Tesla walks away from public funding for Superchargers because of payment system integration

[Webeevdrivers]

I'm suggesting that if Tesla takes the government incentives that it is OK for those chargers to be required to make them universally available to all CCS EVs and all drivers with or without smart phones. If Tesla thinks that the number of non-Tesla drivers is too small to bother with then they don't need to take the incentives either with or without any type of card reader. Tesla can certainly charge extra for non-Tesla cars -- I'm certainly in favor of this since Tesla owners have paid for the Supercharger network to date. And they can even charge a higher price for credit card scans (or more realistically give a "discount" for installing the app or paying a monthly fee of some kind).

Would they be allowed to charge more for certain brands?

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

I think Tesla wants to primarily avoid a kiosk system (and perhaps another third party payment processor), it's not necessarily contactless vs a chip reader.

Well, Tesla _currently_ doesn't have pre-paid accounts, so I assume they pay fees to credit card companies when they bill peoples cards. But that's on their servers, so they may be able to handle it in a more cost-efficient way.

If Tesla did generic charging I'd suspect it'd be contactless and a very minimal cheap LCD display as I've seen on the basic 50kW chargers in NB and PE I mentioned above.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Would they be allowed to charge more for certain brands?

I'm sure that would be a hard no. But higher PAYG and credit card fees (in many states) would be OK.

 

[rlsd]

Any method that requires people to login, to swipe credit card will add more wait time for everyone at the charge station. Pay kiosk at the supercharge station is a really bad idea: people have to wait in queue to move the car to the the charging stall and and have to spend more time at the pay kiosk. If the car is already parked in a charging stall and it is not charging will cost Tesla $1 per minute.

 

[SVMike]

Would they be allowed to charge more for certain brands?

Are you asking what could they do or should they do? Or what is legal? Or what is allowed by the merchant agreements for a business accepting credit cards? I think that they cannot charge extra for using a credit card (or debit card) but they can arrange it so the normal price is what credit card users pay and app users and Teslas with a card on the account get a discount.
I think it might be a legal issue if they charged, for example, GM cars extra. I don't even know how they would know that.
I think part of the reason the government money is tied to universal access (and possible kiosk with display) is so that you know the price before you start charging.

 

[stopcrazypp]

Are you asking what could they do or should they do? Or what is legal? Or what is allowed by the merchant agreements for a business accepting credit cards? I think that they cannot charge extra for using a credit card (or debit card) but they can arrange it so the normal price is what credit card users pay and app users and Teslas with a card on the account get a discount.
I think it might be a legal issue if they charged, for example, GM cars extra. I don't even know how they would know that.
I think part of the reason the government money is tied to universal access (and possible kiosk with display) is so that you know the price before you start charging.

Tesla already charges non-Teslas more. I don't see an exclusion against that in the government programs, especially given some car makers have preferential rates or free charging on third party networks. There is also things like subscriptions. Basically the concern is mainly access for everyone (or at least CCS cars, CHAdeMo is out of luck), not necessarily that everyone pays the same price.