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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 overcom

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.
- tzs 3y ago
  Another reason for a card reader is that it easily handles the case of a borrowed EV. It is customary when borrowing someone's ICE car to pay for the gas used by returning the car with as much gas as it had when you borrowed it, or even with a full tank. I'd expect people will want to continue that custom when the car is an EV.
  - matt-attack 3y ago
    EVs could potentially handle that scenario even better than how it works with ICE cars. With ICE there’s always the error associated with how much gas was in the car to start as well as how much should you fill up when returning it. (Yes I know it’s customary to always just return a friend’s car filled to 100% regardless of the original tank state). Nonetheless with an EV you could just hit a button saying “friend has taken possession” or “loaner mode” similar to valet mode. Upon returning the car and disabling that mode the car could present you with an accurate dollar amount of exactly what to pay your friend.
- mikepurvis 3y ago
  Particularly in a world where every new phone and smartwatch integrates tap-to-pay, seems like a no-brainer to just integrate at that point.
- Retric 3y ago
  Cars don’t need to have credit card details onboard. Hypothetical standard: Charger lets car open a low bandwidth internet connection. Car uses it (or cellular) to open an encrypted channel to a 3rd part service (Tesla/Visa/whatever) saying it’s VIN, password, and the charger’s ID. Charger gets payment from 3rd party. PS: I would rather chargers just had working credit card readers, but individual chargers don’t do many transactions per day so apps are a cost saving thing.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    You're getting at the root of the problem here, which is that Visa doesn't actually support anything like that and "whatever" is going to add another grubby middle man to the transaction, which is the thing that most needs to be prevented. You're fundamentally trying to transfer your money to the operator of the charger, but they aren't standing around to give cash to, so you want something digital. Alright, so your bank should do this -- you authorize your car's private key to make withdrawals from your bank account at charging points and we're all set. Except that banks suck at this sort of thing, which is why we have the credit/debit network to create some kind of standard. Except the standard is credit cards, not public key cryptography. You wanted to give your money to the charging point operator but instead you have to give it to your bank to give it to Visa to give it to the charging point operator. Now we're going to add "Tesla/whatever" to the chain? This needs to stop. You stick with the card reader until you figure out how to get banks, using some kind of standard, to support the public/private key thing and we can remove a middle man instead of adding one.
    - Retric 3y ago
      I agree, except Visa and Mastercard are willing to innovate. Apple Pay/Google Wallet for cars isn’t an unrealistic goal.
    - matthewdgreen 3y ago
      Visa et al are going to charge a minimum transaction fee for small-value transactions, which covers the typical charging session. Third party services are an advantage, because they can bundle small transactions together and take advantage of their economies of scale and their own fraud models. There is a world where Visa and the payment card industry looked forward in the year 2005 and said “IoT devices like EVs will need payment capability, let’s think about how to be essential to this ecosystem in a way that removes the need for third party services and saves everyone money” but that kind of technical innovation seems to be outside of their core competency.
- chmod775 3y ago
  All the car needs to store is some private key corresponding to yourself, to prove it's that car. On modern hardware you can make these really hard to steal, short of taking the entire chip with you. Worse case, if someone steals that key (or the hardware that stores it), they can steal electricity with it. Which also means they'll be caught approximately tomorrow. If you have that level of access/capability, there's better things to do than using it to get 50 dollars worth of electricity and probably being picked up by police as you siphon it. Besides, there's easier and stealthier ways to get free electricity.
highwaylights 3y ago
It also brings that part of the charging experience to parity with gas, which is really simple for non-tech savvy switchers to understand. The process for EV and gas refuelling is then identical: Lift thingamabob -> tap card -> plug into car -> leave Easy.
Animats 3y ago
The tap-and-pay RF people need to get their act together. The average number of tries needed to get a good read is > 1. For Veriphone units, > 2. Please make it clear where, exactly, the near-field antenna is. Behind the screen? Behind the logo that looks like WiFi? Somewhere inside a separate hockey-puck device? And indicate when the reader is active, too. Light up something. One place I visit regularly had a POS system which worked perfectly. They recently switched it out for a Clover unit with much lower read reliability and a worse customer-facing UI.
- VBprogrammer 3y ago
  For what it's worth, contactless is ubiquitous in the UK – the experience is almost always seamless. The only exception being the odd reader with the antenna in a stupid place (these have gotten less common over time) or when your bank decides to force a pin check.
  - Affric 3y ago
    I want to echo this. When contactless is ubiquitous there are pretty much no problems.
    - xp84 3y ago
      I don’t know if I agree. It’s exceedingly rare now to find a place which doesn’t accept contactless in America, but we have these problems still. Besides dumb inconsistent terminals, the main thing holding it back is (A) customers don’t use it because they either don’t know it’s much faster than our garbage chip readers, or they have been burned by hunting for the right spot to tap. And (B) even the clerks don’t use it because until about this year there was a significant fraction of cards out there without NFC and who wants to hunt for the logo instead of just always shoving it in the (stupid slow) chip reader. There still might be plenty if you count debit cards which I never use but are very popular.
      - recursive 3y ago
        Sometimes I try to use the tap-to-pay. When I try, more often than not, I cannot get it to work, and then I use the chip anyway. So usually, I just use the chip to save time.
Sophira 3y ago
Okay, hear me out here. What's stopping us from just having payments be out of band, like with petrol? Is being able to ask your car to make a long drive across long distances on its own actually something people want to do? Or is it a solution in search of a problem? (Disclaimer, I live in the UK and not the US. It's possible there are cultural reasons I've missed.)
henrikschroder 3y ago
I saw that Norway is now mandating tap and pay at all new EV charging spots. I agree, that's the way to go. Charging an EV has to be just as easy as filling up a gas car. Pull up, tap you card, plug in. There's zero reason for having to fiddle with apps and memberships and qr codes and whatever else bullshit.

