So, I haven't got the money for an electric car... One just can't use the payment card at a bog standard self service payment terminal? I had assumed that, but apparently no? You seriously visit random websites and enter CC details?

Right, many or most don't have credit card terminals. You plug in, load an app, find you station, select a port number, tell it to start and hope it works. It doesn't sound that bad, but the chargers janky, the apps are janky and it takes a long time often with multiple attempts.

Installing random apps sounds janky as hell. I only install vetted apps from F droid. I wouldn't give a charging station access to my phone.

It is janky as hell, but it sounds like EV owners are making their lives more difficult in just slightly different ways from how you're making your life more difficult :)

I really can't believe how the idea of giving random companies access to electronics, which is what installing an app means, ever got normalised, even among techies. I guess people also do give out tons of personal details just because some form asks them. It goes against any and all security advice even regular people are now given. I guess it's true: the brosephs ook over...

So having an electric car requires an smartphone, one on which you can install random software, where you want to install random software, and have internet (cause I suppose there's no WiFi at those bornes) and you have a CC (also not true for many).

Good to know that this isn't for me.

I don't disagree with your principles; I was definitely on your side of the issue ~25 years ago and I suppose I still am, intellectually. I never changed my mind, it just wasn't important enough to me to put the substantial effort into. (which is, I suppose, what "they" are counting on). More power to you for investing the effort rather than just taking the path of least resistance.

Many things and services now 'require' an app, but I never do and in practice that doesn't seem much of an issue. It's just sad to hear it won't be possible to sidestep if I ever do own (or rent) an electric car, which ofc I fully expect. I already caved by having a phone with Google Play services enabled for a few banking apps. But I figure I can have some trust in them, since they are my bank.

A friend of mine has a card with which he can charge at certain places, but definitely not all (so he has some anxiety over that, in new places you never can be sure it actually works). Is such a card an option at those places that 'require' and app?

And what's even the reason for this? Those unmanned fossil fuel stations debit your card with some largish amount before you can take fuel. Why would things need to be more complex than that when charging electrons?

> It doesn't sound that bad

It does tho, even before getting into the reliability issues I don’t want to have to install random applications.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Can't read. Does it say USB-C? ;)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The transactions are of higher value than many public transport tickets, and those are already common — either as normal purchases from a ticket machine, or with the special transaction type used when the payment card is touched to the reader on the ticket barrier.

Following a recent trip I had a bunch of ~1€ transactions from buying single bus/metro tickets from machines.

Visa charges a 5-10 cent fixed fee plus a percentage for those 1 Euro transactions. Presumably public transport just eats those costs, but in a commodity business like electricity I imagine it’s a noticeable chunk of the profit margin.

1 cent fixed fee + percentage seems to be the standard where I am. It might be difficult in other EU countries but IIRC the fixed fee is capped at 5cents.

The only public information I can find is this, which is from 2013 in London:

Visa credit 0.65%, debit 1 pence. Mastercard credit 0.80%, debit 1 pence + 0.5%.

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/costs_to_tfl_for_cont...

> of ~1€ transactions

In Europe, sure because the fees are capped. In the US you pay a fixed fee + x% which makes small transactions like this prohibitively expensive

I agree, except Visa and Mastercard are willing to innovate. Apple Pay/Google Wallet for cars isn’t an unrealistic goal.

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.

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.

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.

How would paying for an EV charge work like this? Would you select an amount of credit in currency (presumably via buttons on the charger?) then tap-to-pay for that amount?

(I believe there are some limitations on tap-to-pay transactions to prevent a merchant presenting the transaction with a different value after actually tapping the card.)

I think a lot of "pay at pump" fuel stations require a full insertion of the card to pre-authorize a large amount, then release it as a partial refund once the amount of fuel dispensed is known.

Would this be a barrier to EV charging, if you need a way to communicate this upfront, or have to effectively replicate out EMV infrastructure on totally unmonitored terminals with PIN readers (and likely the next card skimming scandal brewing)?

