9 ms·

Soros fund management backs electric-vehicle charging startup

89 points by hhs 7y ago

bsder 7y ago
I'm so tired of these charging companies. Especially since I have to "sign up and use our app" for all of them instead of just present my credit card at point of charging because they are all trying to corner the market. Can we please just get a state government to start installing charging stations in all public lots so these charging companies have to give up their dreams of being a monopoly?
- zamfi 7y ago
  Don’t worry, friend, this particular startup doesn’t seem interested in you downloading an app — or your money, unless you run a commercial fleet. From TFA: > Amply sets up the physical charging infrastructure for commercial fleets like school buses and uses its software to manage the charging.
  - jamisteven 7y ago
    software = app
- de_watcher 7y ago
  If you're talking about charging for individual customers then here in EU you're fine with just one RFID card.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  Even worse, many use incompatible sockets. (As a CHAdeMO car owner, it’d be nice if Tesla switched from CCS…)
  - speedgoose 7y ago
    It's a matter of time, CHADeMO will slowly die in Europe and USA. Everyone's using CCS nowadays excepts the Japanese brands that didn't get the memo.
  - SuoDuanDao 7y ago
    Question for anyone who works in the EV space - why can't EV owners just get an adapter like I do for wall outlets when I'm travelling? Are the currents too high? It seems like an obvious aftermarket gizmo for someone who lives in an area with competing charger designs.
    - imtringued 7y ago
      Updating an old car to the latest standard works just fine as you say. But if the charging stations don't actually follow the latest standard then you'd need lots of adapters.
    - clouddrover 7y ago
      The charging standards also have software protocols the car must support. And some chargers will refuse to charge your car if it's the "wrong" brand. Tesla's chargers in Europe have CCS type 2 combo plugs but they won't charge non-Tesla vehicles whereas Ionity's chargers will charge anything that can plug into them. CCS: https://www.charinev.org/index.php?id=170 https://www.charinev.org/index.php?id=170 CHAdeMO: https://www.chademo.com/ https://www.chademo.com/
- ohyeahlaws 7y ago
  What would a $100 billion and some open Tesla-like Supercharger system produce? In LA, there’s no Superchargers in Beverly Hills or West Hollywood. There’s one in Culver City and one in Burbank. Some don’t tell you they’re “shared” so sometimes it says 30 mins to charge, other times 3 hours. They were going to build a Supercharger in the Pacific Palisades but the Dept of Transportation said no.
- z-cam 7y ago
  >Can we please just get a state government to start installing charging stations in all public lots so these charging companies have to give up their dreams of being a monopoly? Completely agree that the "sign up and use our app" approach is insufferable. But asking your state to build all the infrastructure doesn't solve the problem. Your state is not going to (a) manufacture charging stations or (b) build the software/payment interfaces needed to manage them. What you're proposing would have the gov sole-source from one of these "apps". Instead of letting the the market determine who can build the best user experience, you would be giving one company (probably ChargePoint) a government-granted monopoly.
  - placatedmayhem 7y ago
    Or maybe we simply legislate that any charger take card payments? That would allow competition in the market to continue while also providing accessibility to the general populace.
- q92z8oeif 7y ago
  > Can we please just get a state government No. How about you give your business to a company that accepts credit card, like any gas station, instead?
- fpoling 7y ago
  I Norway I ended up with 6 different apps to charge various electrical cars that I rented. Surely it is annoying when I need to install yet another app. But after that it does not bother me. I just select the logo matching the the charging station and that is it. All those apps have similar GUI and use GPS to preselect the charging station. So there is very little friction in usage.
  - Barrin92 7y ago
    it doesn't bother you for one appliance, but are you willing to install 6 apps for multiple things that can be charged or any other electrified infrastructure of the future? I don't think I have that much memory on my phone left This really is a question of basic, national infrastructure and I think it should be treated as such rather than this fractured marketplace we have.
- barryrandall 7y ago
  “Can we please just get a state government to start installing charging stations in all public lots so these charging companies have to give up their dreams of being a monopoly?“ I’d settle for requiring charging station operators to use existing financial infrastructure (cash, card, contactless device, etc.). It doesn’t seem like an onerous burden to place on a business and the cost to consumers is not substantially different than what they’re accustomed to.
greendave 7y ago
> The Mountain View, California-based company helps commercial vehicle operators go electric by providing charging infrastructure and fixed prices to charge their vehicles. I imagine that commercial power rates are less variable than residential rates. Nonetheless, providing fixed-cost charging, could get complicated across different states/regions/timezones.
- jamisteven 7y ago
  Not if they have negotiated the rates with the power company ahead of time.
- Mvandenbergh 7y ago
  Commercial power rates are much more variable. Large users are billed based on half hourly rates so are directly exposed to wholesale fluctuations. I'm sure their fixed rate charging offer includes a forecasting and trading module that makes decisions about when to charge if there is any fleet flexibility. So a vehicle that passes through the depot at 60% charge during a low power price period and which has schedule slack might charge but not if the power price is currently very high. The degree to which power price fluctuations can be used depends on how much control you have over charging time. If you run your vehicles down to 20% and they then have a fixed time slot in which they must charge before returning to service, then obviously you're just a permanent price-taker and must simply put up with it. Capital costs are currently sufficiently higher than charging costs that strategically over-provisioning yourself with fleet in order to reduce your average charging cost is not worth the money.