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.
tzs 3y ago
Another reason for a card reader is that it easily handles the case of a borrowed EV. It is customary when borrowing someone's ICE car to pay for the gas used by returning the car with as much gas as it had when you borrowed it, or even with a full tank. I'd expect people will want to continue that custom when the car is an EV.
- matt-attack 3y ago
  EVs could potentially handle that scenario even better than how it works with ICE cars. With ICE there’s always the error associated with how much gas was in the car to start as well as how much should you fill up when returning it. (Yes I know it’s customary to always just return a friend’s car filled to 100% regardless of the original tank state). Nonetheless with an EV you could just hit a button saying “friend has taken possession” or “loaner mode” similar to valet mode. Upon returning the car and disabling that mode the car could present you with an accurate dollar amount of exactly what to pay your friend.
mikepurvis 3y ago
Particularly in a world where every new phone and smartwatch integrates tap-to-pay, seems like a no-brainer to just integrate at that point.
Retric 3y ago
Cars don’t need to have credit card details onboard. Hypothetical standard: Charger lets car open a low bandwidth internet connection. Car uses it (or cellular) to open an encrypted channel to a 3rd part service (Tesla/Visa/whatever) saying it’s VIN, password, and the charger’s ID. Charger gets payment from 3rd party. PS: I would rather chargers just had working credit card readers, but individual chargers don’t do many transactions per day so apps are a cost saving thing.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  You're getting at the root of the problem here, which is that Visa doesn't actually support anything like that and "whatever" is going to add another grubby middle man to the transaction, which is the thing that most needs to be prevented. You're fundamentally trying to transfer your money to the operator of the charger, but they aren't standing around to give cash to, so you want something digital. Alright, so your bank should do this -- you authorize your car's private key to make withdrawals from your bank account at charging points and we're all set. Except that banks suck at this sort of thing, which is why we have the credit/debit network to create some kind of standard. Except the standard is credit cards, not public key cryptography. You wanted to give your money to the charging point operator but instead you have to give it to your bank to give it to Visa to give it to the charging point operator. Now we're going to add "Tesla/whatever" to the chain? This needs to stop. You stick with the card reader until you figure out how to get banks, using some kind of standard, to support the public/private key thing and we can remove a middle man instead of adding one.
  - Retric 3y ago
    I agree, except Visa and Mastercard are willing to innovate. Apple Pay/Google Wallet for cars isn’t an unrealistic goal.
  - matthewdgreen 3y ago
    Visa et al are going to charge a minimum transaction fee for small-value transactions, which covers the typical charging session. Third party services are an advantage, because they can bundle small transactions together and take advantage of their economies of scale and their own fraud models. There is a world where Visa and the payment card industry looked forward in the year 2005 and said “IoT devices like EVs will need payment capability, let’s think about how to be essential to this ecosystem in a way that removes the need for third party services and saves everyone money” but that kind of technical innovation seems to be outside of their core competency.
chmod775 3y ago
All the car needs to store is some private key corresponding to yourself, to prove it's that car. On modern hardware you can make these really hard to steal, short of taking the entire chip with you. Worse case, if someone steals that key (or the hardware that stores it), they can steal electricity with it. Which also means they'll be caught approximately tomorrow. If you have that level of access/capability, there's better things to do than using it to get 50 dollars worth of electricity and probably being picked up by police as you siphon it. Besides, there's easier and stealthier ways to get free electricity.