Also, how would contactless-only work for cards that get soft locked to be inserted for a PIN check? Would there be a way for EV chargers to be exempted from this? Or would people end up stuck and unable to charge as there's no available place with a PIN reader they can use to unlock their contactless payments?

Pay-at-pump is ubiquitous here in New Zealand, I don't think I've seen a station without it for years. This may be because around 90% of all retail transactions are done with payment cards here.

It's easy. You select the max amount (up to NZ$200), tap your card, and it's done. Pick up the right fuel nozzle, refuel, and go. Exactly the same can be done on EV chargers.

The process card-side is not a charge-and-refund as refunds have fees to the merchant. Rather it's a pre-authentication and finalisation. Pre-auth holds the funds for a set time (determined by the merchant agreement with the bank) and the vendor can finalise the charge up to the pre-authentication amount. Most hotels and car rental places do this for security deposits as well, if they don't charge or explicitly cancel your bank will release the fund hold at the end of the holding period.

They generally pre-auth for either £20 or £40 and then update the amount post-transaction.

In terms of PIN check, the card is just declined with an appropriate error message because you can’t insert it and the next time you use a contactless machine it asks for the card to be inserted and a PIN entered.

For petrol (gas) pumps in the UK it generally auths either £1 or £99.

Makes sense and matched my understanding of the pay at pump preauth for a fixed amount.

I guess the issue then becomes relying on contactless (only) without the hardware for full EMV with PIN, as then someone whose card has been used contactless one too many times can't charge, and potentially ends up stuck there.

It does feel like contactless is a good convenience measure, but probably isn't ideal as the only mechanism on a reader for charging infrastructure.

Unrelated to this, but not being able to initiate charging without internet access (for online auth of cards, and the ones that can only be used online) also is likely to become an issue in rural areas, as well as give quite a few resilience issues if cloud infrastructure isn't available, or internet backhaul from the area is disrupted. Even once power is restored after a storm, if comms are down (like with Storm Arwen), this doesn't sound ideal for EV charging...

I only have experience with Shell, Morrisons, and Tesco pay-at-pump stations. In all of those, you have to physically insert your card and type in your PIN; contactless does not exist.

What's a large amount? I haven't inserted my card at Costco for a very long time now. Just tap.

If the pump pre-authorizes an amount (many non-Costco gas stations I go to make you choose an amount to authorize) it simply never captures more than was actually used.

Now why would any of this be fundamentally different for EVs? You have a rough gauge for how much "fuel" i.e. "juice" you need, pre-authorize enough money but only capture what actually got used. Done. Why do EVs need to be special?

Public transport transactions (where the reader is directly on the ticket gate) are exempted from the soft lock, so maybe EV chargers could be too. At least for small amounts.

That makes good sense to exempt those kinds of readers from the soft lock. And given that's possible, it would likely make sense for some similar kind of leeway on EV charging.

Not that there's likely to be any real repercussions in many places given a lack of criminal enforcement around theft/fraud, but EV charging requires the user of the stolen card to stick around in a given area to charge the car, so it's likely lower risk than other places where a stolen card can be used for a large transaction in a short period of time.

I imagine you'd eventually get some people going around offering people "cheap" EV charges for free (for cash), and then tapping a stolen card on the reader, but there's always going to be someone trying to exploit stolen cards in innovative ways.

I'm not sure how it works at the protocol level, but I've been using contactless payments at gas stations here in the US for years now. You just tap to pay before you start pumping, then after you're finished you get charged for the amount of fuel dispensed.

I'm increasingly finding that my phone is detected while I'm still moving it towards the scanner, and it complains that my phone moved too fast. Then I have to wait like a schmuck until something resets and I can do it again.

I want to echo this. When contactless is ubiquitous there are pretty much no problems.

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.

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.

Yes, this is precisely what I think many people do. Because they are frequently punished for trying it by being made to look foolish. We all roll our eyes when someone in front of us can't seem to master the trivial task of completing a purchase, and in that moment, we are dismayed to realize WE are that person right now!

> It’s exceedingly rare now to find a place which doesn’t accept contactless in America...

Lowe's and Home Depot? Walmart, still?

