I am watching the “sh*t show” that EA is live and in person

Scandinavian

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All that (and more I'm sure) for what, maybe 10,000 VW, Audi, and Porsche EVs which don't have plug-and-charge? My guess the ROI is not there for EA. I'm not arguing this is the right thing, because it does suck for early adopters, but just saying that realistically non-plug-and-charge cars may get stuck with how it works today forever if plug-and-charge solves the usage problem and majority of cars on the road will have it. I think your biggest hope here would be that they fix the activation via the app to become reliable.
I agree fully with you that Plug and Charge is the best way forward.

When I mentioned the RFID tags, I based that on Kyle from Outofspec experience here in Europe. He could not get the different apps etc. as I understand it, due to his US registered phone and App Store? Thus he mentioned his use of Plugsurfing tag. I mistook the Plugsurfing tag to be of US origin, which I now see is an European product.
Plugsurfing claim to have more than 250000 charging points in their network. They only provide the platform for charging and billing, not the actual stations etc. It works really well, but at a cost. Unfortunately the systems here in Europe are very fragmented at the moment, so you have to pay a substantial premium for having access to such a broad network. For example through the Porsche Charging service you pay 0.33 Euro per kWh at Ionity. Via Plugsurfing or other services you will pay about 0.88 Euro per kWh. Ionity are charging other cars 0.79 Euro per kWh, so Plugsurding add about 10% margin on the price they are charged from Ionity.

https://plugsurfing.com/

So what I mean by this is that the backend systems for administration and billing do exist and are working. And nearly all public charge points here in Europe seem to have RFID readers as well.

The next challenge will be to break down the Walled Garden approach. It just has to get to be as simple to charge an EV as it is to fill an ICE tank! We are not there yet, but I am sure that will happen.
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daveo4EV

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While more efficient, it opens the door to abuse. If you simply unplug and plug back in after the grace period, with a car without or with but disabled (in settings) plug-and-charge (so no VIN number or other way for the charger to identify the car), you could charge forever simply unplugging and plugging back in every 10 minutes (or whatever the grace period is). Adding special cameras with vision processing to automatically decide if it's the same car as before or same as few minutes ago (someone hops from charger to charger) would probably cost way more than just getting the app to work properly and quickly.

The bad news is that as plug-and-charge becomes available in future cars, the percentage of cars without it might be too small to justify investment in an efficient and proper solution for those cars. :(
they get to tolerate abuse until they fix the non-Plug&Charge activations - it’s cost of doing business because they are imposing crap on the customers - and beside if you throttle the charge rate the normal start up costs of getting a charging session going is going to make abuse ineffective - and trust me the cost of electricity is not their biggest problem at the moment - they are effectively earning no revenue - worrying about abuse but leaving your system disfunctional is the ultimate backwards thinking.

their current system doesn’t work and leaves customers not able to charge/stranded - kinda backward thinking.
 

chrisk

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Rfid cards are nit only used in Europe. Chargepoint uses rfid cards (or phone NFC) and activation works great every time. Alternatively you can activate from their app but using the card is easier.
Maybe EA can learn something from the other companies.
 

kmcdonal

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Do the EA shortcomings have the potential to wreck VAG's EV plans?
Just one data point, but it has been 9 months since I charged anywhere aside from home. When I am on the road, I use EvGo and Chargepoint more than EA. I think I have always been successful at EvGo and Chargepoint. EA could fall off the grid tomorrow, and it would not be the end of the world for me.
 


menzz

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Just one data point, but it has been 9 months since I charged anywhere aside from home. When I am on the road, I use EvGo and Chargepoint more than EA. I think I have always been successful at EvGo and Chargepoint. EA could fall off the grid tomorrow, and it would not be the end of the world for me.
Is plug and charge available for those as well or is it just EA network? I’m still waiting for a Ct so I don’t know how it will be like once I get my car.
 

whitex

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The next challenge will be to break down the Walled Garden approach. It just has to get to be as simple to charge an EV as it is to fill an ICE tank! We are not there yet, but I am sure that will happen.
Plug-and-charge is an open standard and its intent is to allow breaking down of the walled garden. Since it identifies each car with a VIN, you can wall of the garden to only a subset of manufacturers (based on VIN), or allow any VIN as long as it has a payment account associated with it.
they get to tolerate abuse until they fix the non-Plug&Charge activations - it’s cost of doing business because they are imposing crap on the customers
Depends on how much business it's costing them. I am not defending that they are doing, just saying what is likely to happen. Think light bulbs. Once the screw on socket got standardized, do you think a lot of companies made their lightbulbs for a myriad of different proprietary sockets? No, yes they annoyed customers who had old sockets, but those customers were a minority. Once the vast majority of paying customers have plug-and-charge, enabling non plug-and-charge customers will become super low priority. If the number of cars without plug-and-charge is low, there won't even be a niche market opportunity for any company to survive enabling and billing those customers. This problem is compounded by the fact that EA gets a 3 year subscription for those customers regardless if they are happy customer or not. Notice a parallel situation with ChaDeMo. There are a bunch of cars out there with ChaDeMo in the USA (mostly Nissans, but even Tesla has an adapter) and yet it's become an orphan child for most recent charging networks. I suspect same will happen with non plug-and-charge cars. Perhaps there will be enough cars out there that need it so that it will create an opportunity for some small company to make some money selling a CCS to PnC-CCS, and the billing will be to the adapter owner rather than the car.

To reiterate, I am not saying this is how it should be, only that this is how the world operates. Don't shoot the messenger please.
 

mikelevitt

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I think I had over read how to charge. Yes, I thought "plug and charge" is how it was supposed to work. When I plugged in, the EA wanted me to sign in as a guest or member. It was not until I got the agent on the phone and we used the connect app that it worked.

I will give it another try when I am near the charger again. I do all my charging at home.
You have to enable plug and charge in your car. It's buried in a sub-menu of the charging menu.
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