Week 10: Captive to Which Network
Multi-operator EV charging kiosks, app-required unlocking, and roaming fees as an unresolved standards war charged to the driver
26 April 2027 incentive
Outline
- a charging kiosk is captive twice over: to the location, and to whichever operator’s app you happen to have installed
- roaming fees and account requirements as a standards war between operators, settled by charging the driver rather than resolving it
- why “just use the app” is doing a lot of quiet work in this sentence
The argument
An EV charging kiosk makes you captive twice: first to whichever location happens to have a free bay, and then to whichever operator built that particular kiosk, whether or not you have their app, their account, or their card. Two competing standards could have resolved this the way payment networks eventually did, by agreeing to interoperate — but resolving it wouldn’t let either operator keep the customers roaming fees currently lock in.
“Just use the app” sounds like a minor inconvenience, said once. Said at every charger, by a different app each time, it’s actually the cost of an unresolved standards war being charged directly to the driver, one download and one account at a time, instead of being absorbed by the operators who left it unresolved.
Question to carry: if two operators can’t agree on a standard, why is the incompatibility always priced into the driver’s bill rather than the operators’ margins?
Teaching team
- Marisol Quaye — convenor