On the site for RWE's charging points, there's no mention of this.[1]<p>The way RWE actually works is like cell phone plans. Users have to sign up for a 1-year contract. This gets you an ID token which the charging stations recognize when you plug into the charger. Then there's an EUR 0.30/Kwh charge, which is billed periodically. That's the usual way the system is used.<p>The Share and Charge system [3] doesn't use Etherium as a currency. They use Euros.
Payments are made using SEPA, PayPal, and Sofortüberweisung (which is sort of like Venmo.) They mention that they're using a blockchain, but don't mention Etherium at all. Share and Charge is a third-party payment system for electric charging points. They try to sign up charging point operators to accept their payment system.<p>So the headline is somewhat deceptive.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.rwe-mobility.com/web/cms/en/1178726/private-customers/frequently-asked-questions/" rel="nofollow">https://www.rwe-mobility.com/web/cms/en/1178726/private-cust...</a>
[2] <a href="https://www.rwe-mobility.com/web/cms/en/1232368/products-services/rwe-epower/rwe-epower-basic/" rel="nofollow">https://www.rwe-mobility.com/web/cms/en/1232368/products-ser...</a>
[3] <a href="https://shareandcharge.com/en/" rel="nofollow">https://shareandcharge.com/en/</a>
Wasn't Ethereum unusable for a a decent percentage of 2017 so far? " charging and billing solution with no middleman is created.”<p>The ethereum network is a middleman, that has fees and downtime, and the unknowable risk of future forks, downtime and client software choice incompatibilities.<p>This is their "wallet" <a href="https://shareandcharge.com/" rel="nofollow">https://shareandcharge.com/</a> which also, as for no other middleman free things, wants you to use the appstore or googleplay to use it.<p>"“Tomorrow 100s of EV Charging Assets all over Germany Blockchainified. E2E Product using asset-backed Crypto-EURO for payments,” "<p>Looks like the middlemen added to what could have easily been an interface like any other gas station are, unreliable Ethereum, unreliable appstore, playstore, and fiat currency, with trusting the accountant of that Currency to crypto gateway to maintain your balance.<p>This is not the distributed future. I'd prefer the charging station have a bill counter that I can feed cash into, that's far less middlemen, far more reliable, and far more secure and anonymous. Cash is king. Also paying by btc instead of requiring an oracle to keep your balance would also be more reliable, and less risky.<p>Everyone long ETH though, you know what arrow to click.<p>Wouldn't it be nice if charging your car didn't require: 1. Smart phone. 2. Credits on an oracle. 3. Internet access. 4. Yet another account on yet another third party. 5. More loss of your personal driving and location habits to yet another place.
There's a recent podcast about this and blockchain + energy sector in general: <a href="https://epicenter.tv/episode/174/" rel="nofollow">https://epicenter.tv/episode/174/</a> Why blockchain? It enables peer-to-peer buying and selling of electricity (no middle man), which becomes more interesting as the grid itself is becoming more decentralized with solar, etc. Imagine being able to buy and sell electricity directly between you and your neighbors. Lots of questions about how this is metered & controlled, but it seems promising.
"Explaining why he is using a blockchain at all, Stöcker says because the “future of business will be fuelled by the #MachineEconomy … Machines – such as autonomous cars.”"<p>So it's just for PR. No reasonable explanation at all.
Why do I feel like etherium is being crammed into all kinds of places where it really isn't necessary, and offers little or no real benefit over conventional solutions? Perhaps I'm misunderstanding something here.<p>As an example in addition to this post, our petroleum company recently began a switch to an ETH based block chain for managing/tracking inventory/data samples. I don't understand how hacking smart contracts together on a private ledger is not total overkill for such function.
Recently I restarted thinking on IFEX[0], a generic transaction protocol for arbitrary assets/settlement systems conceived in 2012 while building Kraken[1]. One of the four pilot use cases we are considering is energy routing within next-generation, renewables-focused, community-owned electricity and data infrastructure.[2] We are building an interesting team: one of the collaborators is a European inventor with significant experience in this area and some contact with major electric vehicle brands who would like a safe solution for rapid charging, another is a maths/physics guy with nontrivial quantitative finance experience ($3bn+ under management). We also have conventional and distributed manufacturing and logistics as pilot use cases. If anyone would like to collaborate feel free to get in touch.<p>[0] <a href="http://www.ifex-project.org/our-proposals/ifex/2012-04-11-partial-draft" rel="nofollow">http://www.ifex-project.org/our-proposals/ifex/2012-04-11-pa...</a><p>[1] <a href="http://kraken.com/" rel="nofollow">http://kraken.com/</a><p>[2] <a href="http://fiberhood.nl/" rel="nofollow">http://fiberhood.nl/</a>
Do they know that all transactions will be public and great resource for competitors?<p>Do they know that blockchain transactions need few confirmations to be trusted and mining takes time?
Hi, Stephan from Slock.it here - there's going to be a lot more info about this project coming up, but I wrote this blog post back in September when we entered live beta. I hope you find it helps answers some questions:<p><a href="https://blog.slock.it/blockchain-energy-p2p-sharing-project-share-charge-going-into-live-beta-ad4e069e79d" rel="nofollow">https://blog.slock.it/blockchain-energy-p2p-sharing-project-...</a>
how big really is this project? sounds more like something thought up to an advertising agency.<p>bmw had tons of billboards advertising the i3 as a digital wallet in futuristic concept drawings. but again, all the work of advertising agencies.
Could someone not build something similar, but for WiFi routers instead of charging stations?. I.e. a company selling or renting pre-programmed WiFi routers that sell bandwidth directly to the users. Anyone could buy or rent one and put it inside their private space that is within a public zone (e.g. cafes and restaurants). Thoughts?
RWE (well like pretty much every big cooperation) is very corrupt and immoral. They for example fought hard against Germany's plans to end Atom Power plants. So I am not really to happy about this news. They are in for the money thats it.