Companies still hoping to silo people into their own apps or antiquated payment method, which might give them a slight cc processing fee reduction that boosts their margins... at the cost of being a usability nightmare for anyone who doesn't shop there frequently. I expect that frequent shoppers will live with whatever a store does, and set up a custom app, if any, or accept using a physical card.

It's easy to see that their approach is petty, because Costco, which has fanatical customers and is members-only—there are no casual infrequent shoppers—got on board with nfc (card and smartphone) payments years ago. If any business could've gotten away with having their own app and special payment processing deals to save money, it's Costco.

It's very odd, as this has been working smoothly in the EU for around a decade, depending on the country. It's so reliable that you can pay for bus/metro/train tickets in London (since 2014) and many other cities directly at the ticket barrier [1 for photo], which would cause problems if cards were failing or slow.

The only time I'm confused is when there's an unusual card reader, usually a low-budget all-in-one type with a touchscreen, as it's not always clear where the NFC reader is. This is maybe 1-2% of transactions.

Every so often a machine makes the "dur dur" noise and I have to use the chip and my PIN. I'm not sure if this is every Nth transaction, or after spending ¤X. Either way, it's to avoid a lot of contactless payments being made if the card is stolen. (And maybe this is irrelevant in the USA, without PINs?)

"8 out of 10 card payments now contactless in the Nordics" [2]. 54% in the whole EU [3], only 34% in the USA [4].

[1] https://www.intelligenttransport.com/transport-articles/1153...

[2] https://www.nets.eu/Media-and-press/news/Pages/8-out-of-10-c...

[3] https://data.ecb.europa.eu/blog/blog-posts/contactless-payme...

[4] https://ktvz.com/stacker-money/2023/08/01/american-consumers...

Ah, you're right. I forgot about HD which surprises me every time I visit. TBH I have knuckled under for Walmart, which I shop frequently, by using Walmart Pay on their app. I agree that for frequent shoppers it's well worth it, but useless to someone off the street who isn't used to it.

I as a frequent shopper just like the way I can scan my code at any point and then push one button to check out, and that they allow credit cards to back it. For a while before its launch I think it was rumored that Walmart Pay would require an ACH or debit, which would have made it a hard no for me.

I still think that we've seen major progress. For instance, the huge Kroger chain got on board sometime in the past 2 years after being NFC or Apple Pay laggards. CVS a couple years before that, I remember them being particularly prickly about never taking Apple Pay and they came around.

It’s ubiquitous in Australia as well. I haven’t carried a wallet in almost 5 years. My credit card, driver’s license, and other important cards are all digital.

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.)

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.

If I may ask what seems like an obvious question… why can’t they just use credit card terminals like gas stations have been using for many decades?

They could, and many do, but the difference is that those types of interfaces are mandated/regulated while EV charging is not. Guess what's slightly cheaper when amortized across tens of thousands of customers in the products lifetime? Not to mention the amount of data that could be mined from those customers by having yet another app on their phone with bullshit location permissions "for the best user experience."

Every gas pump has looked/functioned largely the same since the widespread adoption of cashless payments around the world. Until governments mandate a standard payment interface, I think it's more likely that companies will continue to find ways to mine data from consumers through shitty apps.

Oh, and that's not even to mention the companies that include some amount of "free charging" credits with the purchase of the vehicle. Not only is that cost baked into the cost of the car, you're also disincentivized from using the network at all because of how crappy it is. /tinfoilhat

Yeah that just seems like a poor decision on the part of these charger owners. I feel like there’s an opportunity for a company called “EZCharge - we take credit cards”. People will seek it out when looking for a charging station because they know they won’t need to download a BS app.

Or maybe another solution would be like WeChat Pay in China, something that’s so ubiquitous that all stores just have a QR code you scan to pay for anything nowadays. I’m surprised nothing like that has taken off in the US, it’s crazy convenient.

There is no way to communicate when you are charged up that way, maybe via an SMS that you add with your phone number. Also, you have to communicate your charging preference somehow. It’s not like pumping gas, you rarely want it to stop at 100%, although the charging standard might at least be able to control that from the car.

