EV Charging Network : Airbnb Style

[ganner]

Hello Everyone:
As we all know EV‘s are all the craze currently and most likely will become even more important over the next years. So I decided to start on the journey of starting a share network that basically allows people to list their own home charger or businesses to list their chargers, similar to how people list their apartments on Airbnb. In a nutshell the App would show a map of your local area with available chargers and their individual prices listed. People would be free to select their own price/kWh, and allow people to charge at their charger. Profit would be generated by taking a small fee per kWh charged.

Some issues that I would like help with/thoughts about:

1) The charger (if it is a home charger) would need to be publicly accessible, so having it inside of a garage, like many people obviously do, would not work.
2) The charging would need to be regulated so that people don’t go around stealing electricity. I’m thinking some kind of IOT Smart Plug or circuit breaker that gets installed inside the building (to prevent third party interference with it). How could this be tied into the app? Especially because it has to be easily installed by the consumer. This would also be used to measure how many kWh are actually being charged into the vehicle (losses through the charger just have to be accepted) and used to calculate the final cost of the charging process.
3) How would you recommend I continue with this? I have close to zero coding experience, but was initially thinking to build an iOS app as that would be easiest for me to prototype, but I’m not sure if it’s worth the effort if the project doesn’t succeed. Also: Support for other platforms would take longer. So maybe a Webapp would be better?
4) I don’t exactly have the financial means for a project of this scale, but I’m thinking the timing is perfect right now, so I wanted to see if you all think it’s worth running this through Kickstarter and see if it raises some capital.
5) I’m not 18 yet, so the legal aspects of the business would need to be handled by someone else for now. This isn’t really a problem though as my sister is willing to take on the legal matters, she’s just not really willing to provide any assistance otherwise.

So: what do y’all think? How would you recommend I proceed with this and continue building this project? What would be a good initial start point to try and launch a kickstarter with? Any other recommendations?

-Leo

 

[justinemf]

@ganner Go to a public ev charger and see how it works, that answers most of your questions.

The big problem is no one will have 50kw+ fast chargers, most home electrical panels can't even handle that much power. That leaves you with 10kw max, about 30 miles of charge an hour. Not super practical.

 

[lasiilea]

@justinemf 30 miles is 48.28 km

 

[elijah1933]

@ganner It's a great idea, and there are multiple providers that have launched and are launching solutions currently (which should confirm that this is a good idea)!

There are existing standards for handling payment through charge networks. The chargers report their usage in a standardized format, so that any billing can be handled for multiple providers in a single network. See OCPP from the Open Charge Alliance.

Usually you integrate this into the charger itself with custom firmware. There are ways around it as you've suggested, but you will want to make people pay for just leaving their car connected to the charger as well - without actually charging, since they're taking up a spot that other people could be using. The charger will also contain a small 4g modem and can report any usage and availability through the network, so that people can see which chargers are available and for what cost.

The most efficient way to do this in the start is usually to go after community parking spaces run by home owner associations / landlords / etc., as they parking area is already publicly available, there are multiple spots, the landlord / hoa is interested in providing the service to their own renters / people who live there - so they're funding the chargers themselves (and the company can offer the charger as part of the package - we handle everything, you just have the location).

At least one of the companies who makes the chargers here has purchased their own solution to do exactly this - they make the charger and offer their customers to be part of their "network" of chargers - as long as the charger is installed in a public location (and if it's not; the people who live in the area / use the garage / etc. are invoiced based on their usage through the same network and app).

Be aware - the app is the last step in the equation - there are many steps before that, and many of the involve high voltage situations - you'll want people with specific knowledge (and the necessary certifications) to integrate with those units.

Customers are generally not allowed to make any changes to their electrical installation themselves (depending on jurisdiction, but I'm guessing it's the same in most locations - an electrician will have to do the actual installation).

 

[kanandele]

@ganner I would do some research and see if there is excess capacity availble from the home charging station. In the sense that if I have a station and I lend it out, how does that change the usage for me? If I can't use it when I need it, then I am not likely to give it out. Second, you can assume that people will build an extra station at their homes ( a la airbnb buying apartments), what does the cost and unit economics look like. Second charging a car in North america cost like 2-3 dollars, if you are taking a % of that then you will make cents...unless your cost of customer aquisition is super low then the unit economics wont make sense. So I would adjust pricing as a flat fee per use or something. I personally think you are 10 years too early but I am may be wrong.