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?
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.
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.
Just give me website god damn it.
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.
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 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.
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'.
The only opposition I've heard is "uwu but charge costs are lower so CC fees add up".
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.
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.
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.
Sure, they can steal the car AND the key, but more often, it's the car alone.
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.
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.
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 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.
Following a recent trip I had a bunch of ~1€ transactions from buying single bus/metro tickets from machines.
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...
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
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.
The process for EV and gas refuelling is then identical:
Lift thingamabob -> tap card -> plug into car -> leave
Easy.
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.
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.
So usually, I just use the chip to save time.
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.
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...
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.
(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?
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.
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...
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?
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
But I agree, DCFC need to all accept credit cards like gas pumps. Fortunately NEVI funding requires it.
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
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.
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.
Cant' the car do it?
That was my cynical take on it.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 does tho, even before getting into the reliability issues I don’t want to have to install random applications.
You may have been used to that process so it seems more fluid, but Tesla charging is truly "plug and charge" at superchargers
So some hoop-jumping should also be required.
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).
i have cloned keyfobs for like 5 building at a local laundry. Never met a fob they couldn't clone
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.
I feel like no matter what you’ll need to accept credit card payments in these sort of shared environments.
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.
Though public utilities are typically even worse, than the current landscape of charging apps :(
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.
I’d go to the one that accepted my credit card and didn’t have an app.
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.
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?
Not everyone in the US lives in a single family home
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).
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.
How do you handle for example visitor spots (e.g. one off charge) in a multi-family unit?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!)
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.