The fact that electric cars can travel much less far on a charge than most traditional cars can travel on a tank of gas is not merely a convenience issue. Those frequent and predictable charge station visits can reveal quite a bit about the consumers and corporate employees who drive those vehicles.
A specialized payment mechanism—leveraging a car-based mobile unit—is being positioned as a privacy tool. Beyond the risk of someone compiling a list of areas driven—which is something any decent mobile geolocation system should be able to track—the nature of electric fuel payments present extra risks. For example, according to a report in Phys.org, “some cars with solar panels are able to sell electricity back to the grid, meaning payments flow in both directions.”
The story quoted researcher Joseph Liu arguing that privacy concerns are often ignored. “Some popular electronic payment systems like credit cards do not provide any privacy, while other systems like prepaid cash cards may not be suitable for large payments, or are not insured against card loss,” said Liu, who works for the A*STAR Institute for Infocomm Research in Singapore. “Cash is anonymous, but requires expensive machines to keep cash stores secure from thieves.”
The new system uses two-way anonymous payments to fuel purchases and gives drivers the ability to shut down accounts at any point and retrieve unspent dollars.
