[peutetre]

The main problem has been lack of standardization. No one wants to invest in infrastructure when there's no common standard to build to.

North America is a long way behind Europe in EV charging infrastructure:

https://evboosters.com/ev-charging-news/europe-surpasses-900...

And both are behind China:

https://evboosters.com/ev-charging-news/the-state-of-public-...

Europe and China have charging standards that everyone can build to. There is more investment, more charge point operators, more charger manufacturers, and more chargers simply because companies can deploy chargers that will work with all cars.

Eventually North America will achieve standardization by building to CCS chargers with the J3400 plug but that will be a slow and gradual process. There will be many adapters and retrofits in the meantime.

[HdS84]

Where Europe dropped the ball is not forcing gas station like behaviour onto the chargers. Now we have a bazillion different charging cards and prices differ wildly depending on the Tarif.

[peutetre]

Contactless payment by card is mandated going forward:

https://www.fleeteurope.com/en/new-energies/europe/article/f...

So you won't have to sign up for anything else.

[natch]

Or with Tesla leave your card in your wallet, you won't need it. The station IDs the car and charges the card on file in your account. No card, no scan, no tap, no need to use an app, just plug in. At least in the US. Hopefully they aren't forcing this step backwards to contactless payment by card on Teslas too when the existing system is so much better.

[peutetre]

No. I'm not interested in setting up an account for every charging network I use.

[natch]

You don’t have to charge. Just drive a gas car and pay with cash.

[peutetre]

Just pay contactless. It's easy. No idiot apps, no extra accounts.

[HdS84]

Yes, but currently that's always the most expensive option. I am driving a lot from Cologne to Bremerhaven. Depending on the spot where I stop, I would need an EWE, EnBW, Aral, ionity, eon, shell or some smaller card to get somewhat reasonable prices. Annoying.

[ninalanyon]

Get yourself a Tesla account. I think all of the Tesla chargers between Cologne and Bremerhaven are open to any CCS compatible car; you just need the tesla app and register your credit card. Tesla is usually cheaper as well as more reliable.

But there are also services like ChargePoint which unify the payment systems for numerous networks (certainly including Eon and Shell).