To fill a petrol cars, usually a credit card or cash is sufficient. To load a EV in a DC fast charging station, you need any number of things that work: a credit card reader, a charger network app, a touchscreen that works, and they’re all a little different.
The situation could change next year if a new “Universal Plug and Charge” initiative. of SAE International, a group of manufacturers of automobiles and electric vehicle chargers, advances and gains ground. Launching in early 2025, the network could make charging an electric vehicle actually easier than filling up: plug it in, let the car and charger sort out payment details via a cloud connection, and off you go.
Some combinations of cars and charging networks already offer such a system through a patchwork of individual offers, for example listed in Inside EVs. Tesla has always offered a plug-and-charge experience, given the tight integration between its Superchargers and vehicles. Now Tesla will join the plug-and-charge movement proper, allowing Teslas to have a more or less similar experience at other stations.
The public key infrastructure of electric vehiclesor EVPKI, has a good number of the main players on board and is based on the ISO standard (15118) to make the authentication and authorization of cars to charge at stations faster and more secure. There are a whole series of certificates at each stage of the charging process, as detailed in an EVPKI presentationand the system includes a list of certified certificates. With an open standard and authentication system, there should be room for new charging networks and new vehicle manufacturers.
Charging networks can and will likely continue to offer incentives for brand loyalty, whether through apps or reward points. But new EV owners won’t have to do as much work to figure out “the good ones” on road trips.
By connecting cars to key-based authentication systems, there is also the possibility that this initiative will also foster Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) charging, where huge car batteries can be used to balance regional energy loads and make the network more resilient.
“We are rapidly approaching a future where every electric vehicle driver can simply plug in, charge and go; the network will talk to your car and process payment seamlessly,” Gabe Klein, executive director of the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation , said in a statement. “This is a fundamental architectural step towards bi-directional charging and true vehicle-grid integration, the Holy Grail of energy and transportation.” The Joint Office is a collaboration between the Departments of Energy and Transportation.
The Hummer EV-sized elephant in the room is as the incoming Trump administration, with its declared opposition to the Biden administration’s electric vehicle policies, could influence this initiative. Klein told The Verge that, with consensus and real work done by automakers and the industry, including Elon Musk-led Tesla, “the ship has kind of sailed, if you will.”
This story originally appeared ON Ars Tecnica.
