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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. O

by akouri 3y ago

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 https://www.starlightcharging.com

why_at 3y ago
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?
- jakewins 3y ago
  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.
  - afavour 3y ago
    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.
    - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
      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.
      - afavour 3y ago
        [flagged]
        AnthonyMouse 3y ago
        This is something you add support for as an optional convenience feature because you can do it entirely in software, not something you require people to use. You still need a card reader on the charger. This is the fundamental problem with all of this stuff -- nobody wants your app. If you can't make it better than sticking a card in the machine, go away. If you can, prove it, by making it an alternative to sticking a card in the machine instead of the only option.
        andrelaszlo 3y ago
        Can't read. Does it say USB-C? ;)
      - sonicanatidae 3y ago
        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.
- solatic 3y ago
  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.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    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
    - fshbbdssbbgdd 3y ago
      Your car is rear-wheel-drive and the extra weight you are carrying around in the fuel tank helps your acceleration in the snow?
      - dylan604 3y ago
        no, i had a small truck, so we'd just throw extra ballast in the back to help with that
      - NewJazz 3y ago
        Driving with a near empty tank is more likely to cause corrosion.
        dylan604 3y ago
        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
- enragedcacti 3y ago
  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.
  - _ea1k 3y ago
    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.
  - spaceywilly 3y ago
    It would be easy to support both options. Many gas stations have their own app payment system.
  - HenryBemis 3y ago
    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.
  - namdnay 3y ago
    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
    - akouri 3y ago
      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.
      - g_p 3y ago
        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).
- _ea1k 3y ago
  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.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    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
    - _ea1k 3y ago
      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.
      - dylan604 3y ago
        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.
        _ea1k 3y ago
        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.
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  Yep. Regular petrol stations figured out pay at the pump decades ago. Why is this such a problem for EV charging?
  - quickthrowman 3y ago
    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.
  - KennyBlanken 3y ago
    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.
    - JAlexoid 3y ago
      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 :(
    - ska 3y ago
      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.
- hehhehaha 3y ago
  I think the credit card thing would require the chargers to be monitored in a way.
- autoexecbat 3y ago
  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
- akouri 3y ago
  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.
  - hedora 3y ago
    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?
    - akouri 3y ago
      > 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
      - hedora 3y ago
        But if you have a dedicated spot, then the problem is still solved.
    - VBprogrammer 3y ago
      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).
      - hedora 3y ago
- CarVac 3y ago
  For routine home charging, you don't want to require a credit card transaction.
- AmericanChopper 3y ago
  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?
- andrejk 3y ago
  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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92w5doU68D8
- moralestapia 3y ago
  Lol, why would one want more friction on a particular activity?
- shreezus 3y ago
  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.
- browningstreet 3y ago
  The plug and charge solution will seem an iteration or two more advanced than others. And it serves as a customer delight.
dybber 3y ago
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.
- akira2501 3y ago
  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.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  > 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.
  - DeepSeaTortoise 3y ago
    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.
baybal2 3y ago
[dead]
Caddickbrown 3y ago
Did Tesla not release all of their patents a few years back? Can people not just… use the stuff?
- GuB-42 3y ago
  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.
  - heyoni 3y ago
    What was missing from NACS? Design schematics or something? Until now I was under the impression that their patent release was a noble gesture.
- akouri 3y ago
  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.
7952 3y ago
Any thoughts on having a credit card reader instead?
castratikron 3y ago
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.
Animats 3y ago
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?
- Shank 3y ago
  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.
  - londons_explore 3y ago
    There are hacks to make the car appear as if it is another car...
iwontberude 3y ago
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.
- akouri 3y ago
  Glad my high school Latin classes came in useful for something.
alistairSH 3y ago
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?
- heyoni 3y ago
  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.
  - alistairSH 3y ago
    Ah, I hyper-focused on the dead phone and many apps and totally missed the communication hopefully moves directly between car and charger.
port914 3y ago
I think you'll need to pivot soon. Tesla has it all figured out, including destination charging.
m3kw9 3y ago
How are you still in business when everyone will use Teslas standard chargers?
- kccqzy 3y ago
  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.
kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
How will you pay with cash under such a regime? No EVs for the poor, let them eat cake.
- you-make-it 3y ago
  Good idea. Go ahead and get started building that and let me know how it goes.
- midasuni 3y ago
  Buy a prepaid card. Just like you have to do now for large numbers of places - including filling up with gas at many places.
alexthornton 3y ago
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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIsvUof3UWo. You can learn more here: https://lfenergy.org/projects/everest/ https://lfenergy.org/projects/everest/.
xpe 3y ago
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-ev-charging-mustang-mach-e/ https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a35044132/plug-and-charge-...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- akouri 3y ago
  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.
  - lvturner 3y ago
    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!
    - bravoetch 3y ago
      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.
- taneq 3y ago
  Aah wait so it's Plug-And-Supply-Currency rather than Plug-And-Supply-Current?
dchuk 3y ago
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.
- akouri 3y ago
  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.
  - LeafItAlone 3y ago
    > 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.
  - dchuk 3y ago
    But as a resident, I’m just paying for my electricity monthly, like everyone has been, for literally decades?
- mark_story 3y ago
  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 $.
jcarrano 3y ago
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.
midasuni 3y ago
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.
samstave 3y ago
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?

