[pshirshov]

> poor public charging infrastructure in Germany

Dunno, had a trip through it last year, there are more than enough chargers. Some of them were literally free.

I have 70kWh battery though. Also, I paid much less than 40k for my chinese SUV. The software is buggy though, a random reboot on motorway doesn't feel nice.

[BobaFloutist]

Does the random reboot affect the motor, lights, defogger, signals, anything else absolutely essential to driving?

Don't get me wrong, I'd be annoyed and unsettled if the sound system or gps or whatever rebooted while I was driving, I'm just curious just how dire it is

[sjducb]

It’s just the Android bit that reboots, so maps and music.

The rest of the car drives fine.

[StilesCrisis]

American safety standards require that the car be more-or-less entirely functional without the infotainment system.

[magicalhippo]

On my Renault Megane e-Tech, the Android infotainment system sometimes requires a reboot while driving. If I have the route visualized on the instrument cluster screen, that stays working fine while the infotainment reboots.

So clearly entirely separate systems, despite it is obviously also running Google maps to show the route. Presumably this is quite common.

[BobaFloutist]

Well we're talking about a Chinese-made car purchased and driven in Germany, so I'm not sure what American safety standards have to do with the situation...

[StilesCrisis]

Cars which are built to sell into the US market (Japanese and European) all follow these regulations. If the EU has similar laws, then a Chinese car that sells into the EU would need to follow the same rules here, but I don't know enough about EU safety regulations to be sure.

[pshirshov]

Lane keeping stops working for a minute, so the car suddenly feels like a dumb one.

[M0r13n]

It depends where you are. I live in a somewhat rural area in Northern Germany. There are some chargers, but many of them are out of service like the one next door. I've never stumbled upon a free charger though.

[beAbU]

Do you not charge at home? I charge at home 99% of the time. I only really need the public infra when I'm going to the big city, or when going on a roadtrip.

I charge with the granny charger at home.

[thirdsun]

Not OP but chances are they are renting (like a large part of germany's population are) and therefore don't have the option of installing a wallbox.

[Gud]

I work all over Europe and I’m not super impressed with the state of charging infrastructure in general and it seems particularly bad in German.

One thing that’s super annoying and this is not specific to Germany, but why the fuck do I need some shitty app to use your charger? Should be tap and go like any other purchase. You know, like how I pay for my petrol?

Seems to me like everyone wants to force an app down my throat where it’s really not needed. It especially sucks when you’re a visitor to the country.

[toast0]

> why the fuck do I need some shitty app to use your charger?

I have PHEV that doesn't pull much from a charger, and I usually don't use chargers for money, but... When I charged for fun while I was shopping at a grocery store, it ended up being like a 70 cent charge. If you bill 70 cents to a credit card, it doesn't make sense. Tieing it to an app, you can either charge more and have me loan you the balance, or you can wait until I acrue enough debt that it's economic to charge me.

With full EVs, they can usually pull enough current to reach a billable amount in a short time, but aggregating charges may still be useful.

[georgefrowny]

This is where China has it right. You can pay 1 yuan by WeChat no problem. Scan the QR code, enter "1", the shop terminal says "1 yuan paid" out loud, job done. And yes some things are 1 yuan, for example picking up a parcel from a parcel locker a day late.

Yes, the entire economy is beholden to two payment portals (WeChat and Alipay) and I'm sure the analytics are off the scale and you're completely fucked if you can't use or get banned from the platform but the actual 99% user experience is exactly the microtransaction dream that people have been unable to solve in the west for decades.

[Marsymars]

It doesn't have to be an app to handle small transactions - different countries already have mechanisms in place to handle that - e.g. any credit card purchase under $5 gets a $1 surcharge, to avoid the surcharge you can tap with a debit card (with much lower transaction costs).

[Dylan16807]

Paypal will do small payments for 9 cents plus 5%, or 7 euro cents plus 6.5%. That can handle pretty small charges.

And a charger network can have a running balance for small payments without a garbage app.