Battery Vehicle Society

Went to renew my membership on the EV-network charge point map today. as I have done for many years, only to find it took me to PayPal, odd I thought

Clicked back a few pages and discovered they now charge £3 for membership

I can understand that the site costs a few quid to run but I'm afraid thats me out of the running on it now money is tight enough for everyone at the moment and I feel putting any restraint on people signing up may well kill it off altogether ?

I wonder how many other points they will lose due to it, I was surprised that there was no e-mail saying this was likely to happen and unless you pay attention to the form you dont actually realise theres a charge until it takes you to a PayPal login screen maybe I missed a global e-mail telling me it was likely to happen

I've dug about and there is a mention on the Discussion forum but thats about it.

ChrisB

The introduction of the membership fee has been discussed by EV Network members in the forums since January 2010 and has been effective since January 2011.

While the loss of any members is regrettable, £3 is a very modest fee for members to pay (a fraction of the price of BVS membership, and less then the cost of a day's parking for many people).

Hi Tim

I understand the need to recover costs to run the site, thats totally understandable, but the bit that hurt the most was the fact business's got it for free which I just couldnt get my head round

You need to adjust the "Dontations" page because as it stands .........



....which doesnt really apply now

ChrisB

Open Charge Map is a free and open global database of Charging Station locations, capabilities, and status. The data that we collect is owned by the community and is freely available for all satnav/websites/apps to use. Please help us by contributing Charging Station data so that we all have a single, reliable source of data;

http://openchargemap.org/

Thought you'd sneak in there Kevin

Out of interest I noted that on your map it doesnt seem to show any of the points that you used for the End to End trip
Also is your map intended for commercial type points or can private individuals who want to allow access to a point also put their details on the site, if so are there any safe guards regarding the information that is held on the site. EV network required you to sign up to be a member and gain access to private details.

ChrisB

The current OCM database does not support multiple connectors on the same physical Charging Station. The OCM release that's currently in test includes this feature and once released we will add all the ZCW, HPC, and Third Party 32A Charging Stations.

It's important to remember that OCM is a database of Charging Station locations, capabilities, and status. The database is primarily intended to be used by developers of websites, apps, and sat-nav systems to prevent the duplication of basic Charging Station data. The OCM database can support multiple levels of access and encryption such as that required by private individuals.

The 'maps' displayed on the OCM home page are intended to demonstrate the capabilities of the 'widget' that's been designed by the project to simplify the deployment of OCM. They are really not intended to be used by end users for navigation purposes.

Today, I'd recommend that end users take a look at the EV Charger Finder app if they want some idea of what the OCM database can do;

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ev-charger-finder/id354628084?mt=8

Going forward, a number of OCM websites are in development by third parties and they will be useful to end users.

If you are in any doubt about why we need the community to support OCM then take a look at the 62 websites that display EV Charging Stations today;

http://sourceforge.net/projects/openchargemap/forums/forum/1250135/topic/3889257

Ah I see, sorry for the confusion, I hadnt realised it was aimed at the developers etc rather than the end user.

ChrisB

No they don't.

It costs nothing to contribute a charge point to the database as businesses do.

It costs £3 to get access to details of others' private charge points as individual members do.

Businesses don't have access to private charging points contributed by individual members.

If an individual wants to share their private point but doesn't want access to other individual members' private points they can sign up as a business for free too.

Oh I see Tim, it doesnt really make that very clear on the site.

Dont suppose theres any deals for BVS members i.e if your a BVS member you get access? I can just see that possibley the BVS could start their own DB for their members who wish to allow charging

ChrisB