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In this day and age of global competition, it is crucial for every company to provide a product or a service that stands out from its competitors. In several cases, this tends to ensure that the product from one company is not compatible with that of another company, thereby creating dependency for the customer on a single vendor.
Moving across to Electric Vehicles (EV) infrastructure, several automotive players have been forced to collaborate with the aim of ensuring that their individual market prospects and the market as a whole improve. Numerous partnerships have taken place in the EV charging infrastructure segment across major EV markets. Network operators are coming together and signing roaming interoperability, or ‘eRoaming’ agreements to make EVs more practical and affordable.
Interoperability pacts allow an EV user to use various charging networks irrespective of the charging network ownership, through the membership of one operator. While standards for physical charging plugs, such as CHaDEMO, CCS, and GT/B, have been formulated, interoperability is primarily bringing together backend communication as well as payment and information sharing.
Roaming Agreement in EV Charging
Roaming Agreements are based on the Open Charge Point Interface (OCPI) protocol that enables network operators to exchange key information needed to share charging stations with each other’s customers, thereby providing choice and flexibility to use any network on any charge station.
Open Charge Point Interface (OCPI) Protocol is a language for communication between a networked charging station and a network management system to enable an automated EV roaming setup between Charge Point Operators and e-Mobility Service Providers.
The OCPI was established as an initiative by the Open Charge Point Protocol (OCPP) Forum led by the E-Laad foundation. The protocol is available free of cost from the website of the Open Charge Alliance, without any licensing/royalty obligations or usage restriction. Features of Open Charge Point Interface (OCPI) Protocol are presented below in Exhibit 1.
The main purpose of ensuring interoperability is to address the biggest impediment to a steady growth in EV adoption that is access to a charging point. An increase in the range of an EV will certainly reduce the frequency of charging points; however, to witness higher adoption of EVs, it is necessary that the environment (charging infrastructure) supporting EVs grows at a much faster pace as a means of a market “pull” for EVs. A limited number of EV charging points will always be a concern for the current as well as potential customers of EVs. The above case for interoperability immediately increases the number of charging points available to a user as against a user using charging points from a single operator. By having a membership of a single charging operator, which has signed interoperability agreements with multiple other operators, the driver can use that one membership to locate, access, and pay for EV charging stations of various networks through one app or one RFID card. It also improves the overall user experience by offering more consistent service levels, easier billing management through one invoice for all charging, and better financial transaction security.
Strategies of EV Charging Network Providers
Realizing the necessity for economies of scale to install and expand across geographies with a higher density of stations, the electric vehicle charging network providers are focusing on strategic partnerships with other network providers to provide maximum geographical coverage to their customers. They are also helping customers reduce waiting time and demand incentive rates through these partnerships. Improvement in services, user interface, and access to other networks have increased customer retention for service providers.
EVgo announced a massive expansion of roaming access to public chargers for EVgo customers across the US, with bilateral interoperability agreements with ChargePoint and EV Connect. EVgo customers will have access to the more than 400 fast-charging stations operated by these networks, in addition to 750 EVgo DCFC stations across the US.
ChargePoint is collaborating with FLO to offer its customers combined access to around 33,000 public charging stations. The company also entered into a similar agreement with Greenlots and EVBox to seamlessly access public charging spots while traveling through Europe and North America.
The Austrian charging station operator, Smatrics, expanded its European roaming network in cooperation with Enel X. With this collaboration, users can gain access to 4,000 charging points in Italy and 1,900 EnBW chargers in Germany.
Electrify America (a Volkswagen subsidiary) has signed network Interoperability Agreements with other EV network providers, including EV Connect, Greenlots, and SemaConnect. Blink and Hubject are also working together in a strategic partnership for expanded charging coverage.
Hubject is an eRoaming charging platform established in 2012 by BMW, Bosch, Daimler, EnBW, Innogy, and Siemens. Started in Europe in 2012, Hubject began operations in the US last year and presently has over 300 members and 90,000 charging points connected to Hubject’s platform. Some of the other eRoaming platforms operating in Europe include Gireve and e-clearing.net, and evRoaming4EU.
Challenges on Course
High-maintenance IT infrastructure: Various partnerships among network operators will be beneficial to end users, allowing them to a much larger network of charging stations as against what the scenario would have been otherwise. However, this will also result in high costs for the operators. Interoperability partnerships require the maintenance of multiple IT connections, which will vary in terms of individual data configuration and features being offered. It is necessary that constant maintenance and auditing is done until the point where 100% interoperability has been achieved for current as well as for future charging points to ensure that the system is fully functional.
Downtime Management: Logging of problems faced by charging station users and, more importantly, the ability to fix these problems in a timely manner has been a challenge for an individual operator. This will also serve as a challenge for all operators in the system as a whole.
Space Allocation and Infrastructure Set-up: Increased organizational effort will be required in performing multiple gap analysis to discover optimum distances between chargers and users of EVs to ensure that future charging points are placed at favorable locations, which can cater to the highest number of users, without making other charging points redundant.
Demand Charges: High-demand cost charged by utility companies to open charging networks during peak load remains a hidden challenge.
High Permit Time: With building permits in the US averaging 55 days, network providers are increasingly facing delays in procuring permit from local authorities.
Payment Systems: Faulty card readers, drop-in payment platform connections, etc., are leading causes of delay in user charging time.
Billing and Clearing: Partnerships require regular billing and clearing among partners for driver roaming costs. This would significantly increase the auditing and communication requirements among various departments of service providers. Such issues might lead to neglect of small network operators, as they will be deemed “not worth the effort.”
Road Ahead
An increase in the adoption rate and driving-range of electric vehicles would increase the suitability for long-distance travel. As the charging infrastructure grows rapidly to address the upcoming market, industry-wide collaboration and cooperation among mobility service players, infrastructure, and charging network providers has increased significantly.
The roll-out of open charging systems is addressing major challenges associated with EV charging, such as reducing the cost of operation, increasing network coverage, easing accessibility of charging points, and unifying and user-friendly payment interface, etc.
In the near future, with the success of open charging points in EV charging, individuals could charge electric vehicles the way they access the Internet.
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