This is one of those American absurdities that thankfully hasn't made its way over to Europe yet, at least to my knowledge. I hope I have an electric car by the point they start introducing these here.
In Finland our equivalence to Wal-Mart also sells cheap gas and they have ads on their pumps advertising their own products but it's just on the display and there's no sound with it.
And now when I get gas I gotta listen to them hawk some shitty podcast from a washed up morning host. No! I don't want to know about Hoda Kotb, I just want gas!
Would be nice if the gas was less expensive at the stores with ads. At least that's not the case in my area. 5 min down the road the same company has pumps without ads for the same price.
Oh yes they tried. The damn thing scared me when that ad started playing. I haven't been back at that station again. Some other stations do have ads playing but those are silent, so I guess they do learn customers don't like the loud ads.
They mean there are ads on the screen, with sound and everything. Like a TV advert on the pump. A non intrusive sign that you don't have to interact with in any way is no where near as bad.
I've been driving an EV for a few years, but I flew out of state and had to rent a car recently. I'd never experienced this before then. It was one of the most dystopian experiences ever, leaving me feeling dirty and used.
I don't think I could keep myself from vandalizing those things if I had to do that constantly.
Why do you think charging stations will be immune? Plus with all the ‘smart’ ‘connected’ cars it’s not impossible for them to push ads directly to your car.
EV charging doesn’t require you to stand around for 5 minutes holding a handle to fuel up. The charging times are longer, but once plugged in your need to stay anywhere near the vehicle is zero. And plugging in usually takes less than 5s.
So even if someone came up with a system whereby they expected you to watch an ad before the power would flow, you could always just plug in and walk away. How are they going to know you’re physically there?
As an EV driver I haven’t been to a gas station since I started driving it, but AFAIK this advertising hasn’t come to Canada — and hopefully it never does.
So even if someone came up with a system whereby they expected you to watch an ad before the power would flow, you could always just plug in and walk away. How are they going to know you’re physically there?
How about a button located near the ad screen and speaker that you have to hold like at least 80% of ad duration. If you failed to reach 80% it would reset to 0 and show you another ad so you can try again.