- floatrock 7y ago
  Just the opposite -- commercial rates is where the consultant-grade fun pricing games happen that residential customers wouldn't tolerate the complexity of [1]. Besides more exposure to wholesale fluctuations and time-of-use, there's also things like demand charges, where there's a price component based on your maximum power draw rather than your consumption -- max kW in addition to sum kWh. Demand charge management is a lot of what these commercial charging platforms do. It's fine when a single fleet vehicle comes up to charge, but when a couple show up to charge at the same time all with different times-to-departure, that's when you need to do some selective prioritization and optimization to not get ratcheted to your highest kW demand charge for the month. Then, if you run any industrial-grade machines (or even elevator motors), that's when they start adding additional charges for things like uncorrected power factors -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_factor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_factor [1]: All these things are coming to resi, though... time-of-use rates are increasingly common (it's now the default new rate in CA), and two or three states are experimenting with resi demand charges.
jmeister 7y ago
Yet another data-point for the “climate-change is a Soros hoax” conspiracy nuts..
OliverJones 7y ago
Why is this even a thing? <rant> Because the electric utilities don't understand, and can't/won't adapt to, the electrification of transportation. BEVs from skateboard- to class 8 truck- size are a) an unimaginably vast opportunity for electricity distributors. They're going to get ALL THE GAS STATION BUSINESS in the next generation. b) a time-shiftable load. For the BEV energy business to be viable at scale the time-shifting technology is mandatory. They need smart ways to spread out the electric load. If every good doobie battery car owner says, "I'll tell mine to charge at midnight" guess what happens when they all start drawing 8kW at midnight? The peaking generators have to kick on and the power gets really expensive. And "frequency control ancillary services?" They get costly with sudden large loads. Tesla's already figured out a localized approach to the load-control: I now tell my car what time I need it rather than when to start charging, and it picks the time to start charging. But for load-balancing work at scale is going to require, basically, real-time capacity auctioning. In Norway, the electric utilities use the FM radio text channel (the one that announces songs on fancy radios) to announce current electricity rates, and their meters pick it up and use it. That's a start. If the electricity distributors won't build this smart grid, I guess third-party companies have to step into the breach. It's a lot of hands in the cookie jar. </rant>
- ragebol 7y ago
  > the FM radio text channel (the one that announces songs on fancy radios) That's RDS. It would also make more sense to install batteries like a Tesla Powerwall if it knows it's cheap to load it up now. I expect that exposing residential customers to the price fluctuations will help to flatten out the 'duck curve' that you typically see with heavy PV generation. It makes much more sense then to install such home batteries to dump your PV-electricity in when selling it directly doesn't pay much. Moreover when you can sell the stored electricity at a higher rate when it's needed. Not sure if this set up would prevent transmission capacity limits from being hit as well. The whole thing, and how its set up, is quite interesting from a basic game theoretic view.
  - beckingz 7y ago
    Transmission capacity could be more effectively utilized if prices increased as capacity reached max utilization. This would be extremely unpopular for most residential customers though. Probably better to set it up as a rebate scheme where people get a credit if their EV charger is enrolled in the local Virtual Power Plant
williesleg 7y ago
I love Soros!
Haga 7y ago
So e won. Cause the 2nd hump will break the supply chains back in Europe.
olivermarks 7y ago
Having watched Jeff Gibbs/Michael Moore produced 'planet of the humans' last week I'm not enthusiastic about the way EV's are currently mass produced or the ways the energy they rely on is created. https://youtu.be/Zk11vI-7czE https://youtu.be/Zk11vI-7czE
- floatrock 7y ago
  That documentary completely and/or intentionally missed the point so they could churn out video clickbait. I wrote more about it the other day here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22950172 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22950172
  - olivermarks 7y ago
    There are some damning facts about Green capitalism there (Blood and Gore etc) and the platform Moore appears to have moved to with Gibbs is that there are too many people on the planet, and burning more wood and coal to create electricity isn't solving pollution problems. The materials EVs are created out of need some serious changes to be a lot cleaner before ramping up out of the current niche market.
    - olivermarks 7y ago
      I really hope the Gibbs film shakes up the entrenched 'green energy' cabal, they badly need a wakeup call. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_of_the_Humans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_of_the_Humans I haven't watched this episode of Rising yet but looks like a good follow up discussion https://youtu.be/Bop8x24G_o0 https://youtu.be/Bop8x24G_o0
      - rsynnott 7y ago
        > The central thesis of the film is that various people and organizations in the United States claiming to promote green energy have actually been promoting biomass energy, largely meaning burning trees instead of fossil fuels Wood would appear to be 0.98% of the US's fuel mix, vs 1.58% solar, 6.51% wind. So, this seems like, er, a dubious claim? Maybe they're just really bad at promoting it.
grayed-down 7y ago
Hmmm, now how the heck would Soros use charging stations to further pervert or subvert western society?
neonate 7y ago
https://archive.md/qlMqm https://archive.md/qlMqm

