Charger may not be available at reservation start time, or may be available before reservation end time, resulting in poor customer expectation or reduced charger utilization

[ameetdesh]

• If reservationSupported: true, reservation flow is tightly coupled with catalog structure.

• Reservation is a soft promise for future availability, but is actually poor predictor of it.

  • If charger does not have auto-shutoff capability at the time of reservation end, one session may eat into next reservation. This is very common because, the actual charging time depends on initial state of charge, efficiency, speed of charger, battery pack temp when the vehicle comes in. Due to this if users needs to add 10miles of range (say 10kwh).. the charging time can be highly variable.
  • Similarly of a session finishes before reservation end time, the charger is available, but it is not clear whether to accept a new reservation for the remaining time. If EVSE operator accepts a walk-in (scan & charge) there is a risk of eating into next reservation session, if they don't there is foregone sales/utilization.

• How can we best balance the customer experience & asset utilization.. Does reseravation needs to be reimagine to perform better?

A side problem:

• beckn:availabilityWindow updates require CPOs to guess session duration which is hard due to all above. beckn:isActive = false makes charger disappear from ALL discovery. isActive is too coarse—it's a global kill switch, not a real-time indicator.

Possible solution: @DevangMstryls suggested decoupling reservation from availability. Devang.. please comment/elaborate .. Happy to review.

++ @biodatanet, @ravi-prakash-v

[ravi-prakash-v]

Catalog Discovery does not guarantee inventory availability. If a charger is unavailable post reservation, the BPP SHOULD either
a) Redirect the consumer to a new charger, or
b) Cancel the reservation entirely and initiate a refund

In the second case, the BAP may choose to either bubble up the cancellation status or internally perform a discovery + ordering cycle and book another charger and update the user's reservation. To provide a good user experience, it might take over the payment collection flow so that the consumer does not need to keep paying for new reservations due to cancellations and delayed refund cycles.