I'd love to have an alternative to ChargePoint for charging my Tesla at airports. It takes multiple minutes of diddling around with their app to make their charger's relay contacts close. They have reviews within their app, wherein people report which of their chargers usually work, which sometimes work, and which never work. In no case is the actual power faulty -- it's their monetization strategy that fails to tough-luck.
Back in the early 80s, I spent part of a summer in a slate-roofed cottage in Wales. The cottage had a box in which you had to insert a coin to turn on the electricity. Like, if you wanted to cook or watch TV that night you had to insert a shilling coin and turn a knob and --- kerchunk --- you'd have electricity until you'd used up your 1d worth of kilowatt-hours and then --- kerchunk --- you were a savage again.
Somehow, paying for electricity at each act of consumption feels bad. Like paying for toilets.
Tesla got it right. I paid $100,000 for the car -- I want hassle-free electricity, thanks.
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 no one maintains them because they're not getting paid for.
A buck an hour should be the minimum for 6kWh L2. $5/hr if you leave it 30 minutes past full.
As for the blockchain idea, this seems strange. Too much solution for not enough problem. I don't want to use some random person's L2 in a neighborhood. I could imagine an emergency thing but that's about it.
Those pay-as-you-use-it (prepayment) meters still exist!
The first house I rented as a student had one, in 2006. The landlord said the previous tenants had had trouble paying the bills, so the electricity company had insisted on the meter when reconnecting the supply. In reality, I think he'd asked for it to be installed to simplify his job.
Nowadays, the meters are topped up with a smart card, usually at a local newsagent or corner shop. I think we put £100 on it, then forgot about it for several months.
I'm not familiar with how billing for Tesla's chargers work, except that some of the high end models include free charging (or at least they used to). Are you saying the electricity should be free, or simply that you prefer to pay monthly based on usage?
This startup seems like a stepping stone to me. Eventually you should be able to define limits (max $/kWh, min charge rate, min time available, max distance) and the app should just show you available stations. Billing can happen automatically.
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 they're only inserting a blockchain here because it gets the idea more buzz.
Side note: I had no idea people paid so much to charge they're EVs. the article mentioned that a electric bill in Cali can be upwards of $1000/yr.
Edit for clarity: the $1000/yr figure is the marginal cost of charging the EV, not the entire bill
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.
This is exactly the sort of nonsense that people are doing that makes other people think the entire cryptocurrency community is a joke. Obviously there is no benefit to having this on a blockchain here. You can just pay the charging station.
I made a comment the other day that there is very little overlap between cryptocurrency enthusiasts and people who want to blockchain-all-the-things. It was heavily downvoted and I suspect people didn't believe me, so I'm going to keep repeating it until people believe me :)
Don't write off cryptocurrency just because of nonsense like this. Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Monero (and a small handful of other coins) are genuinely worthwhile projects.
> I made a comment the other day that there is very little overlap between cryptocurrency enthusiasts and people who want to blockchain-all-the-things. It was heavily downvoted and I suspect people didn't believe me, so I'm going to keep repeating it until people believe me :)
Probably because:
1. you're making a historically false claim. Pushing "blockchain" to business is quite well documented (Digital Gold, contemporary press) as being something that was pushed by the Bitcoin fans at the time - late 2014, when the bitcoin price was cratering - as a way to keep interest up.
2. the claims for "Blockchain" (and even the further euphemism, "Digital Ledger Technology") are blatantly the most fantastic claims for Bitcoin, with only the buzzword changed.
3. the bitcoin blog press can't get enough of these "blockchain" initiatives. Clearly their readers think it's all much the same thing.
As someone associated with this project, I can inform you that the reason the words "blockchain enabled" are used is because the Share and Charge platform enables peer-to-peer payments between car charger and private (not commercial) charging pole owner via the blockchain. As it happens however, as this is a pilot in a new country (US) with new compliance requirements, there are no actual cash payments taking place for now. And as for the electricity cost of Proof of Work, we're actually looking to move to a special purpose chain using Proof of Authority in the near future.
Perfect! Put a few tons of carbon in the air pointlessly calculating hashes to mine *coins, and then use those e-coins to charge your electric car.
This uses Ethereum so when they eventually move to proof-of-stake I'll mostly retract my scorn, but for now I stand by this being counterproductive and dumb.
"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, jobs created, real utility of cryptos, etc). If cars with internal combustion engines were introduced today, would HNers complain its a dumb tech because it wastes 97% of the fuel's energy?[1]
[1] 90% wasted moving 1.5 tons of metal and only 150 kg of useful cargo/passengers, and remaining 7% wasted mostly as heat/friction.
Measuring the actual carbon produced by butcoin mining is hard, miners inevitably co-located with cheap sources of power where renewable power is oversupplied.
Bank of America also puts carbon in the air in order to make your debit card work. Those offices cost a lot of money, resources, and carbon in order to keep the lights on and make those databases work.
How are crypto-currencies any different than that?
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.
> The peer-to-peer concept relies on blockchain, one of today's hottest trends [...]
Note the missing article. Not "relies on the blockchain" or "relies on a blockchain" but "relies on blockchain" as if that were some kind of new elemental resource like water or electricity.
