Motion in support or reject EV charging chip reader?

If anything, it appears that society is going the opposite direction at least here. Pay per deal is more and more being replaced by complicated subscription systems where it is difficult to see who has the advantage, but likely it isn't the customer.

Reply to
Rob
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This is exactly why the People in the Social ePublic of California want to opt out of subscription, as opposed to the People's Republic of another country where everybody is forced to subscribe to the State. The other country hijacked the name of the "People's Republic" and doing exactly the opposite of what the People want.

We, the People in the SEOC, want to be free from subscription and tracking and all the nonsense of submission for the benefit of the State.

We are in support of the Motion to require anonymous payment with pre-paid chip card.

Reply to
Ed Lee

But that would mean that you need to have a single company operating a charging point (like there is a single company operating a gas station), which has a single pricing structure for everyone (prices per kWh, per minute, one-time charge, etc all of course for on-peak and off-peak) so the charging point can calculate the cost of the charge when you end it and leave. And of course all the time you stand there the security camera will have your license plate in view, so it isn't very anonymous anyway.

Here, the EU believes in "competition" (they have gone far overboard with that IMHO), and they would like several such operating companies to compete with their services on the same infrastructure. The charging points themselves are often established by the municipality, a local company, etc and this is considered to be a monopolistic activity as there cannot realistically be charging points from many different companies al side-by-side on the same street or parking space. So what the user is dealing with is only an operating company, there are several, and they are unrelated to the charging points.

It is similar to the situation in telecom and energy. We have separated the physical network operation from the "provider" of the service, of which there are many. You deal only with them, not with the network provider.

Reply to
Rob

Why should that matter with the manner of payment? I should be billed for the amount of electricity obtained, regardless of whom i am. Gas stations don't reject cash or credit card or if you are not a subscriber.

camera recordings are not usually used for marketing data collection, but only for security when there is crime involved.

Reply to
Ed Lee

Yes, but that is the old model. Gas stations are branded, and sell a product for the same price to everyone.

With charging points they (at least here) try to move that branding from the physical point to some virtual company where you have an account to buy electricity. These companies can compete, e.g. offer discounts at certain time of day, bulk purchase by fleet owners, etc. The charging point does not know about that, it just delivers a metered number of kWh in a metered amount of time (at a specific date/time) and sends that record to the company that you have contracted (you have presented your RFID card to identify you as a customer and the company where you have your contract) and they calculate how much it is going to cost. Which they may be only able to do later, at the end of the month, when it is know how much you have used in total.

So it is not possible to calculate that amount in place at the charging point, and hence also not possible to pay for it using a plain credit card.

It is all much comparable to cellphone subscriptions, public transport tickets, electricity contracts, etc etc.

Sure not everyone likes it. The fact that you usually cannot know how much a charge is going to cost you when starting it is seen as a definite disadvantage of the system.

Reply to
Rob

The amount i pay at this station should not depend on how much i use elsewhere. And none of the charging companys offer discount for using more non-charging electricity.

Nop, i am paying exactly the same with their RFID card, which is registering the same pre-paid card.

I am also using pre-paid cellphone account, which is fixed amount whether using the quota or not.

and also pay per use.

and only pay for the amount of usage.

But i know exactly what it's going to cost at the end of the session. The only different is that i am giving up their "frequent charger" points by not using their RFID card.

Anyway, what we are asking for is to have the choice of using pre-paid card, not just forced to use their RFID card.

Reply to
Ed Lee

I think the gas station business model won't apply to charging an EV.

I'm not sure where you get the idea of this system. It is one of many variations. What it does not offer is the single most important thing to consumers, convenience. Mostly EV owners will charge at home. With range comparable to PV (Petroleum Vehicles) EVs will only need charging at stations when on trips. To facilitate getting the most out of the EV range will require closer spacing of charging units than we see now. They will need to be at as many highway exits as possible. For multiple companies to do this will result in so much duplication of effort that some companies will not be competitive ending up with many being merged into the bigger companies. I can't see any reason for this to stop at any number of companies other than one. Along the way the emphasis will be on lowering costs which will require a simple payment method, credit cards. I recall Sheetz sending my company advertisements for fleet sales with various promotional features including discounts on gas. No special cards were required. Just a Sheetz credit card so they could track your savings. Not a bad business model for local travel, but not so good to be hunting for a particular brand when on the highway. So, good for gas, not so good for electrons.

The only thing preventing a single supplier of EV fast charging is the government who is loath to allow monopolies... unless they are regulated. As I've said before, some states don't allow the sale of kWh unless you are a registered (and regulated) utility. So it may end up with EV charging being run by the utilities. That doesn't sound like a good thing.

Still, since EV charging is mostly a trip thing, the only important thing about it is that it exist. The world does not view EVs through Ed Lee colored glasses with his 40 mile range. We need to focus more on facilitating home and work charging. All this Ed Lee charging is a red herring.

Reply to
Rick C

I don't get it. If you disagree with my assertion that chargers should be spaced less than 30 to 40 miles apart, what should it be? At least in California, that requirement is almost satisfied along major corridols. However, we still need to work on improving minor corridol such as the 152 Pacheco Pass between San Jose and I-5.

