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We put a QR code on every charger and provide a web app so that users don't have to download another app.

Plug and Charge is exciting, but there's many limitations. Mostly comes down to vehicle manufacturers and charger manufacturers. On both sides, there are many that don't support ISO 15118 yet.

ChargePoint's security concerns about ISO 15118 published a few years ago were also valid (https://www.chargepoint.com/files/15118whitepaper.pdf). A man-in-the-middle attack is possible with the current version of the ISO 15118.

1) There's an open protocol called the Open Charge Point Protocol (OCPP). It's been adopted by all of the top hardware manufacturers (ABB, Siemens, Schneider Electric, Eaton, Delta, Phihong, etc.). So long as a charger complies with OCPP, it will work with our cloud.

There are still holdouts that do not use the protocol or make it difficult to access within their firmware, like ChargePoint and Tesla.

Just like any industry, "hardware agnostic" does not mean "any hardware". But our platform does work with 4 out of 5 of the most sold EV charging brands in the world!

More on OCPP here: https://www.chargelab.co/industry-advocacy/ocpp

2) We're focused on North America right now. We have ambitions to serve other markets, but it's really tricky to hop the Atlantic. Language, GDPR, and other things make it tricky to enter new markets. We're also only running on one cloud region now (us-east-1). As we scale we'll naturally run instances on different cloud instances, but haven't done so yet.

3) We would provide the technology to enable this, but might not create it ourselves. Our customers (all the emerging charging networks) will have much stronger opinions on whether they want to create a subscription with each other or not.

Great questions!

EV charging is similar to many other infrastructure businesses. The companies that install, own, and operate EV chargers don't build the actual EV charging hardware and software.

If you were to compare it to the petrol industry, Shell builds gas stations, but the less-known Gilbarco Veeder-Root builds the actual gas pumps and POS software.

What's different in EV charging is that almost anywhere can be a refuelling station -- grocery stores, office buildings, condos, apartments, even single-family homes.

With some many use cases, it's impossible to build a comprehensive product to serve every niche. At ChargeLab we focus on the core needs of the industry, like hardware-agnostic device connectivity, device monitoring, reporting, power management, and payments. Then we provide a public API to enable others to build niche-specific solutions on top of our platform: a unique fleet scheduling tool, an integration with existing petrol loyalty programs, or just a custom interface for your apartment building.

ChargeLab co-founder here!

Let me know if you have any questions about our vision for open EV charging infrastructure.

Alpha user here, AMA!

Can we please just get a state government to start installing charging stations in all public lots so these charging companies have to give up their dreams of being a monopoly?

Completely agree that the "sign up and use our app" approach is insufferable. But asking your state to build all the infrastructure doesn't solve the problem. Your state is not going to (a) manufacture charging stations or (b) build the software/payment interfaces needed to manage them. What you're proposing would have the gov sole-source from one of these "apps". Instead of letting the the market determine who can build the best user experience, you would be giving one company (probably ChargePoint) a government-granted monopoly.

ChargeLab | Team Lead | Toronto, ON | ONSITE (WFH for now) | FULL-TIME

ChargeLab (https://www.chargelab.co/) is the Android of EV charging: we make hardware-agnostic software for managing networks of EV chargers. I'm the founder & CEO.

We're hiring a team lead to manage and scale up our existing team of 7 developers (local & remote). You should be full-stack but most comfortable with back-end (Spring Boot, Java, Hibernate, jOOQ, AWS).

Competitive salary + 1–5% equity.

We interviewed with YC in Mountain View twice before raising funding from VCs & Angels and focusing on building our company in Toronto.

https://indeedhi.re/2UycH7l

My email: zak@chargelab.co

Thanks... you've probably got lots on your plate right now will keep an eye on Visual One! If there is enough demand I'm sure you'll invest more in the firmware retrofit, or maybe I'll buy some of your cameras

Can I hook up my existing Wyze cams or install your firmware on them?

ChargeLab | Team Lead | Toronto, ON | ONSITE | FULL-TIME

ChargeLab (https://www.chargelab.co/) is the Android of EV charging: we make hardware-agnostic software for managing networks of EV chargers. I'm the founder & CEO.

We're hiring a team lead to manage and scale up our existing team of 5 developers (local & remote). You should be full-stack but most comfortable with back-end (Spring Boot, Java, Hibernate, jOOQ, AWS).

Competitive salary + 1–5% equity.

We interviewed with YC in Mountain View twice before raising funding from VCs & Angels and focusing on building our company in Toronto.

My email: zak@chargelab.co

503

I never thought I would learn so much about Tin

Agreed

I might be saying "en masse" 18 months prematurely. But at the speed utilities move, that's a blink of an eye.

I'm often reminded of Steve Balmer in 2007 laughing at the iPhone: "it's $500 and it doesn't even have a keyboard!?"

Less than 10 years later smartphones are ubiquitous. Not popular--ubiquitous.

That's where EVs are right now: "they cost more and they can't even go 250 miles!?"

EVs will be cheaper than gas cars by 2022, and a few years after that nobody will buy another gas car.

Electric cars add storage at almost no cost to the utility.

Consumers in North America bought 260,000 battery electric vehicles in 2018. This is over 15 GWh of storage. And utilities paid $0 for it. As many others pointed out in this thread, EV penetration is minimal--so imagine how much storage potential will be added as adoption grows exponentially in the next 5 years.

There is no way for utilities to access this storage yet--but this is what we are building (at least the software part of the equation).

I agree that nuclear should be taken way more seriously.

But V2G is also game-changing since it lets utilities "rent" capacity instead of "owning" it.

We think that leveraging electric vehicles as a storage device will help solve the duck curve problem.

Utilities are reluctant to invest billions of dollars in energy storage to smooth out their demand curve.

But consumers are already making this investment by switching en masse to EVs.

We're building software that will one day help utilities transact with individual or fleet vehicle owners to leverage their vehicles as energy storage.

Relevant (and mentioned at the end of the video): https://gist.github.com/ecelis/f2428c38fd7777b20ace

Does anyone know how committed Sketch is to desktop? Do you think they would do something like this?

Yes, removing the uncertainty of if there is a plug available is a big plus

Talk soon!

Congrats on launching! Great job getting >1,000 hosts in a concentrated area--this is where others have fallen short with this idea.

Do you have plans to integrate with public & semi-private CPOs? (charge point operators)

We are a startup CPO. I'm thinking about some of our multi-res customers who installed stations in visitor parking. They have asked us to list their stations publicly so they can recoup their initial costs. Your platform might be a good fit for this.

Let me know if this is interesting!

There's a great video essay on this topic: https://youtu.be/r86Sb4heCWM

In theory Apple Watch has the processing power for significantly > OS 7

http://www.cultofmac.com/320279/how-powerful-is-the-apple-wa...

Both Becker and Aaronson arrive at an interesting puzzle

So the real question is not why the entropy is increasing, but why it was ever low to begin with

With regards to SapphireSun's question I am not a physicist either, but this seems to be a good place to start down the shape dynamics rabbit hole: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwqkdvKHTlg