone.

It is janky as hell, but it sounds like EV owners are making their lives more difficult in just slightly different ways from how you're making your life more difficult :)

I really can't believe how the idea of giving random companies access to electronics, which is what installing an app means, ever got normalised, even among techies. I guess people also do give out tons of personal details just because some form asks them. It goes against any and all security advice even regular people are now given. I guess it's true: the brosephs ook over...

So having an electric car requires an smartphone, one on which you can install random software, where you want to install random software, and have internet (cause I suppose there's no WiFi at those bornes) and you have a CC (also not true for many).

Good to know that this isn't for me.

I don't disagree with your principles; I was definitely on your side of the issue ~25 years ago and I suppose I still am, intellectually. I never changed my mind, it just wasn't important enough to me to put the substantial effort into. (which is, I suppose, what "they" are counting on). More power to you for investing the effort rather than just taking the path of least resistance.

Many things and services now 'require' an app, but I never do and in practice that doesn't seem much of an issue. It's just sad to hear it won't be possible to sidestep if I ever do own (or rent) an electric car, which ofc I fully expect. I already caved by having a phone with Google Play services enabled for a few banking apps. But I figure I can have some trust in them, since they are my bank.

A friend of mine has a card with which he can charge at certain places, but definitely not all (so he has some anxiety over that, in new places you never can be sure it actually works). Is such a card an option at those places that 'require' and app?

And what's even the reason for this? Those unmanned fossil fuel stations debit your card with some largish amount before you can take fuel. Why would things need to be more complex than that when charging electrons?

> It doesn't sound that bad

It does tho, even before getting into the reliability issues I don’t want to have to install random applications.

But why not just have contactless bank card payment?

Yeah it is a pain, I have an electric car, but only because they force you to use their broken apps. All they have to do is let you pay with a bank card and it'll be just as easy as buying petrol.

This is exactly it. My dad almost missed some of my sister's wedding fiddling with the same type of crappy UX on a no-name charger.

That's nothing in comparison to what we get in Switzerland. I went to a public parking garage yesterday that advertised ev charging spots. I get there and there's just an nfc module. I had to look for and google some logo on the station only to find out that to charge with that provider you need to order a physical badge and pay 50 bucks upfront. That sort of crap is why I don't rely on anything other than Superchargers. And I won't for a long time even after they do get their act together. It's just too much risk.

GP is talking about L2 charging for multi family homes. Not DCFC.

But I agree, DCFC need to all accept credit cards like gas pumps. Fortunately NEVI funding requires it.

I have done multiple 10+ hour (although no multi day) road trips in an ev. It was fine. I had problems exactly one time and i was able to just go to a different charger a mile away.

All of the chargers I've used had apps, but they also allowed using a credit card, which seems like it would have solved your problem just as well. And that's already a solved problem, even if not every charging network uses it.

Now go abroad where charging app is not available in your country or requires local phone number to register, uses local language, or even wants local address or local payment method.

Just give me website god damn it.

My story of charging in Germany one time a year ago:

The charger requires an app, ok fine. Downloaded the app, had to setup the whole account with my address(UK address was allowed as my address), verify my email, verify my phone number(UK one was accepted), fine, done.

Went to add my payment card - nope, the billing address has a pre-filled country field set to Germany, can't change it. It says ring this number in case of any problems. I ring the number just to hear:

"Sorry, our customer service operators are not available on Sunday. Call back on Monday after 9am".

Imagine if filling up with petrol was such a lottery.

I know it's not quite the problem you are talking about (which would be dealt with by making normal contactless / chip and pin readers a requirement) – but I'd love to see a legal requirement that when your charge point can't contact the piece of shit payment / authentication service the user gets to charge for free. That would soon see an uptick in the reliability of charge points...

thats the only correct eay of dealing with the issue. If you can't maintain infrastructure you failed at your job, why should someone be stranded or freeze to death because of your incompetence

German "Sunday is rest day" at it's best.

If fuel stations are essential(as in allowed to be open on Sundays), then with the EVs becoming the norm so should be the support for these stations.

I'm in the process of deactivating my family Apple One account (they overseas) so I can change app store for few minutes and download all the local apps I need.

I have to wait until end of month so my subscription actually expires, then make sure family sharing is disabled (which already screwed up location sharing). Oh and about 2.5TB of entire generation photos are up to be deleted by Apple if I screw up.

