4 ms·

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

by _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.
    - progman32 3y ago
      When my car is home, it's plugged in always. That way I can pre warm or cool the cabin before I leave, and the car dumps a few more percent into the battery (usually it internally charges to about 80% to save the battery, but if it knows you're leaving soon it bumps it up). Then again my car is 2014 and has a much smaller battery than modern cars.
  - g_p 3y ago
    The problem with fancy variants on trying to "better protect" a QR code is that users don't know what to expect, and the lowest common denomenator of social compliance means they'll (have to, if they want to not be stranded) eventually scan whatever QR code is there, in an attempt to charge. 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!)

by _ea1k 3y ago

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.
  - progman32 3y ago
    When my car is home, it's plugged in always. That way I can pre warm or cool the cabin before I leave, and the car dumps a few more percent into the battery (usually it internally charges to about 80% to save the battery, but if it knows you're leaving soon it bumps it up). Then again my car is 2014 and has a much smaller battery than modern cars.
- g_p 3y ago
  The problem with fancy variants on trying to "better protect" a QR code is that users don't know what to expect, and the lowest common denomenator of social compliance means they'll (have to, if they want to not be stranded) eventually scan whatever QR code is there, in an attempt to charge. 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!)