True I see what you mean, but that would seem to be an easy function to build into the car’s charging controller. I’m not sure how it works today but I would imagine most cars have a “stop charging at x%” function already without depending on the charger for that.

Ya, I think they even get status otherwise I’m not sure how electrify America’s app works in the first place.

I once charged at an L2 in Canada that involved a QR code, and then payment via a web form. In that case, a POS would make the setup too expensive compared to just putting power out there with a networked microcontroller.

> There is no way to communicate when you are charged up that way

Cant' the car do it?

Or ya know.. the pump, like has existed for decades..

I thought the problem was that it takes long enough that you aren't by the "pump" during process. Also that the chargepoints are likely less infrastructure than a pump. So something has to contact you (SMS/email/whatever)

Yeah... cars come with internet connections these days, I'd say it's the car's job.

IIRC the federal infrastructure bill required chargers to accept via CC reader or plug and charge. So I'm sure we will be seeing more chargers with it shortly.

Yep: https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2023-03500/p-48 https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2023-03500/p-370

> This final rule establishes a requirement that charging stations must provide a contactless payment method that accepts major credit and debit cards and accept payment through either an automated toll-free phone number or a short message/messaging system (commonly abbreviated as SMS). Payment methods must be accessible to persons with disabilities, not require a membership, not affect the power flow to vehicles, and provide access for those that are limited English proficient.

> Not to mention the amount of data that could be mined from those customers

That was my cynical take on it.

So solving this problem would be as simple as mandating/regulating it? Sounds like a no-brainer to end this debate, standardize things, and allow the build out to happen in a quick and standard way across companies.

With all the EV goals that various countries are making, this seems like a foundational part of it. Consumers aren't going to buy into EVs in mass until charging in a solved problem.

The epic solution is free charging financed by gasoline taxes.

That would be quite effective IF it were tenable, but this is a solution in search of a revolution, lol (speaking strictly for the US). I wish I were joking, but politically you would have an easier time abolishing Christmas than something like this. Pitchforks would be wielded by 2 groups:

1. numbskulls who hate EVs because they believe that being able to add 400 miles of range in their F150 in 5 minutes (ie gasoline) is the only okay way to do energy for every vehicle.

2. People with a good point that EVs are very expensive and why should poorer people subsidize the rich when the poors can’t even afford an EV.

That second point is personally the sticking point for me. No reason the less-well-off should subsidize those who have the ability to purchase a new vehicle.

Most of the tax revenue does not come from the poor though. They could still be given EVs regardless.

RV charging has much smaller installations than gas. Instead of gas stations, the most common SV charging will eventually be thick poles on the footpath so you can charge wherever you park, or small one or two bay charging facilities at various businesses. That's the sort of charging infrastructure you want and seamless payment solutions is an enabling tech.

What's RV and SV charging?

S and R are on either side of E, so I'm guessing I meant EV.

Yeah I agree having a different app for each station sucks, but I don't really understand how plug-and-charge would solve this. For anything that does support plug-and-charge, don't you still need to register the payment method somewhere in advance?

Unless we have some universal payment processor which all the charging networks agree to use I will still need register through an app or something when I encounter a new brand of charger on a road trip.

It seems like the real solution is a law which requires the stations to accept a more universal payment system like credit cards. I think there is already a law like this in California IIRC.

Tap & Pay 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.

It takes something like half of a second for my Apple Pay Amex/Visa to let me through the barrier in the London Underground, and the complexity they have to deal with for fare calculations is quite something too.

This is true. Apple Pay has been something we're keen on adding

The fare isn’t calculated on the spot though, a base amount is authorized and then only charged later. Not that the plug needs to figure that out immediately but it’s worth noting.

Surely the interchange fee can be negotiated for volume? Or even mandated by law. When I tap my credit card to buy a 1$ bus ticket I doubt the interchange is keeping 30 cents?

There are transit systems that have made this work smoothly, you just walk up to a gate, tap your card as you walk through, so I can't imagine the barrier is technological unachievable. Seems like similar frequency and $.