I have literally gotten visas for and worked in another country with greater ease than trying to get my Apple account to work well with local apps in my new country of residence while still allowing me to download and update apps from the first country.

Just trying to move to or be in another country and have the App store actually work properly for local apps (and the ones you want to keep from your original country) is a complete nightmare anyway.

It amazes me that for such a progressive and forward thinking company as Apple, that the very thought that their customers might actually move countries with their device and account seems to have been relegated to 'edge case'.

Like i said, credit card terminals seem the best way to fix this problem, Rather than done complicated plug-and-charge mechanism

Yeah, CC terminals (and NFC / tap if you want to be fancy) are working things which work.

The only opposition I've heard is "uwu but charge costs are lower so CC fees add up".

CC fees add up, but/and electricity is cheaper than gas, so net-net, you gain. Also considering the convenience that you have zero worries and you will be able to charge hassle-free in any charging stations, I'd pay an extra €1 to not have any headaches, apps, phone charged, and any/all hoops by any apps.

Things like little kiddy rides and vending machines are able to take contactless payments (in the UK). I don't really see how this can be a valid arguement.

It varies by country. In NZ we pay about $0.5 each time using contactless/apple pay, but 0 when using chip+pin.

IMO websites and/or open API's are way to go - allows third parties to build integrations, automations and superapps that enable all sort of benefits for users.

You have this problem because they’re not Tesla. Thats why everyone is adopting NACS and Tesla superchargers

I mean... you can't just fill up. You have to scan a card, wait 5 seconds, enter your zip code, select the button for "grade". Credit card skimmers at gas stations are a big problem too.

You may have been used to that process so it seems more fluid, but Tesla charging is truly "plug and charge" at superchargers

For apartments I think it makes a lot of sense. Having to do a couple transactions every road trip is one thing, but having to complete a transaction just to top off every night the way a homeowner would sounds really annoying.

For apartments it would make more sense to have it read the same key fob you use to open the gates or whatever. Then just add it on your monthly building bill

Not a bad idea. We are looking into this. One issue is that the vendors for these keyfobs are super fragmented -- even more so than Plug & Charge adoption.

Worth being aware that, as well as keyfobs being super fragmented, many are woefully insecure. Think "they just say their ID number when you put them in a reader field".

That means you can trivially clone them. Not hugely exciting for access to a (common) hallway in a large building. If cloning someone else's fob gets you free car charging, the incentive is there to clone them. Also, not all buildings will use unique fobs per "unit" (and you'd likely need to support per-resident/tenant fob uniqueness... And something for guests!) -- sometimes it's a single hardcoded value for the whole block or door zone that the fob opens...

You can, of course, build something proper using NFC (and a smartcard running a smartcard applet), which is effectively like your own custom mini "chip and PIN" EMV system -- you would have to design and implement the wire protocol to authenticate the card etc etc, and all the security design around that, but it could be done. That would at least let you have something more than simply shouting your tag ID number into the air like a super basic NFC tag (or RFID keyfob).

> That means you can trivially clone them.

i have cloned keyfobs for like 5 building at a local laundry. Never met a fob they couldn't clone

Yeah - there's even some fairly capable "cloners" available on eBay for most of the common formats. I guess that the ongoing use of (derived from magnetic stripe) Wiegand interfaces mean that most can be cloned like this.

There are absolutely some unclonable (without massive expenditure on defeating CC EAL 5+ smartcards) access control systems, but those are never the cheapest, so they don't get adopted outside of (very) high security environments.

I wondered if we'd see a shift once the Flipper Zero hit the ground, but it's probably still a bit too early on that.

A lot of hotels used to use insecure (and pretty easily cloned with an Android app) Mifare Ultralight NFC on room keys, but I've not seen one of those recently - most seem to be Mifare classic now, which is secure if your keys aren't compromised.

At that point why not just accept tap-and-pay in addition to the car identifier over the plug?

I feel like no matter what you’ll need to accept credit card payments in these sort of shared environments.

Our current plan is Plug & Charge (via ISO 15118 as well as a fallback to our NFC cable) and Tap to Pay as a backup in case you haven't set up a payment method on your vehicle.

I am thinking of buildings where they got 100+ parking spots, and one can install a charging station for his/her/their car. THAT station needs some 'lock' (software or hardware). Otherwise what stops someone else to abuse my parking spot's 'e-pump', when I drive to work and the spot will be unoccupied for the next 10h?