I've noticed that expression in quite a few articles. DOes anyone know where it comes from?
tlb|8 years ago
Back in the early 80s, I spent part of a summer in a slate-roofed cottage in Wales. The cottage had a box in which you had to insert a coin to turn on the electricity. Like, if you wanted to cook or watch TV that night you had to insert a shilling coin and turn a knob and --- kerchunk --- you'd have electricity until you'd used up your 1d worth of kilowatt-hours and then --- kerchunk --- you were a savage again.
Somehow, paying for electricity at each act of consumption feels bad. Like paying for toilets.
Tesla got it right. I paid $100,000 for the car -- I want hassle-free electricity, thanks.
CalChris|8 years ago
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 no one maintains them because they're not getting paid for.
A buck an hour should be the minimum for 6kWh L2. $5/hr if you leave it 30 minutes past full.
As for the blockchain idea, this seems strange. Too much solution for not enough problem. I don't want to use some random person's L2 in a neighborhood. I could imagine an emergency thing but that's about it.
Symbiote|8 years ago
The first house I rented as a student had one, in 2006. The landlord said the previous tenants had had trouble paying the bills, so the electricity company had insisted on the meter when reconnecting the supply. In reality, I think he'd asked for it to be installed to simplify his job.
Nowadays, the meters are topped up with a smart card, usually at a local newsagent or corner shop. I think we put £100 on it, then forgot about it for several months.
Info and a couple of pictures: https://www.uswitch.com/gas-electricity/guides/prepayment-me...
thinkmassive|8 years ago
This startup seems like a stepping stone to me. Eventually you should be able to define limits (max $/kWh, min charge rate, min time available, max distance) and the app should just show you available stations. Billing can happen automatically.
tigeba|8 years ago
alistproducer2|8 years ago
Side note: I had no idea people paid so much to charge they're EVs. the article mentioned that a electric bill in Cali can be upwards of $1000/yr.
Edit for clarity: the $1000/yr figure is the marginal cost of charging the EV, not the entire bill
rm_-rf_slash|8 years ago
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.
cr0sh|8 years ago
I live in Phoenix, AZ - my electric bill is rarely ever under $100.00 per month; in the summertime it can edge upwards to close to $400.00 a month.
I don't have an electric car, either.
/two A/C units on a 2000 sf house will do that, tho...
jstanley|8 years ago
This is exactly the sort of nonsense that people are doing that makes other people think the entire cryptocurrency community is a joke. Obviously there is no benefit to having this on a blockchain here. You can just pay the charging station.
I made a comment the other day that there is very little overlap between cryptocurrency enthusiasts and people who want to blockchain-all-the-things. It was heavily downvoted and I suspect people didn't believe me, so I'm going to keep repeating it until people believe me :)
Don't write off cryptocurrency just because of nonsense like this. Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Monero (and a small handful of other coins) are genuinely worthwhile projects.
davidgerard|8 years ago
Probably because:
1. you're making a historically false claim. Pushing "blockchain" to business is quite well documented (Digital Gold, contemporary press) as being something that was pushed by the Bitcoin fans at the time - late 2014, when the bitcoin price was cratering - as a way to keep interest up.
2. the claims for "Blockchain" (and even the further euphemism, "Digital Ledger Technology") are blatantly the most fantastic claims for Bitcoin, with only the buzzword changed.
3. the bitcoin blog press can't get enough of these "blockchain" initiatives. Clearly their readers think it's all much the same thing.
spraak|8 years ago
Cut_N_Paste|8 years ago
[deleted]
iMuzz|8 years ago
- Minuscule transaction fees as opposed to 3% banking fees.
- Less necessary server infrastructure to manage identity/payments
Would these not be benefits or am I missing something?
bosslevel|8 years ago
bpodgursky|8 years ago
This uses Ethereum so when they eventually move to proof-of-stake I'll mostly retract my scorn, but for now I stand by this being counterproductive and dumb.
mrb|8 years ago
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, jobs created, real utility of cryptos, etc). If cars with internal combustion engines were introduced today, would HNers complain its a dumb tech because it wastes 97% of the fuel's energy?[1]
[1] 90% wasted moving 1.5 tons of metal and only 150 kg of useful cargo/passengers, and remaining 7% wasted mostly as heat/friction.
honestlyreally|8 years ago
Compare that to say air travel
ohazi|8 years ago
stale2002|8 years ago
How are crypto-currencies any different than that?
stale2002|8 years ago
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.
waltero|8 years ago
jstanley|8 years ago
It's just car charging where you pay using Ethereum.
mkagenius|8 years ago
xg15|8 years ago
> The peer-to-peer concept relies on blockchain, one of today's hottest trends [...]
Note the missing article. Not "relies on the blockchain" or "relies on a blockchain" but "relies on blockchain" as if that were some kind of new elemental resource like water or electricity.
I've noticed that expression in quite a few articles. DOes anyone know where it comes from?
davidgerard|8 years ago
xurukefi|8 years ago
kaishiro|8 years ago
0x006A|8 years ago
0x006A|8 years ago
TheSpecialist|8 years ago
xurukefi|8 years ago
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