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Charging infrastructure in the UK is so bad - I have so many terrible apps on my phone to activate the many brands of different charging points. So I'm very ha

Charging infrastructure in the UK is so bad - I have so many terrible apps on my phone to activate the many brands of different charging points. So I'm very happy to see consolidation if that's going to make charging more reliable. The mystery for me - why don't they all work on contactless payment? (like Instavolt does) That way, I don't need an app, account, tracking or anything else - just tap my card and start charging.

oakesm9 6y ago
How do they get your email address to remind you to use their charge rather than their competitors if you just seamlessly use a contactless card? They've got to get that marketing information!
cogman10 6y ago
It really shouldn't even need that, it should be what Tesla does with their supercharger network. Plug in your car, it does a tap/pay style negotiation, start charging. CCS just adopted a payment standard based on that and I hope it ends up killing the need to pull out your wallet to charge.
- itsoktocry 6y ago
  >It really shouldn't even need that, it should be what Tesla does with their supercharger network. Plug in your car, it does a tap/pay style negotiation, start charging. That's a lot simpler when you only have a few cars on the road and standardized charging hardware. But this will get figured out in time. I mean, look at fuel pumps.
  - cogman10 6y ago
    It's already part of the CCS standard, so I expect that you'll start seeing manufactures slowly adopt it in the future. The trick is getting current stations updated. I still can't tap and pay everywhere and that's somewhat frustrating.
- rsynnott 6y ago
  You're back to the phone app problem there; you'd need accounts with a bunch of different charging companies. Unless you were having the car actually pay on your behalf, I suppose, but that has other obvious problems.
  - cogman10 6y ago
    I don't see the obvious problems with the car paying. It can do exactly what google and apple pay does. Issue a one use token for payment to the charging system which is ultimately redeemed with a credit card purchase/money transfer. The only needed system is for either car manufacturers to setup their payment systems, or for them to rely on some 3rd party to provide the same system. There's already an android auto and apple auto so I'd imagine google or apple would both leap at the opportunity to handle payment for them. The only way with obvious problems, to me, is a system that requires you to pull out a credit card. That is wide open for card skimmers.
  - gambiting 6y ago
    Mercedes does that. If you buy their EQC you can use any charging point in the UK and start charging through the Mercedes ME app, it will be billed to Mercedes and then they send you an invoice later. Apparently it works really well but obviously it requires Mercedes to maintain hundreds of different contracts with all these companies
  - jgust 6y ago
    Do you have an account with every gas station that you use? Grocery store? Restaurant? There's some tech bias to this line of thinking.
    - rsynnott 6y ago
      No, but you pay for those by tapping a card on the pump or going into the shop. The suggestion here was some sort of magic communication between the car and charger, which would require either the car to be a payment instrument itself (obvious security issues) or for either the car vendor or car owner to have contracts with a whole bunch of providers.
noneeeed 6y ago
This is one of the more minor issues that puts me off getting an electric car at the moment. Why do I have to sign up for an account and download an app to charge my car? I can see the app being useful for being alerted when it's done, but that should be an optional thing. It needs to be possible to just turn up, swipe your card and start charging (with some ability to limit how much you charge up). This needs to be as close to filling up at a petrol station as possible.
- mattbee 6y ago
  There are many happy use cases for an electric car in the UK, but most of them involve never planning to charge en route. e.g. my family's main car is a 24kWh Leaf, and did 10,000 miles a year (pre pandemic) without leaving our city's outer ring road.
  - noneeeed 6y ago
    Yeah. I definitely want to get an electric at some point, but at the moment it's not practical for us (mostly the lack of off-street parking where we live). If we could charge up at home I think we'd only ever need to charge on route about three or four times a year, when going on holiday. If the car rental industry was a bit more consumer friendly (they seem mostly designed around business use), renting for the holidays would be very appealing. It will be interesting to see if campsites will let you charge up from their electric hookups. I can see that being a thing in the future.

oakesm9 6y ago

How do they get your email address to remind you to use their charge rather than their competitors if you just seamlessly use a contactless card? They've got to get that marketing information!

cogman10 6y ago

It really shouldn't even need that, it should be what Tesla does with their supercharger network. Plug in your car, it does a tap/pay style negotiation, start charging. CCS just adopted a payment standard based on that and I hope it ends up killing the need to pull out your wallet to charge.

itsoktocry 6y ago
>It really shouldn't even need that, it should be what Tesla does with their supercharger network. Plug in your car, it does a tap/pay style negotiation, start charging. That's a lot simpler when you only have a few cars on the road and standardized charging hardware. But this will get figured out in time. I mean, look at fuel pumps.
- cogman10 6y ago
  It's already part of the CCS standard, so I expect that you'll start seeing manufactures slowly adopt it in the future. The trick is getting current stations updated. I still can't tap and pay everywhere and that's somewhat frustrating.
rsynnott 6y ago
You're back to the phone app problem there; you'd need accounts with a bunch of different charging companies. Unless you were having the car actually pay on your behalf, I suppose, but that has other obvious problems.
- cogman10 6y ago
  I don't see the obvious problems with the car paying. It can do exactly what google and apple pay does. Issue a one use token for payment to the charging system which is ultimately redeemed with a credit card purchase/money transfer. The only needed system is for either car manufacturers to setup their payment systems, or for them to rely on some 3rd party to provide the same system. There's already an android auto and apple auto so I'd imagine google or apple would both leap at the opportunity to handle payment for them. The only way with obvious problems, to me, is a system that requires you to pull out a credit card. That is wide open for card skimmers.
- gambiting 6y ago
  Mercedes does that. If you buy their EQC you can use any charging point in the UK and start charging through the Mercedes ME app, it will be billed to Mercedes and then they send you an invoice later. Apparently it works really well but obviously it requires Mercedes to maintain hundreds of different contracts with all these companies
- jgust 6y ago
  Do you have an account with every gas station that you use? Grocery store? Restaurant? There's some tech bias to this line of thinking.
  - rsynnott 6y ago
    No, but you pay for those by tapping a card on the pump or going into the shop. The suggestion here was some sort of magic communication between the car and charger, which would require either the car to be a payment instrument itself (obvious security issues) or for either the car vendor or car owner to have contracts with a whole bunch of providers.

noneeeed 6y ago

This is one of the more minor issues that puts me off getting an electric car at the moment. Why do I have to sign up for an account and download an app to charge my car? I can see the app being useful for being alerted when it's done, but that should be an optional thing. It needs to be possible to just turn up, swipe your card and start charging (with some ability to limit how much you charge up). This needs to be as close to filling up at a petrol station as possible.

mattbee 6y ago
There are many happy use cases for an electric car in the UK, but most of them involve never planning to charge en route. e.g. my family's main car is a 24kWh Leaf, and did 10,000 miles a year (pre pandemic) without leaving our city's outer ring road.
- noneeeed 6y ago
  Yeah. I definitely want to get an electric at some point, but at the moment it's not practical for us (mostly the lack of off-street parking where we live). If we could charge up at home I think we'd only ever need to charge on route about three or four times a year, when going on holiday. If the car rental industry was a bit more consumer friendly (they seem mostly designed around business use), renting for the holidays would be very appealing. It will be interesting to see if campsites will let you charge up from their electric hookups. I can see that being a thing in the future.