So some hoop-jumping should also be required.

The flip side to that is that you'd only have to setup the app once at your home. If the charging activation is as smooth as chargepoint, it wouldn't be bad at all.

It would be easy to support both options. Many gas stations have their own app payment system.

Yep. Regular petrol stations figured out pay at the pump decades ago. Why is this such a problem for EV charging?

Companies don't want want the hassle and expense of PCI compliance across their charger network. If it's just session auth shit going across the wire, they only need to worry about PCI compliance on the back end.

By collecting lots of info about you, they get a lower processing rate because the transaction is lower risk vs a swipe/tap.

They can save on transaction fees if they consolidate charging sessions; say you do 2-3 charging sessions in one day.

They want all the personal data they can collect on you constantly if you have the app installed, and to spam you with marketing notifications.

They want resistance to using a different charging network. Charger Company A's charger is $1/minute and Charger Company B's charger is $1.10, and they're on the same block? Obviously you're going to go to the cheaper one if you can just swipe your credit card.

If you have to download an app (using your mobile data, and it might be quite slow), register an account, etc - then you not going to bother with the cheaper station.

> Charger Company A's charger is $1/minute and Charger Company B's charger is $1.10, and they're on the same block?

I’d go to the one that accepted my credit card and didn’t have an app.

This is before EV charging becomes a commodity or a public utility...

Though public utilities are typically even worse, than the current landscape of charging apps :(

Honestly, it may not matter if companies don't want it.

Consumers are going to demand it, and it may be necessary before EV's become ubiquitous, assuming they do. One thing that has helped their case in the US is that payments have historically been a pain in the ass anyway, compared to many other countries. That is changing though.

That’s a easyn one. The charger manufacturers (ChargePoint, etc) want to rake a percentage of the charging revenue for themselves, so they force you to route payment processing through them.

EV are brand new and give us a chance to think of new and interesting solutions for problems that were solved decades ago. The average baby is about 75% water so do you really want to go through the trouble of separating it from the bath water? /s

Tap & Pay with a ccard still requires you to fiddle with a station and slows you down. If you are plugging in at home (which is our target market), the fewer interactions needed the better. Imagine every time you get home you need to take your wallet out, tap the machine, wait for some 3rd party api to talk to the charger in the dimly lit basement, and then and only then you can leave. This is like 30 seconds of your day wasted.

Plus, ultimately we want to make charging as cheap as possible and having to pay the $.30 interchange fee each time a user plugs in would add a ton of overhead to our cost model.

This would be infinitely better than the current model, where you have to install a bullshit app, which doesn’t work over 20% of the time.

I’d happily pay $0.30 per charge session to just use standard NFC or chip payments.

Also, why in god’s name would I have authentication on my home charger?

> Also, why in god’s name would I have authentication on my home charger?

Not everyone in the US lives in a single family home

But if you have a dedicated spot, then the problem is still solved.

Surely this could be dealt with by accepting a "membership card" over NFC. I'm sure my dad has a token for the parking barriers at his place of work which can also take direct card payments.

As an added bonus, when you have family or friends visiting they can pay to charge as normal (at presumably a slightly less attractive rate).

Currently, I just plug into my friends’ charger, and it goes on their electric bill.

I usually bring 10x the dollar value of the charge in booze and food, so it doesn’t matter.

Also, they don’t have to stress out over trying to figure out how to pair my car to their house and charge me $5 while they’re trying to plate dinner and deal with their kids.

If they cared about the $5 (or if I had a hummer and they had a DC fast charger, so it was $20-50) I’d happily pay cash or apple pay or venmo or really any option other than authenticating with their landlord.

That makes sense that the use case in a shared home lot is different than out and about, but still doesn't obviously suggest payment routing over the charger - wouldn't monthly billing be better from the consumers point of view? You'd only need a car identifier for that.

Yes, to your point the Plug & Charge mechanism is just for authentication. Through our integrations with Yardi, Buildium, etc. payment can just be taken out of rent or tacked onto the sub-metered utility bill.

Gotcha, that makes sense.

How do you handle for example visitor spots (e.g. one off charge) in a multi-family unit?

If it’s a multi-family home system, why not just use contactless badges/fobs to identify each family? When you move in you sign the contract, give your bank details and get a fob. Then just badge with the fob to charge

In that case they often already have a fob to enter shared (secured) parking anyway, that also works on doors, and is registered with the building management...

