http://www.coindesk.com/german-utility-company-turns-to-blockchain-amid-shifting-energy-landscape/"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."
Amazing, you mean you deposit funds into the smart contract built on top of the ether blockchain, and then when you charge your car, the smart contract deducts the funds. Revolutionary! How could you possibly achieve this with a visa card or bitcoin? You would have to... deposit funds into your account or bitcoin wallet... and then the charge station would deduct them when you have charged your car. But... wait
"One notable difference between how charging stations function today and the RWE prototype is that users are billed differently.
Rather than having the user pay for the amount of time spent connected to the charging station – generally an amount in hours, users ultimately purchase the amount of electricity consumed during the charging process.
The thesis behind the experiment is that users will save money through the use of microtransactions, and that electricity would be deployed more efficiently as a result of this approach."
Oh, now this, this there would be no possible way to do without ethereum, would there? I mean, you couldn't just measure the flow of electricity and assign a price per unit, could you?
And ooh, microtransactions, think of all the people who charge tiny amounts of electricity into their electric cars... um, I don't know any, and I can't imagine how that would ever possibly be necessary, but it sounds... sounds, well, you couldn't do micro transactions with visa or bitcoin, so never mind that you can't describe a single possible scenario where this would actually be necessary or beneficial.
I really hope for the sake of ETH fans that I am making a total fool of myself. It will be worth it if someone will finally take the time to talk with me about the actual efficiency gains of ethereum based applications in terms of hard cash.