89 points by hhs 7y ago

I'm so tired of these charging companies. Especially since I have to "sign up and use our app" for all of them instead of just present my credit card at point of charging because they are all trying to corner the market. Can we please just get a state government to start installing charging stations in all public lots so these charging companies have to give up their dreams of being a monopoly?

zamfi 7y ago
Don’t worry, friend, this particular startup doesn’t seem interested in you downloading an app — or your money, unless you run a commercial fleet. From TFA: > Amply sets up the physical charging infrastructure for commercial fleets like school buses and uses its software to manage the charging.
- jamisteven 7y ago
  software = app
de_watcher 7y ago
If you're talking about charging for individual customers then here in EU you're fine with just one RFID card.
saagarjha 7y ago
Even worse, many use incompatible sockets. (As a CHAdeMO car owner, it’d be nice if Tesla switched from CCS…)
- speedgoose 7y ago
  It's a matter of time, CHADeMO will slowly die in Europe and USA. Everyone's using CCS nowadays excepts the Japanese brands that didn't get the memo.
- SuoDuanDao 7y ago
  Question for anyone who works in the EV space - why can't EV owners just get an adapter like I do for wall outlets when I'm travelling? Are the currents too high? It seems like an obvious aftermarket gizmo for someone who lives in an area with competing charger designs.
  - imtringued 7y ago
    Updating an old car to the latest standard works just fine as you say. But if the charging stations don't actually follow the latest standard then you'd need lots of adapters.
  - clouddrover 7y ago
    The charging standards also have software protocols the car must support. And some chargers will refuse to charge your car if it's the "wrong" brand. Tesla's chargers in Europe have CCS type 2 combo plugs but they won't charge non-Tesla vehicles whereas Ionity's chargers will charge anything that can plug into them. CCS: https://www.charinev.org/index.php?id=170 https://www.charinev.org/index.php?id=170 CHAdeMO: https://www.chademo.com/ https://www.chademo.com/
ohyeahlaws 7y ago
What would a $100 billion and some open Tesla-like Supercharger system produce? In LA, there’s no Superchargers in Beverly Hills or West Hollywood. There’s one in Culver City and one in Burbank. Some don’t tell you they’re “shared” so sometimes it says 30 mins to charge, other times 3 hours. They were going to build a Supercharger in the Pacific Palisades but the Dept of Transportation said no.
z-cam 7y ago
>Can we please just get a state government to start installing charging stations in all public lots so these charging companies have to give up their dreams of being a monopoly? Completely agree that the "sign up and use our app" approach is insufferable. But asking your state to build all the infrastructure doesn't solve the problem. Your state is not going to (a) manufacture charging stations or (b) build the software/payment interfaces needed to manage them. What you're proposing would have the gov sole-source from one of these "apps". Instead of letting the the market determine who can build the best user experience, you would be giving one company (probably ChargePoint) a government-granted monopoly.
- placatedmayhem 7y ago
  Or maybe we simply legislate that any charger take card payments? That would allow competition in the market to continue while also providing accessibility to the general populace.
q92z8oeif 7y ago
> Can we please just get a state government No. How about you give your business to a company that accepts credit card, like any gas station, instead?
fpoling 7y ago
I Norway I ended up with 6 different apps to charge various electrical cars that I rented. Surely it is annoying when I need to install yet another app. But after that it does not bother me. I just select the logo matching the the charging station and that is it. All those apps have similar GUI and use GPS to preselect the charging station. So there is very little friction in usage.
