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Ecotricity Electric Highway

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There will be a battle going on between free & not free charging!

Membercard or not

I battle for customers is going on, and ev-users will benefit!

As a business owner I am all for allowing my clients and employees to charge for free. Those that are not clients or employees should pay a nominal amount for the parking, use of the EVSE, and electrons used.
 
Noticed this in the comments there:

Dale Vince
April 5, 2012 at 12:49 pm

Fair guess, but the Tesla never really did it for me.

Was offered the last (new) right hand drive roadster in the world last week (by Tesla), tempted for a split second, but it’s no Nemesis…:)

Air car sounds interesting. I’ll keep an eye out.

Cheers.
 
I am looking for a Point of Sale that will accept a plain credit card swipe.

We have charging posts in Norway that open only after you send an SMS. If it's post #22 I send "Start 22" to a special number and the post open and activates. It is free for now, but the system can be used to charge via the phone bill if they want to later. I send "stop 22" to stop charging and open the post again to free my EVSE cable. That SMS can be charged to the phone bill for the amount of time used to charge. Very simple, everybody has a cellphone.
 
First impression: clever solution! But is there a prevention for other phones to send "stop 22"? e.g. phone number serving as authorization? or a code number in a message sent in return for "start 22" that is required to authorize the stop command? Otherwise, anybody can abort your charging process and remove your charging cable. If it is not locked at the vehicle side, it can be stolen.
 
We have charging posts in Norway that open only after you send an SMS. If it's post #22 I send "Start 22" to a special number and the post open and activates. It is free for now, but the system can be used to charge via the phone bill if they want to later. I send "stop 22" to stop charging and open the post again to free my EVSE cable. That SMS can be charged to the phone bill for the amount of time used to charge. Very simple, everybody has a cellphone.

Clipper Creek uses this solution for POS now, and is workable. The only problem, it is time consuming for the user to enter all the payment information ie credit card. I have not seen the ability to have it added to your phone bill here yet. Additionally as a merchant you are then billed for a non-swiped transaction (3%) versus an non-swiped transaction (1%) as a merchant fee.
 
Not a great day for Ecotricty :-(

I did manage to charge at 32A at Oxford M40 South despite 12" water in the parking bay and an ICE...

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But Membury M4 West was 'dead' once again...

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