“Die paar jugoslawischen Worte, die nach einer Weile hängenblieben und die wir nach einer Weile gezielt einsetzen, sind – böse betrachtet – der Gipfel der Frechheit gegen dieses Land. Wir nehmen uns, was wir brauchen, und wenn wir gehen werfen wir’s weg.”

i‘m a newcomer to electric charging my car. but i‘ve learnt a lot. what‘s easy is using my “internalized“ map: i know where and how to charge the vehicle close to my home. on the road it‘s different, and on long distance rides even more complex. if you stick to the same provider who has a decent network of charging parks near the autobahn, you‘re fine. that‘s one of the things i‘ve learnt.

when parking my car at a charging station which is new to me, things might work out well. but often they don‘t. the EV phase we’re living in may remind automobile historians of the early days of combustion engines when the chauffeurs had to buy petrol at the drug store. of course, not all drug stores had petrol for cars, and obviously the petrol mixes varied from store to store.

with EVs these days here are three major “issues“:

there are RFID cards, “contactless“ smartphones, apps. often they interfere with each other. example: yesterday i used the app of a certain meta-provider. the app wanted me to start charging by pressing “charge now“. at the same time the display of the charging station asked me to confirm the charging process by pressing a physical button. which i did. — charging stopped immediately.

if you have, say, 3 cards or apps which are compatible with a certain charging station, you have to compare prices. this is a tedious process. example: i used card A for charging and later found out that card B would have been better. contactless smartphone check-in with google pay would have been more expensive.

different charging stations demand different sequences of using the app/card and plugging in the cable. some need the cable to be connected before starting the whole process. others want to start with the card or app. if you restart the registration you might need to unplug the cable from your car, so the car knows the charging process failed.

interesting times. we‘re already in a consolidation process. in five years time there will be standards like for petrol stations these days.