We're Charging Our Cars Wrong

If you’re not being facetious, a unit of currency, minted out of metals of varying preciousness throughout the ages in the shape of a circle, usually imprinted with the monarch or head of state on one side and a symbol on the other.

If you’re being facetious, you’re probably aware that “coin-op” refers to any simply-operated payment terminal, as you’d find in a do-it-yourself car wash or parking meter (that doesn’t rely on some stupid phone app). In the past, you inserted the aforementioned coins into a slot, which it counted and provided you with some amount of time of use based on the amount you insert (coin op = coin operated). Nowadays, while there are still coin-op terminals (even in the western world!) they’re being replaced more and more by a pin-pad for processing credit- or debit-card transactions.

These are much preferable to having to use a website or an app, make an account, verify your account, add you personal information, add your vehicle and plate information, add your credit card information, etc. for each different network you’re trying to use, be it parking, car washing, or in this case, car charging. In the past (or present, for the majority of the population), you could drive up to a gas station, pay with some form of currency or card, and receive fuel. The parent was suggestion that maybe, people don’t want to have to deal with more complexity than that while charging their vehicles, especially when travelling to different cities/counties/countries, which are the most likely times they would need to use not-at-home charging (and also the most likely times they’d encounter a new network, and have to go through the rigamarole of new app/website, account, details, etc). By just putting a coin-op (or if you insist on pedantic precision, pin-pad-op) receptacle, someone can pull up, plug in, pay, and be on their way in 30 seconds or less.

Why reinvent the wheel and do anything else, which would take more effort in the best case scenario? If you insist on some godforsaken phone app, make that an option, but I imagine you’ll find most people won’t use it unless forced to.

> NIO might do it

The main obstacle is battery swap is capex heavy, hence PRC might do it, but most other places, less likely. It's pretty easy to extrapolate PRC auto parking / self driving cars sneaking out during low congestion to hit their battery swap queue. But that is a fairly significant logistics / infra issue when most countries would be lucky to get sufficient fast charging piles in place. Battery volume is probably not an issue since batteries will be rentals for minimum XYZ capacity. And algo might eventually bid for price, i.e. discount rental for partial charge if it means your car go for a swap by itself a couple days earlier.

> that can be field replaced

Incredibly dangerous to put naked electrical connectors right next to something flammable that you can't even extinguish.

I can't help but wonder while reading the article: why didn't this win in the market? As the author mentioned, the tech was there with the prototypes they built over 20 years ago. Why did Tesla and every other electric car manufacturer decide to go in a different direction?

>As of July 2024, eight states had opened their first NEVI-funded stations, totaling 61 ports, and powered thousands of charging sessions.

That's not good for a law that was ratified in November of 2021. It might be about par for the course for the federal government, but that's the problem.