Evie Networks charging a Tesla Model Y. Source: Evie Networks
Electric vehicle fast charging network provider Evie Networks has explained why it had to change its payment protocols – including what turned out to be a temporary measure of requesting $30 pre-authorisations for every credit card transaction – saying many drivers had been “committing” fraud to avoid payments.
Evie Networks says that it experienced significant levels of transaction declines under its old protocols, and was often unable to secure payment despite kilowatt hours being delivered to EV customers.
“We found that while most payment declines were accidental, there was a significant proportion of declines that were intentional, with drivers committing fraud to avoid payment,” the company writes in a Knowledge Sharing report submitted to the Australian Renewable Energy Agency as part of its funding agreement for the rollout of its EV chargers.
“This is the equivalent of filling a car with petrol and driving away without paying.”
The requirement for a $30 pre-payment authorisation met with some negative feedback, including from readers of The Driven when it was introduced earlier this year, which Evie Networks achknowledges, and it has already moved on to a new system that links directly to customer accounts, similar to the protocol rolled out by Tesla several years ago.
Evie now has around 270 EV charging stations and more than 600 charging bays. Its report says EV chargers are particularly affected by credit card transaction declines, because while a 5 % rate of decline is typical in retail settings, that usually means that the item is not taken away. It’s a different story in EV charging at unattended stations.
“As the level of declines grew and reached an unsustainable level, it was clear that action was required to stem the flow of lost revenue,” Evie Networks writes.
“Pre-authorisation is not a payment, but a reservation of funds. It is the same as a hotel taking a pre-authorisation payment, or a vending machine checking that there are sufficient funds before distributing a drink. Evie does not receive funds from pre-authorisation, nor are funds taken from the customer account.”
It acknowledges, though, that there were problems, because some banks were slow to respond. “The pre-authorisation hold is often released on the same day, but some banks are slow to act and can take up to 5 or 7 days.”
Still, it says the rate of payment declines has dropped by 75 per cent. “There has been some negative feedback from customers, but this is most often due to a perception that pre-authorisation is a payment.”
And CEO Chris Mills tells The Driven that the new “Autocharge” system has been very successful, and the pre-authorisation protocol was removed a few weeks ago.
“Autocharge identifies the car, the account and the credit card,” he says. “It is fantastic. It is very Tesla-esque.”
And, he reports, driver usage is increasing, with customers a week jumping to 10,000 from 7,000 and sessions a week to 13,000 from 10,000. The next step, he says, is to address the problem of grid demand charges, which he and others say is adding unnecessary costs to charging companies. That will be a story for another day.
Giles Parkinson is founder and editor of The Driven, and also edits and founded the Renew Economy and One Step Off The Grid web sites. He has been a journalist for nearly 40 years, is a former business and deputy editor of the Australian Financial Review, and owns a Tesla Model 3.
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BP Pulse does this too. A $25 charge was on my credit card account for several days before it reverted to the correct amount for the charging session. It was never actually debited, but just sat there as a 'pre-payment'.
Fair enough, if folk want the service, the service needs to be paid.
Impossible to get upset about this.
But most ev owners charge at home from free solar. Giles said so
I'm not sure what your point is. This is generally true, since the EV buyer demographic is the same one that can afford off-street parking, solar, etc in the first place.
Correct.
Until the price of an EV becomes affordable to average Ozzies, they will never change.
Early adopters are happy to pay for the r&d because they clearly have too much money.
Good point. They're so unaffordable!
New Corolla FULL DRIVEAWAY $36,443
New MG ZS EV Excite $34,990 Driveaway
Who's going to buy those?
Hairdressers?
Isympsthise with much of above but the pre authorisation charge potentially left low income drivers with multiple charges on a long trip, cripplingly out of pocket until authorisation was complete. However the new automatic car recognition system is fantastic.
If you can afford the electric car, I am sure one can afford a pre authorisation…. So not a crippling charge at all.
A very closed minded statement. I can think of many scenarios where this wouldn't stack up...
What an ill informed comment. Its cheaper to salary sacrifice an electric car than it is an ICE vehicle. For example I recently priced salary sacrificing a 60k ICE vehicle and it was 30% more expensive to lease than a 85k electric.
So, you don't use a EV to save the planet? It's a financial benefit.
Got it.
You must be looking forward to nuclear powered cars. Fifteen sieverts per kilometre.
Just clue me in here: do you have to have an app for each different charging company, or can you just wave a credit card at the charge machine?
SF,
you normally need an app for each company (a pain!). Chargefox can be used with NRMA chargers, but to get the club discount, your membership must be registered. Owning an EV, you really only charge on a trip if you have access to power &/or a fixed AC charger at home. In my case about 80% of my charging is at home & almost all off my PV (one advantage of being retired!). One company, EVIE has auto-connect: the vehicle is recognised as long as you are registered with them, so no need for an app.). Next best is Chargefox with their (RFID) card (which you request). To my mind the worst is NRMA who have a woeful app & no RFID cards! (I use my Chargefox app or card for NRMA because their app is SO Horrible! Please note, NRMA!))
fyi, SolarQuotes has a good article on home chargers.
