Charging electric vehicles with Bitcoin

In my last post I ranted about the current payment methods for charging E.V.s. The electricity for a full charge of an electric car costs something in the range of $2 to $20. But most of the time, we only need a partial charge. Credit cards impose enormous fees on low value transactions, and require expensive equipment. PayPal even adds on top of that. This is why some energy providers opted to use RFID membership cards. Unfortunately there are many of these. Most have excessive annual fees. They are mostly incompatible island solutions and they usually offer bad deals. So let me explain why Bitcoin offers the perfect solution here.

Machine to machine

Some car manufacturers are already looking into equipping their vehicles with digital wallets. And some power companies are looking already into blockchain payments. So the car could pay directly for the power. This can be done exactly and trustlessly with use of Bitcoin payment channels. The cars already communicate with the charging terminals, so payment would be just one more stream of information. Because Bitcoin accounts don’t need to be tied to a person, and you can create as many accounts as you like, it is no problem to have a separate account for the car. Or you can share an account between your car and other devices. Whatever fits your use case best. The same goes for the infrastructure provider. He can maintain a separate hierarchical deterministic wallet for every charging station. It would even be relatively easy to put a protocol in place where the charging station doesn’t even need an Internet connection by itself. Instead the car or the consumer could present a proof that was signed by the energy provider that a valid payment was made. The possibilities are endless.

Accessibility

Bitcoin wallets exists on almost every operating system. Most of them are open source. This is in stark contrast to proprietary apps that some charging providers advertise. If they have one for Android and one for iOS, I’m out of luck. It won’t run on my Ubuntu phone.

Transaction costs

When I started with Bitcoin in 2011, transaction costs were really neglectable. They were optional, and usually a fraction of a penny. For a long time they were at about two pennies, which is still minor. Only recently they started to raise to about 20 pennies for an average size medium priority transaction. This is still comparable to Maestro cards, and way below credit cards. But it is not so great at the moment for micro transactions. The reason for this is that the block size is capped and the limit was reached. Thus a fee market emerged, where you pay a higher fee to have your transaction included in a block sooner. The Bitcoin community is in deep crisis over this. It is not as bad as it sounds though. Because Bitcoin is an open, distributed system, there is no dictator or board of directors who decides the course behind closed doors. Instead the discussion is held publicly. Everybody who feels he has something to contribute, can take part. It can take longer to come to an agreement, but the chances of getting a good solution are maximized this way. Consensus is something sacred with a trustless distributed network such as Bitcoin. So trust me, the fees will decrease again one or another way. If we can even call it a problem when comparing with other options.

User agreements

Do you know somebody who likes user agreements? Do you know somebody who reads everything he signs? I don’t, eventhough I force myself to read more than I would like to. If a multi page agreement is required to sell something or to make use of a service, that is a clear indication that there is something wrong with the design of the product. If I see an overly lengthy agreement before I can use something, I get offended and run away. The occasions where it is difficult to find a better alternative are few and far between.

If I buy a hammer in a store, I don’t have to sign neither the seller nor the producer off a liability in case I break something with it. If I buy a power tool, I don’t have to sign a letter to make nobody reliable if I electrocute myself. Even the company delivering the electric power cannot be held responsible if I get an electric shock. And I don’t have to sign them off before they would deliver electricity to me. This is because there are rules and regulations and certifications. We know how these tools are supposed to work, and we make sure they do so.

So why do I have to sign pages of incomprehensible legaleeze before opening a bank account or applying for a credit card? Why do I have to sign a user agreement when I want an RFID from one of the power providers for E.V.s? Why do I have to sign off my privacy rights before using an online service? Because the product is poorly designed!

I don’t have to sign anything to open a Bitcoin account. Not even if I want to create a million Bitcoin accounts. I can just do it. Bitcoin is asset based. So whoever or whatever is in control of the private key can spend the funds. Clear and simple.

Clear and simple

Charging an electric vehicle should be at least as simple as fueling a gasoline car. You can usually pay in cash or debit card. I heard that there are charging stations that you can pay in cash. So far I found only one. During a short flight yesterday I charged the car at the Swiss Holiday Park. This was actually the first time I payed for a charge. It was a good service at a reasonable fee.
Only Bitcoin could make the experience even better.

Update Jan 2018:

Meanwhile I have had a charger in the garage at home for half a year. Charging like this is awesome!
All my reservations against the RFID cards at the public charging stations were just confirmed by a talk at the 34c3:

Ladeinfrastruktur für Elektroautos: Ausbau statt Sicherheit

Update Jan 2019

It seems some things are moving into the right direction, albeit at a slow pace:
A Security Model for Electric Vehicle and Charging Pile Management Based on Blockchain Ecosystem
Building a Private Bitcoin-based Payment Network among Electric Vehicles and Charging Stations
Japanisches Unternehmen testet Bitcoin-Zahlungen im Lightning Network