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Blockchain-Enabled Electric Car Charging Comes to California

greentechmedia.com

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Re: Blockchain-Enabled Electric Car Charging Comes to California

#61

Post by cr0sh »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #57
alistproducer2 wrote: post #55

I read the article and no where does it make a case for why a blockchain makes any sense in the application. I read a comment by a person claiming to be associated with the project saying that "blockchain enabled" makes sense because the payment are p2p but that doesn't make sense either. Blockchains are good for pretty much one thing: a distributed ledger that parties can trust to be immutable. I can confidently say…

I fill up my Jeep about once a week. At an average cost of $25 to fill over the course of 52 weeks, that's $1,300. Of course I don't have the added bonus of being able to charge from solar power, but at least that shows that the cost of electricity isn't prohibitive versus the cost of gasoline.

As a fellow Jeep owner (2004 TJ, {waves - lol}), I was sitting here wondering how you "fill up" a Jeep with only $25.00 (@ approx $2.00 per gallon - that'd be 12.5 gallons of gas per fill up). So I googled things - found this:

http://www.jeepforum.com/forum/f9/gas-tank-size-249444/

Of course, that whole discussion just throws a bunch of wrenches into the works; maybe you do have the 15 gallon tank on a older model (newer JKs have much larger tanks supposedly)? And apparently there's still more in the tank even once the light comes on (a few gallons reserve)?

I've never "buried the needle" on my Jeep yet, so I have no idea what size tank I have.

Re: Blockchain-Enabled Electric Car Charging Comes to California

#62

Post by cr0sh »

waltero wrote: post #8
stale2002 wrote: post #4

But why is there a blockchain? Why not just charge people? Crytocurrencies both have large advantages AND disadvantages. The advantage is that it is a decentralized, censorship resist currency. But if you don't care about the decentralized part of it, then there is no point. Just use a credit card.

Because it seems these days projects tend to attract funds just because of mentioning the word 'blockchain'.

I need to pitch to YC my idea of a blockchain-enabled, cloud-hosted deep-learning platform based on TensorFlow.

/probably needs more buzzwords //probably has been done ///probably already funded by YC...meh

Re: Blockchain-Enabled Electric Car Charging Comes to California

#63

Post by Retric »

dingo_bat wrote: post #19
CalChris wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use ChargePoint a lot. If the charger isn't broken, it takes significantly less time than dealing with a gas station. 9 times out of 10, I know ahead of time whether a charger is broken or busy. As for their monetization strategy, I think chargers should require a maintenance contract and that that should be built into the kWh cost. Pay at the pump. I do not like to see free chargers because everyone uses them and…

> it takes significantly less time than dealing with a gas station Considering that most interactions at a gas station are over in 2 minutes, this seems to be a revolutionary fast charging technology!

You need to get to a gas station, where charging stations can be anywhere. If you have one at work and one at your house you will spend vastly less of your time filling up.

Re: Blockchain-Enabled Electric Car Charging Comes to California

#64

Post by rm_-rf_slash »

cr0sh wrote: post #61
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fill up my Jeep about once a week. At an average cost of $25 to fill over the course of 52 weeks, that's $1,300. Of course I don't have the added bonus of being able to charge from solar power, but at least that shows that the cost of electricity isn't prohibitive versus the cost of gasoline.

As a fellow Jeep owner (2004 TJ, {waves - lol}), I was sitting here wondering how you "fill up" a Jeep with only $25.00 (@ approx $2.00 per gallon - that'd be 12.5 gallons of gas per fill up). So I googled things - found this: http://www.jeepforum.com/forum/f9/gas-tank-size-249444/ Of course, that whole discussion just throws a bunch of wrenches into the works; maybe you do have the 15 gallon tank on a older model (n…

Yeah that's kinda what I meant. I don't burn a whole tank each week but I roughly fill it up weekly. Besides it was meant to be more a comparison of marginal rather tha absolute cost.

2015 Patriot (fist bump), if that makes a difference in the calculation.

Re: Blockchain-Enabled Electric Car Charging Comes to California

#65

Post by amluto »

0x006A wrote: post #24
jstanley wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's literally just "use cryptocurrency to pay for car charging", I don't think that counts as "blockchain-enabled" any more than, say, accepting Visa payments makes you "database-enabled". (I've read it now) EDIT: Not that the misleading headline makes it a worse project. I actually think "use cryptocurrency to pay for anything " is a good project. But it's not blockchain-enabled. And that's a good thing.

... uses the Share&Charge platform developed by MotionWerk. Share&Charge harnesses the Ethereum blockchain to track the charging transactions and exchange payment between customer and host. https://shareandcharge.com/ Money can be cashed-in to your Share&Charge wallet by using credit card, PayPal... In addition to the Blockchain technology we developed our Share&Charge App, which builds the point of intersection betw…

As far as I can tell, the only thing blockchainy about this is "Share&Charge and Slock.it are working hard in surfacing the blockchain aspects of the application for our more technical users. For example, we hope to eventually be able to load separately generated private keys within the apps."

That's all?

Re: Blockchain-Enabled Electric Car Charging Comes to California

#66

Post by biggerbistro »

mark_edward wrote: post #53
mkagenius wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the credit card charges. I am sure people driving uber would not mind keeping the 3% to themselves.

Are we still pretending transactions are free and instant like crypto enthusiasts used to claim 2-3 years ago?

Outside of the mess that is Bitcoin they are much cheaper than what credit/debit cards charge. More advanced coins like Ethereum take under a minute for an appropriate number of confirmations.

Re: Blockchain-Enabled Electric Car Charging Comes to California

#68

Post by mrb »

davidgerard wrote: post #47
mrb wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" Put a few tons of carbon in the air pointlessly calculating hashes to mine coins " It's not pointless. Have you read the arguments in http://blog.zorinaq.com/bitcoin-mining-is-not-wasteful/ ? It's not Ethereum-specific but the same logic applies. I feel I post that link too frequently, but people get too often mentally blocked on one technical detail (hashing) and fail to think about the big picture (renewables, jo…

> Venture capitalists invested more than $1 billion into at least 729 Bitcoin companies which created thousands of jobs. ... for return to date of zero. This is literally broken-windows economics.

Returns are irrelevant in the context of this argument. Jobs that provide real utility (not "breaking windows and repairing them") were created, and that's enough to justify the energy spent mining. Furthermore, an average investment takes years to generate returns. It's too early to call such investments worthless.

Re: Blockchain-Enabled Electric Car Charging Comes to California

#69

Post by IanCal »

mulmen wrote: post #43
IanCal wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not a bad thing: efficiency gains are good. But they don't reduce the total energy expenditure, because they incentivise increased mining. I think it's a stretch to say the two are perfectly linked. If you dropped someone's electricity price in half, would they buy twice the equipment to mine? If you dropped it to 1%, would they buy 100x as much equipment?

That's not exactly the question. It's more like if you dropped the price of electricity to 1% would 100x as many people participate. The answer to that is generally yes.

Would they? There are still significant fixed costs for a risky reward. A quick way of looking at the extreme end is: does everyone with free electricity do it?
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