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EV charging roaming interoperability to play a major role in pushing EV adoption
06 May 2019
(Excerpt)
It is not very often that we see competing companies coming
together to share their core technology and resources, especially
when it can directly affect their business. Partnerships of this
nature are now regularly happening in the EV charging
infrastructure segment across major EV markets, where network
operators are coming together and signing roaming interoperability,
or 'eRoaming' agreements to make EVs more practical and affordable,
thus accelerating their adoption. Interoperability pacts between
operators basically allow an EV user to use various charging
networks under different operators by taking membership with just
one operator. While standards for physical charging plugs, such as
CHaDEMO, CCS, GT/B, have been more or less decided across the
world, interoperability is primarily for bringing together backend
communication, payment and information sharing.
Impact on EV charging industry
Interoperability is aimed at addressing one of the biggest
impediments to a steady growth in EV adoption - access to a
charging point. No matter how high the range of an EV is on a
single charge, there are always concerns regarding the number of
charging stations of their subscribed network on long distance
routes. Interoperability tries to mitigate these fears by making
charging stations operator-agnostic for drivers. By having
membership of a single charging operator, which has signed
interoperability agreements, 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.
"It's imperative that EV drivers feel comfortable with the range
of an EV which means they need to know they can easily find, access
and pay for charging with one app or RFID card. For mass EV
adoption, the customer experience surrounding charging should be
better than fueling a conventional car," Paul Glenney, Hubject's
North American CEO, told IHS Markit. Hubject is an eRoaming
charging platform set up in 2012 by BMW, Bosch, Daimler, EnBW,
innogy, and Siemens. Started in Europe in 2012, Hubject began
operations in the United States last year and now 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.
As much as these partnerships prove beneficial for EV users,
interoperability brings about a lot of dividends for operators
themselves. Most important being the higher customer retention for
service providers due to improved user interface and also because
of access to other networks. With more users―compared to captive
customer base using the charger―there is increased charger
utilization leading to better economics and faster return on
investments for charging point operators (CPO). Charging service
providers are also looking to expand operations into new areas,
where e-mobility is fast taking wings, in as short a time as
possible. Interoperability allows the companies to start operations
in new regions by just partnering up with a network already
present. This significantly reduces the time to market and the
level of investments required for expansion.
However, roaming interoperability does bring a few
complications, if not outright challenges, for the e-mobility
service providers. Interoperability partnerships require
maintenance of multiple IT connections that will vary by individual
data configuration and features being offered. They will require
constant maintenance and auditing as well as significant
communication between back-end customer service departments.
Partnerships also require regular billing and clearing between
partners for driver roaming costs. This type of connection issues
is likely to leave smaller network operators out in the cold as
they will be deemed "not worth the effort," according to
Glenney.
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