Not a bad idea. Will look into it!

The only EVs I've used are the hire-from-the-street ones available in some cities in Europe. There's generally a small credit (free minutes) if you leave them charging at the end of a trip. There are RFID tags in the car to activate the charger — I assume it's essentially equivalent to a company credit card used to buy petrol, or when you hire an ICE car with fuel included and there's a special credit card in the glovebox to use to pay for the petrol.

E.g. https://www.greenmobility.com/dk/en/faq/

With an L2 at an apartment, you might be plugging in daily. It'd be nice to keep the steps as minimal as possible.

Having said that, something like an NFC card + QR code support would be good enough, IMO. The main thing would be to keep the app as simple and fast as possible.

QR sticker manipulation is too easy of a vector for me to take anything seriously when it comes to "just scan the code, enter card data, and carry on" is just too easy to fake. it's even easier than credit card skimmers. I like QR codes and their convenience for non-critical things like marketing. For things that are direct payment links it is just too unsecure for my comfort

That's a fair point. TBH, a combination of GPS (or just smart defaulting) and entering a short code would work pretty easily as well.

They could also put the QR on a small screen to make it harder to fake. A little epaper display wouldn't add much to the cost.

The problem with fancy variants on trying to "better protect" a QR code is that users don't know what to expect, and the lowest common denomenator of social compliance means they'll (have to, if they want to not be stranded) eventually scan whatever QR code is there, in an attempt to charge.

It feels like this whole "scan the QR code" is a reverse of the ideal paradigm that is (obviously) very easily exploited by scammers and opportunists, especially if payment information is requested! We spent long enough trying to train users to not enter usernames, passwords, and payment details into random web pages when asked... Now they're being asked to do it!

I don't think a QR on a small screen is the answer - people will just cover it with their sticker. If that's not good enough, they'll make a sticker that looks like a small screen with some frame around it.

We need to treat the charger itself as an untrusted piece of infrastructure, and do discovery the other way around. If a user knows they are going to an "ABC Corp" charger, there is presumably a route for them to use a relatively trustworthy discovery platform (i.e. an app store, their EV charging map already knowing where they are headed) to navigate the user to the genuine interface.

For the issue of "which charger to activate", I'm not an EV user, but this feels like if the car communicates any form of usable information to the charger, this could be used to help the user. Easy (and private) paradigms like unlocking a given charger by a map view wouldn't be intuitive for people with reduced spatial awareness (or at night when nobody has a clue where they are in relation to things on a map), but at a small enough charging station you could just ask the user to confirm if they are using "charger 3" (like gas station pump numbers), since that's the only port with a car not yet enabled to charge. For larger places, surely it's easier to use "pump numbers".

(Which is effectively what you are suggesting with a short code, but I think the QR part is a potentially bad paradigm we should try to kill off before it sticks around!)

also, who plugs in daily? do you fuel your ICE car daily? other than professional drivers, i'm doubting this is the normal routine for normal drivers. the irrational idea that EVs need to be plugged in at any and every opportunity is something that should be rationalized away. <referring to your point earlier>

i don't own an EV, so maybe my preconceived ideas of only charging when necessary may be what needs updating??? however, regular battery maintenance routines suggests daily charging might not be the best for the battery.

When my car is home, it's plugged in always. That way I can pre warm or cool the cabin before I leave, and the car dumps a few more percent into the battery (usually it internally charges to about 80% to save the battery, but if it knows you're leaving soon it bumps it up). Then again my car is 2014 and has a much smaller battery than modern cars.

I'd guess that most EV owners with home charging do plug in daily, but also limit charge based on the type of pack. For most of us, that means ~80% as a daily limit, if not less.

In practice, I don't think EV owners are seeing a meaningful difference between repeatedly doing charges from 70 to 80% vs periodically doing bigger charges (eg, 20-80%).

So why not have a full-enough pack every morning? It is one of the big conveniences of an EV. Obviously this will be different if they don't have home charging or have a less than convenient setup.

This road trip video does a good job showing the papercuts and more significant issues that make a non-Tesla road trip painful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92w5doU68D8

There really additional friction dealing with payments, cards, buttons etc. Personally when I park, I just want to stick the charging plug into my car and walk away and not think about it, the same way I do with my phone every night.

Because according to the parent commenter, any company that doesn’t let them take control of their payments is a walled garden. I mean, how is their startup going to make any money if these charging companies don’t give it to them?

