Featured Want to charge up? EVgo builds chargers at Chevron gas stations

There are five brands of gas stations immediately on my commute. That could easily double without deviating my route by much.

Charger companies likely chose this payment method because of cost, but it can also encourage a monopoly. I didn't include independent gas stations in my count above, who likely couldn't make the switch to such a system for their pumps.

 

Electrify America takes credit cards at the station.

 

Not following you here. The companies that sell gas are as interested in selling more gas as any other vendor with a product. What about gas stations appears to you as backward looking?

I'm with you here. Just show up, swipe (or insert) a credit card, buy the product at the posted price. Done.

 

Gas is the past. Electric is the future.

 

is this vdub? i'm not hopeful

interesting payment structure: $1./session, 30-35 cents/minute, 40 cents/minute idle fee where applicable

a full L2 charge would cost me $28. to go 13 miles

(pricing says dc fast charging, but shows one L2)

 

Ya, super expensive, when it works. Still couldn't recommend a non Tesla EV to someone for road trips yet. Maybe in a year or two, hopefully.

 

Or any EV, depending on where you travel. I take my Prime out on the back roads in the far corners of America, and there is no fast EV charging in most of those places.

 

I find my 310 mile range Tesla to be plenty for anywhere I want to go.

 

I find that my 600 mile range Prime has the range I need. But, if I weren't going where I go, the Tesla range would probably be OK for me as well.

 

How does that apply to payment method?

 

Is it a secret that the EV industry is pretty tech forward thinking? On the flipside, most gearhead people I know refuse to use Google Assistant or Siri because they think it is spying on them.

 

Oh, I think things like using your smart phone as the key to your car is clever. Most of humanity embraces technology because it makes things easier. That's why we have washing machines. So phone as key great, because remembering to grab the phone is easier than remembering to grab the phone and keys. We just need a house lock to work with the phone, though we can settle for keypad ones.

How is signing up with each different charger company easier than using a single credit card, or phone, to pay?

 

It doesn't.

 

I think it evolved this way, from the start, because charging potentially takes so long. When you are charging you'd like to get email/text notifications if the charger stops working, if someone unplugs you, etc. You'd also like to be able to see the status of your charge. You don't want to have to enter your phone number and/or email every time you plug in. Also, a side benefit is that you can see a history of charges and overall stats because people are much more likely to charge at the same place(s) every day.
You also want an app (hence the sign up) so that you can connect to a map and see where chargers are located since they are on every major intersection like gas stations.

Initially, I had only ChargePoint with my PIP in 2012 since that is what we had at work...for free.
When I got the Leaf it came with a 2 year free charging at a number of charging networks, so I signed up for them (a pain) and only used a couple of them once or twice.

Mike

 

A valid argument. My counter is that the cars themselves can notify you of much of that now, and there are mapping and charger locator apps for the rest. So what started out as a convenience will turn into an inconvenience as competing charging networks grow.

 

Unless you take road trips most EV drivers don't even have to worry about this. Just plug in at home and maybe work. That

That is asking a lot of companies not named Tesla. That actually requires them to develop some sort of software. None of them have yet to show any propensity at that.

 

This is a pretty smart idea for a gas station. The longer they can keep you in the restaurant/shop/snack-zone, the more money they can make.


I think we'll start seeing more of these pop up as EVs start to take off.

 

The plan is to eventually get people without home charging access into plug in cars. I would think public charger companies would considering the best way of attracting them as customers. Making the process simple and familiar would help.

Many cars are already connected. I could have checked the tire pressure of the Sonic if I had bothered to download the OnStar app. Maybe I could have even unlocked the doors. The issue now is that they see this ability as a revenue stream instead of as a perk to help sway people to choose the multi thousand dollar product.

 

I realize they have apps. Our 2nd Gen Nissan Leaf has an app to do various things with. Half of them don't work, and the other half literally can take up to a minute to work. As someone that also has a Tesla, trust me when I say there is no comparison.

 

I found the say be be true on my 2015 Leaf. I finally stopped using the app completely.
The Tesla is usually pretty quick and the app works fine most of the time. But a couple of times I tried to turn on the climate control during the "winter" and there was no connectivity.

Mike