highwaylights 3y ago

It also brings that part of the charging experience to parity with gas, which is really simple for non-tech savvy switchers to understand. The process for EV and gas refuelling is then identical: Lift thingamabob -> tap card -> plug into car -> leave Easy.

Animats 3y ago

The tap-and-pay RF people need to get their act together. The average number of tries needed to get a good read is > 1. For Veriphone units, > 2. Please make it clear where, exactly, the near-field antenna is. Behind the screen? Behind the logo that looks like WiFi? Somewhere inside a separate hockey-puck device? And indicate when the reader is active, too. Light up something. One place I visit regularly had a POS system which worked perfectly. They recently switched it out for a Clover unit with much lower read reliability and a worse customer-facing UI.

VBprogrammer 3y ago
For what it's worth, contactless is ubiquitous in the UK – the experience is almost always seamless. The only exception being the odd reader with the antenna in a stupid place (these have gotten less common over time) or when your bank decides to force a pin check.
- Affric 3y ago
  I want to echo this. When contactless is ubiquitous there are pretty much no problems.
  - xp84 3y ago
    I don’t know if I agree. It’s exceedingly rare now to find a place which doesn’t accept contactless in America, but we have these problems still. Besides dumb inconsistent terminals, the main thing holding it back is (A) customers don’t use it because they either don’t know it’s much faster than our garbage chip readers, or they have been burned by hunting for the right spot to tap. And (B) even the clerks don’t use it because until about this year there was a significant fraction of cards out there without NFC and who wants to hunt for the logo instead of just always shoving it in the (stupid slow) chip reader. There still might be plenty if you count debit cards which I never use but are very popular.
    - recursive 3y ago
      Sometimes I try to use the tap-to-pay. When I try, more often than not, I cannot get it to work, and then I use the chip anyway. So usually, I just use the chip to save time.

Sophira 3y ago

Okay, hear me out here. What's stopping us from just having payments be out of band, like with petrol? Is being able to ask your car to make a long drive across long distances on its own actually something people want to do? Or is it a solution in search of a problem? (Disclaimer, I live in the UK and not the US. It's possible there are cultural reasons I've missed.)

henrikschroder 3y ago

I saw that Norway is now mandating tap and pay at all new EV charging spots. I agree, that's the way to go. Charging an EV has to be just as easy as filling up a gas car. Pull up, tap you card, plug in. There's zero reason for having to fiddle with apps and memberships and qr codes and whatever else bullshit.