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Comment by worrycue | Hacker News Reader

Hmmm, I wonder when power companies will make a move. Why go through a middleman like Tesla when you can get all the profit?

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In Germany all major power providers have their own charging networks and they all suck and are very expensive.

You cannot roll up to a charger and pay, no, you need an app and an account for each charging network. Then there are multiple kinds of subscriptions where each kWh costs more or less depending on the base fee and much more.

All those charging network owners threw a fit when German legislation started requiring new stations to be equipped with a card reader to accept digital payments without apps from July 2023 onwards by the way...

The problem is that the card reader will be by far the most expensive part of the charger, plus the service fees for using the payment network.

I agree that having 5 apps and needing a phone is bad, but the cost of the card reader will be passed onto you and less chargers will be available.

An NFC-based solution which worked with a single card or a phone would have been better.

Can you elaborate on that? I can get a credit card reader for almost nothing that connects to my cell phone in the us from stripe or whatever for a business. In this case, for outdoor equipment and open to the public, it has to be hardened, has to connect to a network, probably has to have a small display or at least buttons. So should be under $1,000 maybe. But installing the high capacity electric line probably costs way more than 20k, installing conduit, buying the chargers costs way more. Service fees are handled by slightly increasing the cost, which every business in the world that takes credit cards somehow withstands.

The same day oil companies will go through the middle man and own the gas stations?

The oil companies certainly do own the gas stations. Do you think BP, Shell, Exxon, Mobile, Phillips 66,, Marathon and Chevron are named after giant oil companies for no reason?

AFAIK those are generally franchises, like say a Subway or a McDonald’s.

That seems like a distinction that doesn't matter to this conversation. The point is that it's done through the oil company. Either way, you expect to fill up at a PG&E station in 10 years, not a Tesla one.

I think that while they can be owned by the oil companies, you can also enter into a licensing contract with said oil company to use their likeness.

There’s a subtle difference.

Oil companies are not involved in direct last mile delivery. Electricity providers are already doing that.

That's a good point. But that means they do already sell people the electricity for their ev if they charge at home, which is probably most of the ev charging. So the question is would they bother invest in building charging stations to get the whole market.

> So the question is would they bother invest in building charging stations to get the whole market.

I think that would depend on how the market evolves. Currently I believe they are content, as you say, just delivering to the homes and business (offices which provide charging to employees). If this market starts leaning towards solar and the charging station market becomes huge, I think it’d be trivial for these utilities to set up last mile charging stations, or perhaps create a subsidiary to do just that.

There is a lot of regulation around this sort of thing already, for example some power companies sell AC servicing (motivated by-wanting to prevent under maintained units from causing demand spikes, which would in turn require new plant construction) and this requires the creation of a new independent subsidiary that is not allowed to share data or other resources with the parent company.

Killer feature is when you can use solar surplus to charge everywhere, esp in places where residential solar/wind is unfeasable

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