- Barrin92 7y ago
  it doesn't bother you for one appliance, but are you willing to install 6 apps for multiple things that can be charged or any other electrified infrastructure of the future? I don't think I have that much memory on my phone left This really is a question of basic, national infrastructure and I think it should be treated as such rather than this fractured marketplace we have.
barryrandall 7y ago
“Can we please just get a state government to start installing charging stations in all public lots so these charging companies have to give up their dreams of being a monopoly?“ I’d settle for requiring charging station operators to use existing financial infrastructure (cash, card, contactless device, etc.). It doesn’t seem like an onerous burden to place on a business and the cost to consumers is not substantially different than what they’re accustomed to.

greendave 7y ago

> The Mountain View, California-based company helps commercial vehicle operators go electric by providing charging infrastructure and fixed prices to charge their vehicles. I imagine that commercial power rates are less variable than residential rates. Nonetheless, providing fixed-cost charging, could get complicated across different states/regions/timezones.

jamisteven 7y ago
Not if they have negotiated the rates with the power company ahead of time.
Mvandenbergh 7y ago
Commercial power rates are much more variable. Large users are billed based on half hourly rates so are directly exposed to wholesale fluctuations. I'm sure their fixed rate charging offer includes a forecasting and trading module that makes decisions about when to charge if there is any fleet flexibility. So a vehicle that passes through the depot at 60% charge during a low power price period and which has schedule slack might charge but not if the power price is currently very high. The degree to which power price fluctuations can be used depends on how much control you have over charging time. If you run your vehicles down to 20% and they then have a fixed time slot in which they must charge before returning to service, then obviously you're just a permanent price-taker and must simply put up with it. Capital costs are currently sufficiently higher than charging costs that strategically over-provisioning yourself with fleet in order to reduce your average charging cost is not worth the money.
floatrock 7y ago
Just the opposite -- commercial rates is where the consultant-grade fun pricing games happen that residential customers wouldn't tolerate the complexity of [1]. Besides more exposure to wholesale fluctuations and time-of-use, there's also things like demand charges, where there's a price component based on your maximum power draw rather than your consumption -- max kW in addition to sum kWh. Demand charge management is a lot of what these commercial charging platforms do. It's fine when a single fleet vehicle comes up to charge, but when a couple show up to charge at the same time all with different times-to-departure, that's when you need to do some selective prioritization and optimization to not get ratcheted to your highest kW demand charge for the month. Then, if you run any industrial-grade machines (or even elevator motors), that's when they start adding additional charges for things like uncorrected power factors -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_factor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_factor [1]: All these things are coming to resi, though... time-of-use rates are increasingly common (it's now the default new rate in CA), and two or three states are experimenting with resi demand charges.

jmeister 7y ago

Yet another data-point for the “climate-change is a Soros hoax” conspiracy nuts..

