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The UK's motorway charging network lose their connections all the time, but they tend to fail open, i.e. charge for free as long as it's not an electrical fault

The UK's motorway charging network lose their connections all the time, but they tend to fail open, i.e. charge for free as long as it's not an electrical fault. It seems like a very petty upside to change that.

nickff 4y ago
The problem is that 'failing free' would incentivize people to disrupt charger communications; if you doubt that this is a real issue, look at the article posted earlier on HN, about people stealing Kias and Hyundais.
- krisoft 4y ago
  > The problem is that 'failing free' would incentivize people to disrupt charger communications Can’t you just log locally on the charger the transactions? Once the connection is restored and if there are dishonest charges you can just pursue them the same way a petrol station would pursue those who fill-and-dash. Or even better. Can’t the car download a certificate from the central server when it is still up which is signed with the private key of tesla and it contains what level of service the vehicle is subscribed to and an expiry date? And then the charger can check the validity even without a network connection.
  - filoleg 4y ago
    > Can’t the car download a certificate from the central server when it is still up which is signed with the private key of tesla and it contains what level of service the vehicle is subscribed to and an expiry date? There is no "service" for charging, it is just like with ICE cars at a gas station. You fill up your car, and then you get charged for however much you filled up.
    - simfree 4y ago
      Chargepoint has plenty of chargers that fail to store and forward payments.
    - krisoft 4y ago
      > There is no "service" for charging, it is just like with ICE cars at a gas station. You fill up your car, and then you get charged for however much you filled up. It sounds like you don’t need to swipe your card every time. The system has your payment details on file to pay. That is what the certificate would attest to.
- mattbee 4y ago
  Ha, surely someone who has driven a £20,000+ car to a surveilled remote location isn't going to bring ... what, a 4G radio jammer? Wire cutters? Risking electrocution? To save £5-20 on a top-up? While they wait 30-60 minutes for the charge to complete? I had assumed they failed open because the installers have more of an incentive to build trust with drivers than to avoid a little extra revenue loss for a few days?
- pcdevils 4y ago
  Hard to relate those issues. Most charging ports are in public areas and in the time it takes for the connection to restore and billing to kick in probably isn't going to be long enough to charge your vehicle up much. While the Kia issue boils down to the US failing to follow the UK, Canada and other regions in using regulation to make immobilisers mandatory. The subsequent penny pinching that took place producing cars with security features that have been around since the early 90s, as they were treated as a premium feature in the US. That combined with them opting for a cheap ignition column gave them their current predicament as even basic steering lock functionality is dead.
- Arrath 4y ago
  Can we let the fear of hypothetical bad actors worsen our everyday lives?
- toast0 4y ago
  Credit card systems have offline authentication, where a payment terminal can be configured to accept payments under some threshold for a while and send them in a batch later. It's far from perfect, there's lots of reasons online authentication is preferred; but it allows for business to continue with less friction than requiring cash and someone or something to handle it. It would make sense to do something similar for a charging network. Worst case, it can't be too hard to track down the owner of a vehicle by its VIN.

nickff 4y ago

The problem is that 'failing free' would incentivize people to disrupt charger communications; if you doubt that this is a real issue, look at the article posted earlier on HN, about people stealing Kias and Hyundais.

krisoft 4y ago
> The problem is that 'failing free' would incentivize people to disrupt charger communications Can’t you just log locally on the charger the transactions? Once the connection is restored and if there are dishonest charges you can just pursue them the same way a petrol station would pursue those who fill-and-dash. Or even better. Can’t the car download a certificate from the central server when it is still up which is signed with the private key of tesla and it contains what level of service the vehicle is subscribed to and an expiry date? And then the charger can check the validity even without a network connection.
- filoleg 4y ago
  > Can’t the car download a certificate from the central server when it is still up which is signed with the private key of tesla and it contains what level of service the vehicle is subscribed to and an expiry date? There is no "service" for charging, it is just like with ICE cars at a gas station. You fill up your car, and then you get charged for however much you filled up.
  - simfree 4y ago
    Chargepoint has plenty of chargers that fail to store and forward payments.
  - krisoft 4y ago
    > There is no "service" for charging, it is just like with ICE cars at a gas station. You fill up your car, and then you get charged for however much you filled up. It sounds like you don’t need to swipe your card every time. The system has your payment details on file to pay. That is what the certificate would attest to.
mattbee 4y ago
Ha, surely someone who has driven a £20,000+ car to a surveilled remote location isn't going to bring ... what, a 4G radio jammer? Wire cutters? Risking electrocution? To save £5-20 on a top-up? While they wait 30-60 minutes for the charge to complete? I had assumed they failed open because the installers have more of an incentive to build trust with drivers than to avoid a little extra revenue loss for a few days?
pcdevils 4y ago
Hard to relate those issues. Most charging ports are in public areas and in the time it takes for the connection to restore and billing to kick in probably isn't going to be long enough to charge your vehicle up much. While the Kia issue boils down to the US failing to follow the UK, Canada and other regions in using regulation to make immobilisers mandatory. The subsequent penny pinching that took place producing cars with security features that have been around since the early 90s, as they were treated as a premium feature in the US. That combined with them opting for a cheap ignition column gave them their current predicament as even basic steering lock functionality is dead.
Arrath 4y ago
Can we let the fear of hypothetical bad actors worsen our everyday lives?
toast0 4y ago
Credit card systems have offline authentication, where a payment terminal can be configured to accept payments under some threshold for a while and send them in a batch later. It's far from perfect, there's lots of reasons online authentication is preferred; but it allows for business to continue with less friction than requiring cash and someone or something to handle it. It would make sense to do something similar for a charging network. Worst case, it can't be too hard to track down the owner of a vehicle by its VIN.