Plug & Charge: The future of EV charging is zero touch

The sci-fi writer and luminary Arthur C. Clarke had an uncanny knack for predicting the future. His essays, mostly written in the early 60s, still seem fresh and exciting – a remarkable feat for ideas first published in book form in 1962.

That book – ‘Profiles of the Future’ – contains some of Clarke’s most well-known (and well-worn) adages. Perhaps most famous is his observation that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

In other words, consider being a normal person in the 18th century and being exposed to Wi-Fi or using Alexa to turn on a light. These technologies would seem quite literally paranormal to you.

Clarke – an avid futurist – was excited by technology that bent our perception of reality.??

Do androids dream of electric cars?

For now, Electric Vehicles (EVs) lack a certain magic. That’s because EVs are, ultimately, cars. Sure, they don’t have internal combustion engines (ICEs) and feature a much simpler drive train. But to an ordinary person, the EV’s silhouette remains familiar.

It’s exciting and cool. But magical? That’s hard to argue.

So where might the magic come from? The intangible capital-t Thing that elevates the EV above ICE cars, once and for all? The answer to me is clear: The charging experience. Which, until now, has been unreliable and a major impediment to mass adoption.

Think about the EV charging experience as we know it: Drivers must plug into a charge point and initiate a charge using an RFID card, app or contactless payment. These methods act like a key opening a lock.

It’s a mundane and quite manual process. But there’s a way we can eliminate all of these bells and whistles: It’s called Plug & Charge (PnC). And it’s made possible because EVs have become smart devices.

Drivers are increasingly yielding core activities – even driving – to the vehicle. PnC takes this low/no intervention principle and applies it to the charging experience. All a driver should need to do, to charge their EV, is plug in the cable (or park over a wireless charging pad).?

Plug & Charge: Like magic!

PnC eliminates the need for drivers to handle the identification and payment process. If this sounds like a basic improvement, in a certain sense it is. But there’s a power in simplicity.

PnC means one less step in the user journey, one less click or interaction that could fail. At scale, this simple improvement adds up to something powerful and transformative.

With PnC, payment is authenticated and automated through pure machine-to-machine communication. The EV and charging station ‘talk’ to each other. This is not only convenient but also remarkably seamless, scalable and secure.

The PnC process requires the EV and charging station to establish and share a digitally protected communication link. Several required actions from both sides ensure confidentiality, data integrity, and authenticity.

A successful PnC session is built on confidentiality, integrity and authenticity. In broader terms, both the EV and charging station must be able to:

1. Encrypt and decrypt messages to make sure that no third party or malicious actor can eavesdrop on the communication. This ensures confidentiality.
2. Detect whether or not a received message has been tampered with on the way from the sender to the receiver. This ensures data integrity.
3. Verify that the communicating counterpart – EV or charging station – is who it claims to be. This ensures authenticity.

The antithesis to ‘disruption’

In commerce, there’s much talk about ‘disruption’. But when it comes to PnC, it’s not a term I like to use. If anything, PnC is an enlightenment of charging.

It’s similar to how Uber’s success was built on removing the friction of the taxi experience. No need to hail a cab or fish money out of your purse. It simply worked, and you reached your destination almost without thinking.

PnC delivers similar results. Plug in, juice up – and go. It can – and should! – be that simple. But everyone needs to play their part.

The whole ecosystem, comprising EVs, chargers, backend systems and PKI providers (like Hubject), must seamlessly work together. This interoperability – that is, different systems ‘talking’ to each other in the same language – is vital in Plug & Charge.

The standard for this exists in ISO 15118 and the VDE application guide VDE-AR-E 2802-100-1. This ensures different charging networks and service providers can seamlessly work together. Essentially, it merges energy and mobility into one unified energy ecosystem.

Plug & Charge is how we will make EVs magical, in the Arthur C. Clarke sense of the word. Not in some distant future. Right now.

Want to know more? Read about Plug & Charge in my comprehensive white paper.?