The 20 minutes nobody was monetizing

A colleague at Visa had another designer working on a vehicle-commerce concept for Tesla, but the work wasn't at the bar he needed for a pitch to his leadership team. He asked me to take it over. I rebuilt the concept from the ground up.

Every EV charging stop is 20–40 minutes where the driver is, for practical purposes, captive and idle. Nobody was designing for that window. I built a “Find Chargers” flow that gives drivers a real choice: Just charge — the nearest Supercharger, nothing else — or Charge and save — a charger paired with three or more nearby merchants offering real discounts. The charging stop itself becomes the reason to choose one location over another.

I designed the payment and consent layer directly inside Tesla's own Payments settings: an “Activate vehicle payments” toggle for using saved cards in the car, and an “Enable agent offers” opt-in — framed as a formal Commerce Agent Program — that lets drivers choose to share location, activity, and time with participating merchants in exchange for personalized offers. Redemption happens with an in-car QR code, no separate app required.

Merchant partners in the concept included Whole Foods, 7-Eleven, Chick-fil-A, Home Depot, and Target.

My colleague presented the concept to his leadership team, and they decided to move forward with it. He has since moved to a different role at Visa and is no longer driving the work day to day — but the direction he pitched didn't leave with him. It was strong enough to keep going without him.