why do new technologies insist on integrating nonsense nobody asked for? Last Friday, I had to make a business trip, and the car rental place only gave me an electric car, and I thought I'd give it a go. Big mistake.
I knew beforehand I wouldn't make it to the destination and back without recharging, so I looked up how all of this stuff works. Apparently, you are supposed to download an app to your smartphone, then create an account in that app, and then, when you get to a charging point, use the app to activate the charge point. It also handles billing, because it requires a credit card.
When I'd learned all that, it was too late to refuse the car, so I could only grit and bear it. I don't have mobile internet on my smartphone normally, because I usually don't need the internet when I am out and about. And at home and at work, I have Wifi. Therefore, mobile internet would be redundant.
But alright. My phone provider has an option where I can pay a little bit more and get quite some mobile data for a month, so I did that. Next problem: I have no credit card. You don't really need them here in Germany. We have debit cards that directly wire the money out of the bank account. And a credit card is basically a subscription service to access your own bank account. But my boss was gracious enough to loan me his (private) card. Since it was for a business trip, I would get reimbursed at the end, so I can pay him back as well.
So that still means that in order to just use an electric car, you have to
- Enter into a subscription service for use of the charge points,
- Enter into a subscription service for mobile internet, and
- Enter into a subscription service for access to your own bank account.
Then I got to my destination. There was a massive e-car charging station out front, which I'd seen on the charging app before, and so I wanted to charge the car while I was with the customer. Unfortunately, I couldn't get it to work. The app always told me that charging had begun, but the charge point itself stubbornly stayed at "please authorize" followed quickly by "please unplug". It wouldn't charge. I tried a different plug, in case that one was broken, and got the same result.
So, no charging at the customer's. Thankfully, the meeting with the customer was very short (I'm starting to dislike the guy who send me on the trip), and so I headed back before lunch even. When I got back to the place I'd charged the car at in the morning, I had another unwelcome surprise: That truck stop only has charge points on the other side of the highway. And the next exit was 10km away. I had 30km of range left at that point. That's the kind of anxiety I don't need in my life.
After a lengthy lunch break, I headed out again, and two hours later I pulled up to another charge point very close to home, so I can charge the car up one last time and hand it back fully charged. You always hand gas cars back with a full tank, and I don't see why electric cars should be any different. Plus, with the experience I'd had earlier, I had reason to presume the fast-charge point at the highway would work, but had doubts about the slow-charge points in town.
It took another hour to fully charge. Which meant that a drive that should have taken 2 1/2 hours had taken me 5, of which maybe 1/2 hour was attributable to traffic. In the evening I looked at the bills, and saw that I'd paid around 85€ for power on that day. My private gas car could have made the trip there and back on one tank, which currently goes for 50-60€.
Why do they make this charging stuff so complicated? With a gas car, you pull up to any fuel station in the land, push the nozzle in the hole, push the magic button, and the juices start flowing. Why is this so different when the juice is electric? I can think of explanations, but none favorable to the companies involved. They might argue that the charge stations are unmanned. But we have unmanned fuel stations, and you typically pay with debit card there. You go to the terminal, pre-authorize the withdrawal of funds, and that unlocks the pumps. Works well and requires no credit card and no app and no mobile internet.
Where does this leave me? Well, I know that the charging stuff is currently going very far in the wrong direction, and I won't be buying an electric car for myself unless something changes drastically. And, since that particular customer has a huge train station right outside the factory, next time I'll just take the train. It cannot possibly be this aggravating.
Oh yeah, and I'll have to look into cancelling some of those subscriptions next week.
But this is because of the meningitis I had when I was 13. I've very slowly gotten better over the years, though never to the point of really being able to deal with all this. The number of app downloads and sign-ups @nullplan describes would critically impact my ability to focus for the rest of the day and perhaps into the next.