OliverJones 7y ago

Why is this even a thing? <rant> Because the electric utilities don't understand, and can't/won't adapt to, the electrification of transportation. BEVs from skateboard- to class 8 truck- size are a) an unimaginably vast opportunity for electricity distributors. They're going to get ALL THE GAS STATION BUSINESS in the next generation. b) a time-shiftable load. For the BEV energy business to be viable at scale the time-shifting technology is mandatory. They need smart ways to spread out the electric load. If every good doobie battery car owner says, "I'll tell mine to charge at midnight" guess what happens when they all start drawing 8kW at midnight? The peaking generators have to kick on and the power gets really expensive. And "frequency control ancillary services?" They get costly with sudden large loads. Tesla's already figured out a localized approach to the load-control: I now tell my car what time I need it rather than when to start charging, and it picks the time to start charging. But for load-balancing work at scale is going to require, basically, real-time capacity auctioning. In Norway, the electric utilities use the FM radio text channel (the one that announces songs on fancy radios) to announce current electricity rates, and their meters pick it up and use it. That's a start. If the electricity distributors won't build this smart grid, I guess third-party companies have to step into the breach. It's a lot of hands in the cookie jar. </rant>

ragebol 7y ago
> the FM radio text channel (the one that announces songs on fancy radios) That's RDS. It would also make more sense to install batteries like a Tesla Powerwall if it knows it's cheap to load it up now. I expect that exposing residential customers to the price fluctuations will help to flatten out the 'duck curve' that you typically see with heavy PV generation. It makes much more sense then to install such home batteries to dump your PV-electricity in when selling it directly doesn't pay much. Moreover when you can sell the stored electricity at a higher rate when it's needed. Not sure if this set up would prevent transmission capacity limits from being hit as well. The whole thing, and how its set up, is quite interesting from a basic game theoretic view.
- beckingz 7y ago
  Transmission capacity could be more effectively utilized if prices increased as capacity reached max utilization. This would be extremely unpopular for most residential customers though. Probably better to set it up as a rebate scheme where people get a credit if their EV charger is enrolled in the local Virtual Power Plant

williesleg 7y ago

I love Soros!

Haga 7y ago

So e won. Cause the 2nd hump will break the supply chains back in Europe.

olivermarks 7y ago

Having watched Jeff Gibbs/Michael Moore produced 'planet of the humans' last week I'm not enthusiastic about the way EV's are currently mass produced or the ways the energy they rely on is created. https://youtu.be/Zk11vI-7czE https://youtu.be/Zk11vI-7czE

floatrock 7y ago
That documentary completely and/or intentionally missed the point so they could churn out video clickbait. I wrote more about it the other day here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22950172 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22950172
- olivermarks 7y ago
  There are some damning facts about Green capitalism there (Blood and Gore etc) and the platform Moore appears to have moved to with Gibbs is that there are too many people on the planet, and burning more wood and coal to create electricity isn't solving pollution problems. The materials EVs are created out of need some serious changes to be a lot cleaner before ramping up out of the current niche market.
  - olivermarks 7y ago
    I really hope the Gibbs film shakes up the entrenched 'green energy' cabal, they badly need a wakeup call. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_of_the_Humans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_of_the_Humans I haven't watched this episode of Rising yet but looks like a good follow up discussion https://youtu.be/Bop8x24G_o0 https://youtu.be/Bop8x24G_o0
    - rsynnott 7y ago
      > The central thesis of the film is that various people and organizations in the United States claiming to promote green energy have actually been promoting biomass energy, largely meaning burning trees instead of fossil fuels Wood would appear to be 0.98% of the US's fuel mix, vs 1.58% solar, 6.51% wind. So, this seems like, er, a dubious claim? Maybe they're just really bad at promoting it.

grayed-down 7y ago

Hmmm, now how the heck would Soros use charging stations to further pervert or subvert western society?

neonate 7y ago

https://archive.md/qlMqm https://archive.md/qlMqm