The plug and charge solution will seem an iteration or two more advanced than others. And it serves as a customer delight.

For routine home charging, you don't want to require a credit card transaction.

I think the credit card thing would require the chargers to be monitored in a way.

It's a really big improvement, I don't want to mess around with some random app or some credit card reader. Having experienced it I'd never go back

Lol, why would one want more friction on a particular activity?

Recharging electric vehicles is not like refilling gas-powered cars. You will intentionally drive a gas vehicle down to 20%, even 10% tank left before going out of your way to a gas station, maybe once a week on average. But with electric cars, you should intentionally be plugging in to recharge as frequently as possible, at least once a day, as you are penalized (with longer recharge times) the longer you go between recharges.

Imagine needing to negotiate a credit card with your wall outlet before recharging your phone every night, and you'll get an idea why people would hate needing to pull out their credit card for every EV charge.

You must not have had a dad that harped on you about letting your tank get below 50%. If I let mine get down to 10%, my dad would have taken my keys away. There are many reasons people give for this that do not involve zombies and go bags

I remember the garage owner telling my parents they should only half fill the tank to reduce the weight being driven around.

It's pretty much completely pointless to worry about when you fill up your tank. Just fill it up when you need or want to.

nonsense like that gets you sent to your room without dinner.

Your car is rear-wheel-drive and the extra weight you are carrying around in the fuel tank helps your acceleration in the snow?

Driving with a near empty tank is more likely to cause corrosion.

this isn't technically correct. the low levels are not causing the corrosion. it's the contaminants that float in the fuel is the issue. when the tank has plenty of fuel, those floaters are not near the fuel pump. as the levels lower, the contaminants become more concentrated and are more likely to interact with the pump. at least, that's how it was described to me. by described, of course i mean harped on at every opportunity the parental unit could berate about lack of proper care for the car blah blah blah

Water (usually what corrodes fuel tanks) sinks to the bottom when it separates. Plus running any other contaminants through your fuel pump is exactly what you want - burn them up and get rid of them, don't leave them floating in your tank until you get a hole in your tank from them.

no, i had a small truck, so we'd just throw extra ballast in the back to help with that

With EVs I have the opposite habit, I try to recharge at 5-10% on road trips because it recharges faster. (At least with Teslas, I would not want to do a road trip with anything else.)

Can Tesla refuse to charge a car at their whim? Because, say, you were banned from Twitter/X? Too many fast charges this week? Covered the driver-facing camera?

Tesla currently revokes supercharging status on salvage title vehicles on their network. Depending on the title and circumstances, it can be annoying to get working again.

There are hacks to make the car appear as if it is another car...

That’s where governmental regulation should kick in and require compatibility, so you aren’t forced to change charger because you either change car or power company. I expect EU to get there at some point.

> I expect EU to get there at some point.

IMHO, the EU should have done this yester-five-years-ago. It's absolutely baffling they haven't already, considering they're going to outlaw ICE cars in just 6 years time, yet we don't yet have friggin EV charging regulations in place to ensure it always just works for evryone.

I assume politicians are too busy with the inflation/CoL, wars, migration and how to win the upcoming elections in 2024, to worry that we'll be caught wither our pants down on the EV infrastructure side in a few years, because they've been asleep at the wheel.

Mark my words, come 2029, and everyone's gonna freak out, there will be outcry from the voters, and the ICE ban will be postponed for 5 more years so we can get charging infrastructure sorted.

How do you expect EU lawmakers to require a standard which quite possibly hasn't even been invented yet?

I wouldn't expect any standard becoming a legal requirement until one with open specification becomes available and a significant part of the industry has switched to it.

It's interesting that governments are more interested in telling you what kind of stove you can buy and seem to have zero interests in telling EV makers what kind of plug they have to use.

It took them the better part of a decade just to bring Apple to the table on USB. I don't have the same faith you do they're going to be able to even partially repeat this success in a much more diverse ecosystem like vehicles.

You could either 1. itemize the charging bill on their monthly rent, if that parking spot is reserved for one tenant. Really should be no difference from the rest of their electricity use. 2. Charge a flat fee on their rent, and then give them charging for free between off-peak hours. Some utilities offer very cheap off peak rates for EV charging, 3. integrate a credit card reader or bill acceptor for cash payment. Option 3 seems hard if you are trying to cost optimize the charger hardware.