Is pointing out what we need to do "a red herring".

Reply to
Ed Lee

I simply don't think this is an important issue that we need to worry about. It will take care of itself through free enterprise. I think we need to make the public more aware that EVs do not need the equivalent of the ubiquitous gas stations. We need to make them aware of home charging and make sure it is available even if they live in town houses and apartment buildings. By 2025 something around half the new cars sold will be EVs. We need to get ready for that. Worrying about trip charging isn't as important as the other 99% of the charging that will happen.

Your 30 to 40 mile spacing is literally based on your extremely limited range. How about we mandate EV charging at 55 mile spacing and no closer? LOL

Reply to
Rick C

Hopping from one city to another city is important for many of us, and it's not like that would take huge amount of money to fix it. I can think of only a handful of sites to improve the situation greatly. We have our priority and you have yours. Just because we have a different priority and you label it "red herring"?

Then we should remove all those Tesla Superchargers, since every single one of them locates within 55 miles of another charger.

Reply to
Ed Lee

Then why do you think the payment model does?

It is how it works here in the Netherlands, and I think in large parts of Europe it is the same.

All this does not apply to that situation. At home you buy your own charge point, connect it to your own electrical supply, and don't need to meter your charge, you just pay for it via your electricity bill. So that is irrelevant.

That is reasonable thinking, not political or economical thinking. According to that reasoning, there should be one single large telecom company that manages all the infrastructure and sends you the bills. That hugely reduces duplication of effort and costs. That is how it all used to be, and guess what: that large company was broken up and we got in the mess there is today. Good thing? I don't think so, but governments and economists do.

Right. So that is the same in the USA as here in Europe. It could be done, it would be efficient, but the governments do not like it (after all, every politician wants to have a board of directors function at a large company after their politic career, so they have to make sure enough of those positions are available!), and thus we get the "virtual company" with "competition" situation that requires these virtual companies to be able to differentiate and therefore a simple same-price-for-all pay-at-checkout is not possible.

It depends on local situation. Here, a large percentage of potential electric car users will not be able to charge directly at home. Our homes typically don't have driveways and garages, but instead there is a local parking lot for every group of homes, where like 20 cars can be parked within walking distance of your home. Someone has to fit these with "public" charging points where you can park the car and charge it overnight. Or, there will have to be fast charging stations where you can drive up on the way home from work and charge the car in 15 minutes. Both of these will require a payment system. And it will not be like the "pay-at-checkout" method used in gas stations now.

Reply to
Rob

We are not talking about same price for all station, but the same payment method (chip reader for credit/debit card). I find it hard to follow your reasoning that price cannot be determined at the end of charging session, but you elecricty usage elsewhere. Granted than you have commnuity parking lots for group of homes, but there is no requirement of charging fee directly tied to your home usage. Community parking lots occupy different land and run on different wires, why should it be directly tied to your home usage.

We, in urban US, have the same arrangement, that our vehicles are parked in the street. None of the charging stations here tie to anybody's home electricty bill. Every single one of them are billed at the end of session. The only point of using their subscription RFID card is to get points for "frequent charger", which i am happy to give up with a bit of privacy.

Reply to
Ed Lee

That is clear, but what I want to note that we do not have the same price for all clients. The price depends on your contract, your usage, the time of day, etc and it can only be calculated when all your charges in a particular billing period are known.

Can you calculate what a particular phone call has cost you after you have made it? Probably not.

Reply to
Rob

That might be true for your corner of the world, but not in other in general and not at all in the USA in particular. We have NOT a single charging company in California billing on contract usage rate. When i drove my Leaf pass Oregon, i paid a fixed $20 a month for all the DCFC on the West Coast Electric Highway (of Oregon only). I believe they are currently free (wavier for limited time?) as well. So, at least for the two states (CA, OR), we are not billed on contract usage. Every single charging station bill on fixed price

Why bother? I pay fixed monthly cost.

Reply to
Ed Lee

And Oregon is interesting. You are not allowed to pump your own gas. There are full service gas pumpers at every station. Are they going to extend it to charging stations? If not, what are all the gas pumpers going to do with more and more EVs.

Reply to
Ed Lee

You will not find those here...

So when you have a contract for car charging at fixed monthly cost, would you still want to pay with credit card after charging?

Also, your fixed monthly cost probably does not cover ALL possible calls you can make. So when you make an unusual call (e.g. via INMARSAT), what is it going to cost? Do you know?

Reply to
Rob

It is a bit like the situation of "what are we going to do with all the coal porters after we have deployed the natural gas network".

They will probably get layed off...

Reply to
Rob

Fine. You stay with custom cards and we stay with standard chip cards. I am not planning to drive to your country anyway.

Of course not. Anyway, we have NO changing company offering fixed monthly cost in California. The $20 cover exactly one trip in Oregon. I am not familiar with other states. Except for Washington (with enough L2), i am restricted to drive to any other states. I can still reach Reno and Las Vegas, but not going across Nevada.

No. if i have to make unusual call, i would probably use another phone or some other option. Same for driving, if i have to get out of CA, i would probably rent a GV (Gasoline Vehicle).

Reply to
Ed Lee

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