First Tesla V4 Supercharger station with mandated card payment terminals gets a preview

After demonstrating its first V4 Supercharger piles with what looked like card payment terminals over the weekend, Tesla now has them up with pay screens in Austria, of all places. Its newest V4 Supercharger station in Europe will be located in Graz and the piles installed so far have those card payment terminals with the Tesla logo on them that appeared at a UK exhibit earlier.

Needless to say, this is most likely done to fulfil local European rules and regulations that balk at depriving users of payment methods. As public charger funding proposal comments in the UK put it, there is a need to "remove the push by some companies to use [only] apps and RFID cards."

In the US, Tesla walked away from California state-funded Supercharger buildout as the US$6.4 million grant it won came with the same requirement for card payment terminals. "Unfortunately, due to unnecessarily cumbersome payment infrastructure requirements, we are unable to utilize this award," announced Tesla then.

While in the US it can skate without providing pay screens on its Superchargers, as the subsidized federal EV charging network that is now being built doesn't require them, in Europe the conditions seem different. The EU recently adopted its own public EV charging infrastructure plan that mandates 400kW chargers every 40 miles or so by 2026, with the prospect of those becoming 600kW in 2028.

The proposal also mandates a selection of payment methods for customer convenience, as it won't only be Tesla drivers charging there. Users have to be able to pay with contactless cards or devices, while current pricing must be visible on the terminal screen at all times. With big public funding come big requirements, it seems, at least in Europe.

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