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Volkswagen, Porsche, and Audi say they will use Tesla's EV charging plug

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Re: Volkswagen, Porsche, and Audi say they will use Tesla's EV charging plug

#321

Post by JAlexoid »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #293
SoftTalker wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Regular petrol stations figured out pay at the pump decades ago. Why is this such a problem for EV charging?

Companies don't want want the hassle and expense of PCI compliance across their charger network. If it's just session auth shit going across the wire, they only need to worry about PCI compliance on the back end. By collecting lots of info about you, they get a lower processing rate because the transaction is lower risk vs a swipe/tap. They can save on transaction fees if they consolidate charging sessions; say you d…

This is before EV charging becomes a commodity or a public utility...

Though public utilities are typically even worse, than the current landscape of charging apps :(

Re: Volkswagen, Porsche, and Audi say they will use Tesla's EV charging plug

#322

Post by dkbrk »

l72 wrote: post #250

While this sounds good, why are we so focused on charging stations? It seems to me, it would make much more sense to have a series of batteries that can quickly be removed, and have battery exchanges. Then, if you need a charge, you pull over to a battery exchange, swap out batteries in a few seconds, and go on your way. I have seen this in China with electric scooters, and it seems like it could scale well for cars…

Tesla already tried that, years and years ago. They built a fully automated battery swapping station for the Model S, as a test of concept, and nobody used it. So the program was abandoned as a complete failure, and now Tesla's newer models no longer have the capability.

In fact, Tesla's Head of Design and VP of vehicle engineering discussed this very topic just a few days ago in Jay Leno's video on the Cybertruck [0]:

[0]: https://youtu.be/BGDOKD7ZZqI?si=TR7Txex7qg5VGYar&t=3158

Re: Volkswagen, Porsche, and Audi say they will use Tesla's EV charging plug

#324

Post by spaceywilly »

enragedcacti wrote: post #239
why_at wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain why you feel plug-and-charge is so important? I have used chargers with and without it and while it is slightly more convenient to just plug in and go, it doesn't feel like such a huge improvement that I absolutely need it. I agree that having a different app for every brand of charging station would be annoying, but what about just accepting a credit card the way we do with gas stations now?

For apartments I think it makes a lot of sense. Having to do a couple transactions every road trip is one thing, but having to complete a transaction just to top off every night the way a homeowner would sounds really annoying.

It would be easy to support both options. Many gas stations have their own app payment system.

Re: Volkswagen, Porsche, and Audi say they will use Tesla's EV charging plug

#325

Post by spaceywilly »

l72 wrote: post #250

While this sounds good, why are we so focused on charging stations? It seems to me, it would make much more sense to have a series of batteries that can quickly be removed, and have battery exchanges. Then, if you need a charge, you pull over to a battery exchange, swap out batteries in a few seconds, and go on your way. I have seen this in China with electric scooters, and it seems like it could scale well for cars…

There’s also a company in China that does EV swaps for cars. It’s a very cumbersome process, the battery can be thousands of pounds, and there are also cooling connectors to worry about. On top of that, it would require every car to have a standardized battery, or else we’d be back to we are today.

It would require a large increase in battery energy density combined with a large improvement in thermal efficiency to be successful on a large scale. Plug in chargers make way more sense. Solid state batteries are on the horizon that will charge as quickly as filling a gas tank.

Re: Volkswagen, Porsche, and Audi say they will use Tesla's EV charging plug

#326

Post by MostlyStable »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #249
MostlyStable wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Re: Volkswagen, Porsche, and Audi say they will use Tesla's EV charging plug

#327

Post by reportingsjr »

bluGill wrote: post #229
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Thank you Tesla for helping bring about a better standard here! You should probably thank the government, too. When the feds decided they were going to put billions in subsidies to a national charging network, the original regulations basically required CCS, because that was really the only cross-platform game in town - Tesla was proprietary and not open to other automakers. In a brilliant bit of chutzpah, in respo…

A large number of standards are what one company did on their own and then made available to everybody via the likes of ANSI/ECMA/ISO. There are a number of reasons a company would want to do this.

This is basically how USB C became a thing. A group of engineers at Google created the connector design and then gave it to the USB standards body to use as the next gen.

Re: Volkswagen, Porsche, and Audi say they will use Tesla's EV charging plug

#328

Post by TacticalCoder »

ttyyzz wrote: post #301

I work in the Volkswagen Group and will only add that Audi and Porsche have to go along just because of synergy effects, apart from the fact that they also belong to the Volkswagen Group and do what their mother wants.

> ... apart from the fact that they also belong to the Volkswagen Group

Volkswagen group with itself belongs to the Porsche SE holding. The Porsche SE holding is the biggest owner of Volkswagen shares (with 1/3rd of all the shares) and holds the majority of the shares with voting rights.

And the Porsche SE holding shares are mostly held by the two Porsche and Piech families.

So, in the end, Porsche the car manufacturer belongs to the VW group which itself belongs to the Porsche SE holding which itself belongs to the Porsche (and Piech) families.

Re: Volkswagen, Porsche, and Audi say they will use Tesla's EV charging plug

#329

Post by yurishimo »

spaceywilly wrote: post #319
jakewins wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you done any road tripping in an EV? my experience of the app-based charging landscape has been complete horror; apps don’t work, chargers don’t start, payments don’t through.. Just last month was a new app at McDonalds in Sweden, that one asks me to, in the freezing cold, scan a dirty QR code sticker, which takes me to a website I’ve never heard of that wants me to manually enter credit card info, like a phishi…

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

Re: Volkswagen, Porsche, and Audi say they will use Tesla's EV charging plug

#330

Post by yurishimo »

jdsully wrote: post #245
jakewins wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you done any road tripping in an EV? my experience of the app-based charging landscape has been complete horror; apps don’t work, chargers don’t start, payments don’t through.. Just last month was a new app at McDonalds in Sweden, that one asks me to, in the freezing cold, scan a dirty QR code sticker, which takes me to a website I’ve never heard of that wants me to manually enter credit card info, like a phishi…

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

This should be mandated by law.
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