As I was scrolling my news feed this morning, I came across this article from my colleague Iulian Dnistran, over at InsideEVs. It's an interesting little concept for an electric vehicle charger out of Germany that can be embedded into the ground so as to take up less space than a traditional charger.
Rheinmetall's Curb Charger is an intriguing concept, and I think it'd be great for urban environments where street parking is a necessity for a vast majority of folks: your Chicagos, your Los Angeles', your New Yorks where apartment living represents the vast majority of inhabitants and parking is limited. It could even work in the suburbs or for those who don't want the space displacement of a wall charger in their homes. Who here doesn't need more garage space for lawn tools or fishing poles?
But despite my thinking it's a cool concept, I quickly came to a question that has continually plagued me since the electric vehicles went mainstream: What the hell is wrong with the gas station concept? If there's one single issue that's plagued EVs, it's infrastructure. So after all the complaints and issues we've felt with the EV industry trying to reinvent the gas pump with apps, new physical infrastructure, and other concepts like Rheinmetall's, why can't we just admit that the gas pump—but make it EV—would just freakin' work?
We have to stop trying to reinvent it. At least if the actual goal is to get more people into EVs.
Let me describe to you something I'm sure you're all familiar with. My Honda Ridgeline is running low on fuel, so I turn into a gas station. I park, turn the truck off, and hop out. I insert my credit card, maybe input my fuel rewards program number if I'm near a Kroger-brand store—Ralphs, Smiths—select the fuel, and start pumping. A few minutes later, depending on my tank depletion, I'm on my way after snagging a Twix at the counter because I was having a day.
It's that simple. But allow me to describe the average EV charger experience.
I see my Rivian is running low on juice, so I first look to see where the nearest charging station is. It may be a Tesla Supercharger station—when Rivian adopts NACS next year—or more likely, it's some rando charger behind a liquor store, near a college campus, or some odd public charger that only local state agencies use as is in my small town in Utah. I park, turn the truck off, and hop out. I pull my phone out and either connect to the charger's network or have to download an app that I likely don't have because each charger around the country seemingly uses a different app. I wait for that to download, then connect to the charger. I still have to input my credit card, sign up for the app, input all my information, and then find that the charger isn't working. Or it is working, but seemingly won't connect to the app to allow me to start funneling electrons to my truck. The app tells me to restart the app, restart my phone, log into the app once again, and basically reenact every opening to The IT Crowd ever, "Hello, IT, have you tried turning it off and on again?"
There's another charger next to it, but the screen has gone full Blue Screen of Death, as they're still running Windows XP for some unknown reason to science and God. And if you think I'm being hyperbolic, just ask my colleague Janaki about her own experiences running around Chicago with electric motorcycles last year, or my colleagues at InsideEVs about their own infrastructure issues.
Yes, it's getting better, but why can't we just have a gas pump? Why can't I, someone who actually truly loves the concept of an EV motorcycle and EVs in general, just turn up to something that resembles a gas station, input my credit card, and start "fueling" up? Why do we need apps and disparate charging networks with apps of their own? Why do I need my phone and my credit card to just dispense some electricity? Why can't these stations just be gas stations? Especially when there's so much reticence in the adoption of EVs due to charging them? If the goal was truly more EV owners, wouldn't it be smart to just make them work like gasoline cars?
That's sort of a rhetorical question, though, isn't it? I know why we can't have this experience, as it doesn't give these companies our personal data. It doesn't give them ways to sell our data to brokers and advertisers and whoever else they want when you sign the app's Terms of Service. We're the actual commodity, not the electricity we're just trying to access. But, and hear me out, what if we weren't?
General Motors and Charge Point have a concept that the two companies debuted last year, which we used to create the hero image for this very article. So, clearly, the idea is out there. But as for executing it, no one has seized upon it in any real sense apart from Tesla's Supercharging network, though that doesn't exactly follow the gas station layout either.
Honestly, I do think that Rheinmetall's EV charger concept has merit, and we need innovation. But innovation can only occur when adoption is more universal. We're not even close to that being reality. So, for now, I implore someone to just start making EV charging stations that look, feel, and work like a goddamn gas station.
We don't have to reinvent anything right now, folks, really. Let's just make something that works that everyone already knows how to use.
