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What do we think makes it hard? I would assume it’s just a process thing, there’s no technical magic that I can think of?

al_borland 2y ago
From the reports I’ve read/watched in the news, and EV owners I’ve talked to, it seems like it’s 2 things. One is building good and reliable processes for payment. Two is monitoring and maintenance, so the chargers actually function when someone shows up to use them. I don’t know if Tesla is better at that or is building more reliable chargers from the start, maybe both. Not having to worry at all about payments for the first several years probably helped. A lot of the charger companies seem to think it’s a cheap and easy business. Make a charger, throw it in a parking lot, and get income forever. I think they need to do better, especially with how long some people need to spend at the chargers. Gas stations have attendants. If something is wrong there is someone there to fix basic things or schedule someone to come out to fix more complex things. And they can hang a sign up when something isn’t working. Charging stations need this, as far as I can tell. A lot of them are put in parking lots of existing stores. I think one option would be to partner with the store, so they can have someone on staff who trains on the charger maintenance and takes care of some of those things. Maybe it’s not their full time job, but they get an extra percentage for taking on those extra responsibilities, which is paid for by the charging companies. There is also the question of future development to make the systems better. Tesla’s charger won the war. One would expect the winner to continue development so it can keep getting better and faster. Range anxiety and the time it takes to charge are still some of the big things in consumers minds that will prevent them from buying an EV. Solving those problems are a marriage between the battery and charging tech. A company in control of both parts of that would have a huge advantage when it comes to being first to market with those improvements.

al_borland 2y ago

From the reports I’ve read/watched in the news, and EV owners I’ve talked to, it seems like it’s 2 things. One is building good and reliable processes for payment. Two is monitoring and maintenance, so the chargers actually function when someone shows up to use them. I don’t know if Tesla is better at that or is building more reliable chargers from the start, maybe both. Not having to worry at all about payments for the first several years probably helped. A lot of the charger companies seem to think it’s a cheap and easy business. Make a charger, throw it in a parking lot, and get income forever. I think they need to do better, especially with how long some people need to spend at the chargers. Gas stations have attendants. If something is wrong there is someone there to fix basic things or schedule someone to come out to fix more complex things. And they can hang a sign up when something isn’t working. Charging stations need this, as far as I can tell. A lot of them are put in parking lots of existing stores. I think one option would be to partner with the store, so they can have someone on staff who trains on the charger maintenance and takes care of some of those things. Maybe it’s not their full time job, but they get an extra percentage for taking on those extra responsibilities, which is paid for by the charging companies. There is also the question of future development to make the systems better. Tesla’s charger won the war. One would expect the winner to continue development so it can keep getting better and faster. Range anxiety and the time it takes to charge are still some of the big things in consumers minds that will prevent them from buying an EV. Solving those problems are a marriage between the battery and charging tech. A company in control of both parts of that would have a huge advantage when it comes to being first to market with those improvements.