> It seems like the real solution is a law which requires the stations to accept a more universal payment system like credit cards.

No shit, Sherlock? In the UK a lot of fuel pumps have credit/debit card readers built in, and if not cards are accepted everywhere for payment already. But yes electric charging companies here are still wierd about accepting such standardised payments, and we did just introduce a new law about it [0] promising "most" but not all chargers will accept cards.

[0] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-laws-to-make-charging...

Some chargers have tap&pay on the machine like a gas pump. No app needed.

This should be mandated by law.

disagree. see my comment above

disagree, explain yourself rather than citing (without even providing a link)

Tap & Pay (Apple Pay, etc) are a great backup option -- and Starlight will implement those, but the primary modality of payment should require no user input. That's what we are hoping to accomplish. It's especially important when you are plugging in every night. Fiddling with your wallet or phone (battery dead??) is just one extra step that ultimately is not necessary if we are to design a system at scale.

This is a smaller use case—folks living in apartments without direct electricity connection. While the case exists and can be improved separately it shouldn't dictate requirements/costs to the rest of us.

Think I'd try to solve that by having the customer register the car/payment once at the kiosk and then handle plug-and-charge-and-bill though your service. Then you don't need to wait for an external solution and can advertise convenience as your added value in the meantime.

I've done a fair amount of road tripping (~15k mi over 1.5yr) along the WA/OR/CA/NV corridors where Electrify America is dense enough to use solely, which is convenient since my car came with 2 years of free charging from them.

Ignoring their pervasive station reliability problems, their app is pretty bad and only barely functions.

* I've had to skip a perfectly functioning station because the app thought I was still charging from the previous time and wouldn't change its mind about it.

* Their Carplay app has literally never worked for me, not once (usually it shows me still charging from a session >1wk ago even when the regular app doesn't, sometimes it doesn't boot, sometimes it shows me as not logged in. The main screen has never once rendered.).

* One of their level 2 stations (which tend even less reliable) existed in the app on about 50% of refreshes.

* The app requires a pretty solid signal to work at all since it seems to consult their API to query for stations near where you are and then you guess at which one it is ("is this the target one or the mall one? it's the target that's in the mall?") which is pretty silly when you're parked at the station so it's in range of your hands and eyes.

* I eventually figured out that I can add the EA plan to my Apple Wallet and tap the phone instead of ever opening the app, but that seems to randomly select between the "free" plan (rather, included in the purchase price of my car) and the $10 balance that they make me maintain for god-knows-why when at California electricity prices no charge has ever been below $10.

* The stations have credit card readers which I've never tried to use but almost always when I see somebody having trouble at a station it's because they're fighting with that thing. I assume EA's response would be "just use the app, it's so much better"

That's all just one app, not a slew of them for every charging network in my area (which also includes at least evgo & chargepoint just to cover the big ones). The sooner this app bullshit can die the better.

Every time I use the app I have to force quit it at least once to get it to stop doing whatever backend query it's doing. Doesn't help that their chargers are barely compatible with my car (2014 i3) so the charging fails to start about half the time. The machine itself rejects the charge in about ten seconds so no big deal, but the app isn't built to handle this case and takes multiple minutes to realize something is wrong. So my charging cycle is to initiate via app, plug in, see a failed charge, force quit the app, find the station again, and repeat probably twice. Probably isn't this bad with newer cars, but I love my car otherwise. Made sure to get the one with the extra scooter engine in the back, so I can just drive around on gas if it comes down to it.

I have done multiple 10+ hour (although no multi day) road trips in an ev. It was fine. I had problems exactly one time and i was able to just go to a different charger a mile away.

All of the chargers I've used had apps, but they also allowed using a credit card, which seems like it would have solved your problem just as well. And that's already a solved problem, even if not every charging network uses it.

Now go abroad where charging app is not available in your country or requires local phone number to register, uses local language, or even wants local address or local payment method.

Just give me website god damn it.

My story of charging in Germany one time a year ago:

The charger requires an app, ok fine. Downloaded the app, had to setup the whole account with my address(UK address was allowed as my address), verify my email, verify my phone number(UK one was accepted), fine, done.

