For public chargers? Payment processing. It’s like asking why a service station needs internet to process a card transaction to pay for your petrol.
Mind you, I do partially understand where you’re coming from. Most modern cars are unfortunately packed to the brim with so many computer controlled and internet intergrated components to the point where it hinders the reliability of the vehicle and the privacy of the vehicle’s occupants. For electric cars, a lot of this is somewhat unavoidable.
It’s for a lot of these privacy and reliability reasons (and money) that I’m just going to drive my current petrol car until it dies. Maybe we’ll start to see more hydrogen cars by then, preferably clean hydrogen. Maybe more car manufacturers will opt to just make models without all the touchscreen infotainment crap and just give me a radio and some dials to tell me what’s going on. I know Suzuki started making a version of the new Jimny with a bog standard radio in it, so there’s definitely a demand for basic cars that just work.
Then in that case, shouldn’t only the credit card machine be exposed to the internet, and the charger itself only expose the API for authorising charging to the credit card machine? The issue here is that the charger is a “smart thing” and exposes literally every system API to the internet. So instead of merely being able to de-authorise a charging session (falsely tell the charger you’re done charging and return to the “please pay to continue” screen), they can straight up brick the charger, steal data, or possibly even damage the car or halt and catch fire in a badly designed system.
For public chargers? Payment processing. It’s like asking why a service station needs internet to process a card transaction to pay for your petrol.
Mind you, I do partially understand where you’re coming from. Most modern cars are unfortunately packed to the brim with so many computer controlled and internet intergrated components to the point where it hinders the reliability of the vehicle and the privacy of the vehicle’s occupants. For electric cars, a lot of this is somewhat unavoidable.
It’s for a lot of these privacy and reliability reasons (and money) that I’m just going to drive my current petrol car until it dies. Maybe we’ll start to see more hydrogen cars by then, preferably clean hydrogen. Maybe more car manufacturers will opt to just make models without all the touchscreen infotainment crap and just give me a radio and some dials to tell me what’s going on. I know Suzuki started making a version of the new Jimny with a bog standard radio in it, so there’s definitely a demand for basic cars that just work.
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Then in that case, shouldn’t only the credit card machine be exposed to the internet, and the charger itself only expose the API for authorising charging to the credit card machine? The issue here is that the charger is a “smart thing” and exposes literally every system API to the internet. So instead of merely being able to de-authorise a charging session (falsely tell the charger you’re done charging and return to the “please pay to continue” screen), they can straight up brick the charger, steal data, or possibly even damage the car or halt and catch fire in a badly designed system.