I own a relatively old EV (Hyundai Kona, built 2019: now 130 000Kms) that has a Max DC charge rate of 67Kw. I travelled 1550Kms to Melbourne last year, with a total time on the DC chargers of 3.5Hrs, (6 stops) & cost abt $125. The trick is to only charge until the current reduces (abt 63% charge) then drive off. On a trip it is faster to have an extra stop. (But I leave home with 100% charge). The 3.5 hours of stops are about what a ´normal´ driver requires anyway.
Just another of the numerous examples of the onerous conditions that are a positive hindrance to the fast acceptance and take up of EVs.
Hahaha!
Judging by the bizarre voting system on this site, it seems that a lot of people vote without leaving a comment.
Cowards.
How people interact with your comments says a lot more about you than the people that vote.
What an utterly meaningless statement.
Evie has a RFID card linked to your account and your means of payment (credit card which is same liked card as what is setup in the app) that is free, chargefox charges you for that card. It is easier and quicker. All others are app related. For regional charging go the card in case of poor reception on mobile.
Some apps require you to logon each time / month and others keeps you logged on, again more time stuffing around. One charger had disconnected me 3 times in 10 mins and that ended up taking more time trying to charge than the time it would have taken to charge at a Tesla SC nearby. I chose that 50kW charger and timed it with a work meeting but wasn't able to charge successfully so I was in a difficult situation.
Soon they will be all enabled for credit card payment via tap on or swipe, like vending machines as the government has mandated this.
EVIE need to talk to their card payment acquirer to set up their payments system properly.
The merchant together with the acquiring bank control how long a pending transaction remains on the paying customer's account and should send a message through the payment system to release the amount held at the time the correct amount is debited.
The bank that issues our debit/credit card has no control over specific transactions and, as alluded to in the article, can only set general rules over how long all payments may be held against an account.
Hi Doug, larrymongta@telstra.com I am 60 yo but am thinking of a new ute, never had a new car I'm sceptical of full electric any suggestions I live Echuca VIC I don't have home roof panels either.
You're considering buying an electric ute in cowboy country?
Better upgrade your life, car and home insurance. Make a will to reflect your current circumstances.
Suggestion. Get solar panels first.
Ev drivers committing fraud oh no.
Told by a certain reporting group ev drivers would wait patiently to charge their cars, get out and talk be more friendly.
It has shown it was all lies
You could have stopped at your first sentence Tom and enjoyed a rare victory.
Outside of stolen cars and/or credit cards, any user who drives off without paying should have their registration and driver's licence instantly cancelled and issued with large fines. Even if it's a rental.
It's probably not intentional fraud. The system used to let you charge without checking if you have a balance on the bank account that is tied to your EVIE profile.
It would then attempt to debit the account once the charge session was complete. If there's not enough money on the account, then the transaction won't go through, but you can still drive away.
EVIE had a poor app design that allowed this to happen.
And the 75% of drivers who got away with it all shouted hurrah!
No, if course they didn't. Being the good humanitarians that they are, they donated their windfall to charity, not being able to find any way to reimburse an anonymous app.
So its the same as the OPAL transit card in Sydney where the card has little or not credit but tapping on or off public transport is "accepted" with the user never intending to add credit back to the card. If they do, those transactions will then get processed.
Either way it's a fraudulent transaction.
A couple said to me 'what is the point of charging an EV if the charge companies & 'bousers' are using non-green power to run their chargers'?! good point....how do/can we know where the charging infrastructure companies are getting their power from ?!?
"Our chargers are powered by 100% renewable energy"
Right there on Evie's home page. Other providers claim the same.
And even when the power isn't green, it doesn't invalidate EV ownership as for most owners the bulk of charging can be at home where even if you don't have PV you can use a green electricity tariff.
all the fast chargers in Australia that are connected to the grid, source their power from renewable energy. Pretty easy to look this up on google
To answer the question another way: the point of charging with non-green power is that over the lifetime of an EV, the carbon impact is two-thirds of that of an ICE vehicle if the EV is charged 100% from fossil fuel sources. One-third of an ICE vehicle if charging with renewables. Neither of those scenarios are realistic, so the carbon emissions impact is realistically somewhere in between, and is likely to improve as we get more renewables on the grid.
That’s over the life of the vehicle, including the carbon impact of making the battery.
So whether you’re charging off coal or sunshine, it’s still less carbon emissions than a petrol/diesel vehicle.
Cheaper to charge at home. To pay $30 every charge throughout the day like that, might as well go back to petrol. New Solid State battery and EVs from China are better design and quality than Tesla crap & overpriced EV.
Seems to me many of the early adopters have bought EV cars based on purely what they can get out of it in subsidies paid by other motorists , no road tax , registration and will happily suck up all the freebies like shopping centre free charging etc etc.
But as soon as the initial euphoria has passed you will all being paying full rate and with things like accelerated depreciation and difficulty selling used EV cars reality will hit home. I wonder how you green credentials will make you feel so good then.
John, John, John (sigh)
The first half of your post is correct but if you can believe some of the commenters on here who claim to be on their 3rd or 4th EV they are clearly rich enough to regularly upgrade before depreciation bites