Under the prototype, users interact with the charging station by agreeing to a smart contract that is programmed on top of the Ethereum network. Prior to charging, the user makes a deposit on the network, which is later released after the transaction is complete.
The main difference is that instead of users being billed for the amount of time that they are connected to charging station–i.e. the way most stations work today–users pay only for the amount of electricity consumed during the charging process. The hope is that both the cost of the micro-transactions, and the allocation and consumption of electricity, will be made more efficient and ultimately save money.
In addition, the blockchain plus smart contracts has the potential to streamline the process of purchasing power from a charging station. In theory, this can take place directly with the machine (charging station) and not require prior contact with the providing company or a human representative.
How is paying for electricity with Ethereum better for me than paying with a card? I don't see the advantage.
When VisiCalc was demo'ed there were people lined up literally pulling out their checkbooks and offering to pay almost limitless amounts of money for the prototype. Spreadsheets had insane value to accountants.
Other than the core use case of currency that I mentioned, where are the "killer apps" for block chain? A lot of it looks like minor and dubious improvements or solutions in search of a problem. Neither of those comes close to justifying the insane amount of money and resources being poured into this area.
The big feature of the car example comes within the third paragraph. It's decentralized. The node, the charging station, doesn't need to phone home or synchronize with a central authority in order to process the payment. It can write and fulfill the contract.
It may be the case that the fundamental, key, killer features of the blockchain have lost their initial lustre to many people, and I understand that. But decentralization and verifiable, consistent truth are a really, really big deal.
There are applications with promise, large promise. Killer apps? Maybe. They will arrive, it's more "which of these" and not "whether these":
"At the Ambrosus project we aim to radically improve the global supply chains by creating a trusted ecosystem where we can reliably record the entire history of products and execute commercial transactions accordingly."
sorry but rather phoning home to verify entitlement, it will now have to sync the WHOLE blockchain (probably ASYNC but still). You're mixing two similar problem, and brute forcing things is not going to work for things like topping up a car.
When authority is centralized, it's akin to full control.
Decentralization fragments control across many, many different parties, who in consensus have authority.
If the transaction is on an immutable public record, the authority couldn't say: "Well, no you didn't pay us. Pay us again, or we'll steal your dog."
If you live somewhere where Government/Corporation are out of control, this sort of safe guard has major benefit.
There's no safeguard here. The smart contract is a red herring. Smart contracts cannot see or alter the real world, they have to trust that someone does that for them. In the example of the charging station, there's no safeguard that proves that the charging station will charge my car once I have deposited cash. You can analyse all the lines of the smart contract and the workings of the blockchain, but it is wasted effort: I have no way to know whether or not the charging station will ignore the blockchain's state.
I feel this is grasping at straws. If I'm running a series of charging stations, then I absolutely do want full control. And if I'm the customer, I can simply call Visa or MasterCard if the owner tries that shit.
Have you come across https://www.provenance.org? It's outside the currency/wire transfer space. Looked like an interesting application to me, but possibly too nascent to be a shining example
Once again, the blockchain part of this adds nothing to the process, apart from complexity.
Is the charging process now trustless? Nope, because I still need to trust that once I make my deposit the real-world charging station will honour that payment. Is it decentralized? Of course not, I'm standing in front of a single charging station, not a zillion different ones. Is it immune to double-spends? As a user, I don't care.
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Under the prototype, users interact with the charging station by agreeing to a smart contract that is programmed on top of the Ethereum network. Prior to charging, the user makes a deposit on the network, which is later released after the transaction is complete.
The main difference is that instead of users being billed for the amount of time that they are connected to charging station–i.e. the way most stations work today–users pay only for the amount of electricity consumed during the charging process. The hope is that both the cost of the micro-transactions, and the allocation and consumption of electricity, will be made more efficient and ultimately save money.
In addition, the blockchain plus smart contracts has the potential to streamline the process of purchasing power from a charging station. In theory, this can take place directly with the machine (charging station) and not require prior contact with the providing company or a human representative.