HOW IT SHOULD BE

In my blog of April 4th 2022, I characterised the current landscape of EV charging as the Wild West. This may seem a little harsh, but it is the reality on the ground today. Let’s look at the path forward, at what needs to happen for our utopian charging world to come to pass.

But before that, a classic example of what’s wrong with the current ecosystem occurred to me last year. I was in Ireland in March 2021 and had taken one of our Teslas on hire for a week. I was staying in a ground floor apartment with no access to a charge point. As I wasn’t planning to do much mileage, I didn’t really plan to charge. In the immediate vicinity of the apartment, there are no fast chargers, just level 2 on street. By the way, in mid-2021 there are still no Tesla superchargers in Dublin.

However, I had a few unexpected longer journeys to do that week and got back to the apartment late one night with just 27 km left on the battery. I didn’t panic because I had a few backup plans. Across the road from the apartment is a supermarket that I noticed had just installed a brand-new public charger. On top of that, just about a kilometre from the apartment, there was an on-street public charger available for use.

So, I decided that the next morning that I would drive across to the supermarket and charge. When I got to the supermarket this brand-new charger wouldn’t work because I had to pre-register and use an app to charge and, once again, the “universal” charging card I had wasn’t yet affiliated with this charging network. This is not the first time this happened to me, the same thing occurred in Amsterdam when I arrived at the hotel that I had specifically chosen because I could see a public charger was available right across the street. Only when we got there did I realise that you have to pre-register with a local city council to use the charger, after which it would take about two to three days before they sent you a charge card; in other words, these chargers are totally useless unless you live in Amsterdam. Imagine having to go to a petrol station and have a whole multitude of registrations before you could fill up your car.

I gave up on the Dublin supermarket because I didn’t want to register and download another app, instead, I decided to drive 1 km down to the on-street public charger I knew about. When I got to the charger, a Mercedes S class diesel was parked in the spot reserved for electric cars, meaning I couldn’t access the charger, another ‘gashole’!

I ended up using the ‘cable through the window’ option at my parents’ home.

I’m obviously very experienced in the electric world; a newbie would be totally put off by these experiences. So how can this be fixed?

Connectivity: a simple, consistent, and universal user experience that only routes drivers to working, connected and available chargers.

OEMs, charging app providers, charge point operators, governments and service stations need to come together if we want a massive shift to EVs. Make it a pleasure, make it simple.

Some work on universal roaming charging is underway and a single charging standard, Open Charge Point Protocol, by the Open Charging Alliance (OCPP 1.6 – 2.0). While these standards are more on the physical hardware side, there is still a lot of work to bring a common charging UX to fruition. Here are my top 10 must-dos for charging.

1. Bring the car, the driver and the charger together – let the car do all the work! Not you!*

2. No charging cards

3. No touch screens, choices, buttons or options on chargers

4. One routing standard for all OEMs**

5. Ability to pay with a credit card / contactless for now (but longer term this will be phased out once no.1 is fully in place)

6. No more third-party charging apps – a single in-car interface

7. Provide a choice between the fastest route or cheapest route

8. Put simple EV charge point signage on all highways, airports, hotels, etc.

9. Ban hybrids from using public charging points and fine gasholes for blocking access

10. Share all charging networks – no exclusivity to any OEM

* The solution needs to be that the car does all the ‘talking’ with the charger and makes the payments (by assigning a payment method to your ‘car account’ when you buy it - just like Tesla)

**All OEMs agree and choose a single routing standard (if they are worried about competitive advantage, they needn’t be, as with all new tech, it will eventually standardise and will be solved one way or another anyway, so whoever doesn’t sign up will be out of the club)

Solving charging is the second most important requirement for a successful EV revolution.

Advancing battery technology is the first. By increasing the density, efficiency, range and cost of batteries, part of this charging problem will go away. The battery is what has made a modern EV possible. The advancements in battery systems for electric cars, in less than two decades, has been incredible, but in some ways, the story of the battery has only just begun. That will be the subject of my next few blogs.