Went to add my payment card - nope, the billing address has a pre-filled country field set to Germany, can't change it. It says ring this number in case of any problems. I ring the number just to hear:

"Sorry, our customer service operators are not available on Sunday. Call back on Monday after 9am".

Imagine if filling up with petrol was such a lottery.

German "Sunday is rest day" at it's best.

If fuel stations are essential(as in allowed to be open on Sundays), then with the EVs becoming the norm so should be the support for these stations.

I know it's not quite the problem you are talking about (which would be dealt with by making normal contactless / chip and pin readers a requirement) – but I'd love to see a legal requirement that when your charge point can't contact the piece of shit payment / authentication service the user gets to charge for free. That would soon see an uptick in the reliability of charge points...

thats the only correct eay of dealing with the issue. If you can't maintain infrastructure you failed at your job, why should someone be stranded or freeze to death because of your incompetence

I'm in the process of deactivating my family Apple One account (they overseas) so I can change app store for few minutes and download all the local apps I need.

I have to wait until end of month so my subscription actually expires, then make sure family sharing is disabled (which already screwed up location sharing). Oh and about 2.5TB of entire generation photos are up to be deleted by Apple if I screw up.

I have literally gotten visas for and worked in another country with greater ease than trying to get my Apple account to work well with local apps in my new country of residence while still allowing me to download and update apps from the first country.

Just trying to move to or be in another country and have the App store actually work properly for local apps (and the ones you want to keep from your original country) is a complete nightmare anyway.

It amazes me that for such a progressive and forward thinking company as Apple, that the very thought that their customers might actually move countries with their device and account seems to have been relegated to 'edge case'.

Like i said, credit card terminals seem the best way to fix this problem, Rather than done complicated plug-and-charge mechanism

Yeah, CC terminals (and NFC / tap if you want to be fancy) are working things which work.

The only opposition I've heard is "uwu but charge costs are lower so CC fees add up".

CC fees add up, but/and electricity is cheaper than gas, so net-net, you gain. Also considering the convenience that you have zero worries and you will be able to charge hassle-free in any charging stations, I'd pay an extra €1 to not have any headaches, apps, phone charged, and any/all hoops by any apps.

Things like little kiddy rides and vending machines are able to take contactless payments (in the UK). I don't really see how this can be a valid arguement.

It varies by country. In NZ we pay about $0.5 each time using contactless/apple pay, but 0 when using chip+pin.

IMO websites and/or open API's are way to go - allows third parties to build integrations, automations and superapps that enable all sort of benefits for users.

But why not just have contactless bank card payment?

Yeah it is a pain, I have an electric car, but only because they force you to use their broken apps. All they have to do is let you pay with a bank card and it'll be just as easy as buying petrol.

GP is talking about L2 charging for multi family homes. Not DCFC.

But I agree, DCFC need to all accept credit cards like gas pumps. Fortunately NEVI funding requires it.

This is exactly it. My dad almost missed some of my sister's wedding fiddling with the same type of crappy UX on a no-name charger.

You have this problem because they’re not Tesla. Thats why everyone is adopting NACS and Tesla superchargers

That is entirely the fault of that charging network for implementing a user-unfriendly and unfamiliar interface. How is grandma, who can't even manage a QR code, expected to switch to EVs like that. That company should fail because their business is bad.

I mean... you can't just fill up. You have to scan a card, wait 5 seconds, enter your zip code, select the button for "grade". Credit card skimmers at gas stations are a big problem too.

You may have been used to that process so it seems more fluid, but Tesla charging is truly "plug and charge" at superchargers

That's nothing in comparison to what we get in Switzerland. I went to a public parking garage yesterday that advertised ev charging spots. I get there and there's just an nfc module. I had to look for and google some logo on the station only to find out that to charge with that provider you need to order a physical badge and pay 50 bucks upfront. That sort of crap is why I don't rely on anything other than Superchargers. And I won't for a long time even after they do get their act together. It's just too much risk.