I am bearish on universal PnC being practical to implement. Every EV manufacturer has to make agreements with every EVSE operator to use the same root CAs and same billing system. If you think of an EVSE like a vending machine, there really is no interoperability precedent for this kind of payment. Tesla is special case because they operate both the cars and charging network. But if Pepsi owned and operated all of their vending machines, we probably would have seen the same walled garden.

Using sine-qua-non was a classy way to obfuscate your meaning. I liked it and I don’t know why exactly. I had to read a definition to understand something that was so simple.

Glad my high school Latin classes came in useful for something.

Why does it need to be app based? Can’t you use CC terminals like a normal gas station? Swipe or tap card like any other payment?

Isn’t that what OP is saying? That it shouldn’t be app based and that the new ISO would resolve that by having the car communicate with the charging station? /edit I may have misread that

/edit2 the proposal uses certificate exchange between the car and the charging station. No app.

Ah, I hyper-focused on the dead phone and many apps and totally missed the communication hopefully moves directly between car and charger.

I feel like stuff is pretty easy and solved for at gas stations for payment? Why wouldn’t I just pay at the “pump” (charger) exactly like we’ve all been doing for decades now?

Payment done by the car automatically seems like a solution looking for a problem.

But you're thinking of it as an end customer. What if instead of a 'charging' station getting all the transaction fees the car manufacturers could haggle for some bps and work their way towards a controlling interest in this consortium.

Manufacturers want in because of all the potential $.

Imagine if you had to pull out your credit card every time you wanted to charge your phone at night. This is how most EV drivers charge, so the paradigm for charging an EV is totally different than filling up at a pump.

I got frustrated with dealing with all these charger manufacturer's lousy apps, and that's what led Starlight to focus on building a seamless plug-and-charge experience. No apps required, just plug it in and go.

> Imagine if you had to pull out your credit card every time you wanted to charge your phone at night. This is how most EV drivers charge, so the paradigm for charging an EV is totally different than filling up at a pump.

I’m confused. I have limited expressive with EVs, but when I used a Supercharger, it seemed exactly like a typical gas station experience, other than payment and time spent. Why can’t the payment model be adapted? What am I missing?

Edit: I get it now. It’s aimed at residents, not visitors.

But as a resident, I’m just paying for my electricity monthly, like everyone has been, for literally decades?

EVerest is an open source project that solves for these sorts of interoperability challenges by integrating with all existing standards and making it easy to add new ones. Here's a brief video overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIsvUof3UWo. You can learn more here: https://lfenergy.org/projects/everest/.

My feeling (I've worked on EVSE's but not particularly Plug and Charge) is that standards end up being overly complex with too much potential for different implementations to disagree.

Even something as simple as charging control via control-pilot/proximity signals is already problematic with some vehicles.

Maybe because I'm an engineer and not a business guy, I do not understand why not implement the bare minimum that works and leave advanced cases for later.

Any thoughts on having a credit card reader instead?

Drive upto charger

Plug in

See cost per kWh on the display

Tap contactless card

Charging starts. Status shown on screen.

Optional QR code to a website to monitor charge status

Exactly the same method as buying gas. No need for apps or accounts or anything.

Has anyone pointed out that the people who own Teslas, are likely to also own several of the other cars such as audi and porche?

Did Tesla not release all of their patents a few years back? Can people not just… use the stuff?

It came with a lot of strings attached. For instance, in order to use Tesla patents a company cannot attack Tesla for any intellectual property matter. Also, Tesla still makes use of trade secrets and its design patents are not released.

Which is the reason why about no one took on the offer, it is a legal minefield for not that much value. NACS became a thing only after they truly released the standard.

What was missing from NACS? Design schematics or something? Until now I was under the impression that their patent release was a noble gesture.

The patents for the NACS connector were open sourced. We are utilizing that for our charger hub/connector.

The communication and payment protocol is still proprietary.

How will you pay with cash under such a regime? No EVs for the poor, let them eat cake.

Buy a prepaid card. Just like you have to do now for large numbers of places - including filling up with gas at many places.

Good idea. Go ahead and get started building that and let me know how it goes.

How are you still in business when everyone will use Teslas standard chargers?

Tesla only defines the plug (the interface). Different companies can still manufacture their own plugs and other equipment. Focusing on frictionless payment seems like a good business idea.

I think you'll need to pivot soon. Tesla has it all figured out, including destination charging.

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