by akouri 3y ago

why_at 3y ago

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?

jakewins 3y ago
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.
- afavour 3y ago
  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.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    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.
    - afavour 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
        This is something you add support for as an optional convenience feature because you can do it entirely in software, not something you require people to use. You still need a card reader on the charger. This is the fundamental problem with all of this stuff -- nobody wants your app. If you can't make it better than sticking a card in the machine, go away. If you can, prove it, by making it an alternative to sticking a card in the machine instead of the only option.
      - andrelaszlo 3y ago
        Can't read. Does it say USB-C? ;)
    - sonicanatidae 3y ago
      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.
solatic 3y ago
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.
- dylan604 3y ago
  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
  - fshbbdssbbgdd 3y ago
    Your car is rear-wheel-drive and the extra weight you are carrying around in the fuel tank helps your acceleration in the snow?
    - dylan604 3y ago
      no, i had a small truck, so we'd just throw extra ballast in the back to help with that
    - NewJazz 3y ago
      Driving with a near empty tank is more likely to cause corrosion.
      - dylan604 3y ago
        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
enragedcacti 3y ago
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.
- _ea1k 3y ago
  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.
- spaceywilly 3y ago
  It would be easy to support both options. Many gas stations have their own app payment system.
- HenryBemis 3y ago
  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.
- namdnay 3y ago
  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
  - akouri 3y ago
    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.
    - g_p 3y ago
      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).
_ea1k 3y ago
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.
- dylan604 3y ago
  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
  - _ea1k 3y ago
    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.
    - dylan604 3y ago
      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.
      - _ea1k 3y ago
        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.
SoftTalker 3y ago
Yep. Regular petrol stations figured out pay at the pump decades ago. Why is this such a problem for EV charging?
- quickthrowman 3y ago
  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.
- KennyBlanken 3y ago
  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.
  - JAlexoid 3y ago
    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 :(
  - ska 3y ago
    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.
hehhehaha 3y ago
I think the credit card thing would require the chargers to be monitored in a way.
autoexecbat 3y ago
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
akouri 3y ago
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.
- hedora 3y ago
  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?
  - akouri 3y ago
    > 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
    - hedora 3y ago
      But if you have a dedicated spot, then the problem is still solved.
  - VBprogrammer 3y ago
    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).
    - hedora 3y ago
CarVac 3y ago
For routine home charging, you don't want to require a credit card transaction.
AmericanChopper 3y ago
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?
andrejk 3y ago
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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92w5doU68D8
moralestapia 3y ago
Lol, why would one want more friction on a particular activity?
shreezus 3y ago
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.
browningstreet 3y ago
The plug and charge solution will seem an iteration or two more advanced than others. And it serves as a customer delight.

dybber 3y ago

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.

akira2501 3y ago
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.
FirmwareBurner 3y ago
> 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.
- DeepSeaTortoise 3y ago
  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.

baybal2 3y ago

[dead]

Caddickbrown 3y ago

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

GuB-42 3y ago
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.
- heyoni 3y ago
  What was missing from NACS? Design schematics or something? Until now I was under the impression that their patent release was a noble gesture.
akouri 3y ago
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.

7952 3y ago

Any thoughts on having a credit card reader instead?

castratikron 3y ago

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.

Animats 3y ago

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?

Shank 3y ago
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.
- londons_explore 3y ago
  There are hacks to make the car appear as if it is another car...

iwontberude 3y ago

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.

akouri 3y ago
Glad my high school Latin classes came in useful for something.

alistairSH 3y ago

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?

heyoni 3y ago
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.
- alistairSH 3y ago
  Ah, I hyper-focused on the dead phone and many apps and totally missed the communication hopefully moves directly between car and charger.

port914 3y ago

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

m3kw9 3y ago

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

kccqzy 3y ago
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.

kevin_thibedeau 3y ago

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

you-make-it 3y ago
Good idea. Go ahead and get started building that and let me know how it goes.
midasuni 3y ago
Buy a prepaid card. Just like you have to do now for large numbers of places - including filling up with gas at many places.

alexthornton 3y ago

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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIsvUof3UWo. You can learn more here: https://lfenergy.org/projects/everest/ https://lfenergy.org/projects/everest/.

xpe 3y ago

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-ev-charging-mustang-mach-e/ https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a35044132/plug-and-charge-...

deleted 3y ago
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akouri 3y ago
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.
- lvturner 3y ago
  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!
  - bravoetch 3y ago
    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.
taneq 3y ago
Aah wait so it's Plug-And-Supply-Currency rather than Plug-And-Supply-Current?

dchuk 3y ago

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.

akouri 3y ago
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.
- LeafItAlone 3y ago
  > 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.
- dchuk 3y ago
  But as a resident, I’m just paying for my electricity monthly, like everyone has been, for literally decades?
mark_story 3y ago
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 $.

jcarrano 3y ago

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.

midasuni 3y ago

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.

samstave 3y ago

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?