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Episode 291

291 - The Plug and Charge Update Episode

This episode features an in-depth discussion with Marc Mültin on the current state and future of Plug and Charge technology, ISO 15118 standards, and the challenges of EV charging interoperability. Learn about the technical, market, and security aspects shaping the EV charging ecosystem.

Key topics discussed:

- Plug and Charge technology and its adoption challenges

- ISO 15118 standard and its evolution towards bidirectional charging

- Market dynamics and interoperability in EV charging networks

Key Quote"

"User experience is crucial for wider EV adoption."

The EV Musings Podcast is sponsored by Zapmap, the go-to app for EV drivers, helping you find and pay for public charging with confidence.

Links in the show notes:

Episode produced by Arran Sheppard at Urban Podcasts: https://www.urbanpodcasts.co.uk

(C) 2019-2026 Gary Comerford

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Mentioned in this episode:

Zapmap

The EV Musings Podcast is sponsored by Zapmap, the go-to app for EV drivers, helping you find and pay for public charging with confidence. Zapmap is free to download and use, with subscription plans for enhanced features such as using Zapmap in-car on CarPlay or Android Auto, and discounted charging across thousands of charge points. Download the app from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store or find out more at www.zapmap.com.

Zapmap EV Guide

Transcript
Speaker:

Hi, I'm Gary and this is EV Musings, a podcast about renewables, electric vehicles and

things that are interesting to electric vehicle owners.

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On the show today we'll be revisiting a topic very close to my heart, plug and charge.

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In particular we're talking with one of the people who helped put the plug and charge

standard together.

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Our main topic of discussion today is Plug and Charge.

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Now, those of you who follow my social media posts on places like LinkedIn will know that

I'm a big fan of Plug and Charge and that's the ability to pull up at a charger, insert

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the connector into the charge port and just walk away.

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No payment methods, swiping a payment card, clicking on apps or tapping of RFID tokens.

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No selection of cables, no pre-authorizations, nothing.

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The charger recognizes your car, knows how you're going to pay,

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and just starts charging.

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As Shakespeare said in Hamlet, 'T'is a consummation devoutly to be wished.'

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Although he was talking about something much more important than plug and charge.

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So why isn't this a standard everywhere at the moment?

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I mean, version of plug and charge has been used by Tesla pretty much since day one of

their rollout.

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In fact, it's one of the USPs of the Tesla brand.

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But with very few exceptions, nobody else in the UK has enabled plug and charge.

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A recent report from the US highlighted that users over there suffer from three main

issues when it comes to public charging.

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The inability to read the screen, payment processing issues and general charge of

failures.

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Now, if you think about it, the first two problems in that list, the inability to read the

screen and payment processing issues, go away with plug and charge, leaving charges

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failing as the main issue.

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That occurs, it seems, around 4% of sessions, which incidentally,

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is the same that this Tesla Supercharger network apparently suffers from.

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So it would make sense for plug and charge to be a thing, right?

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Wrong.

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Here in the UK, Ionity have implemented it on their network and well, that's pretty much

it in the UK at the moment.

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I know there are a couple of others that are well along the way to doing this, but I'm not

authorized to discuss who they are as a result of NDAs I signed in order to produce this

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episode.

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though consolidation activity in the recent weeks might have an impact, that's all I'm

saying.

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What we do have in the UK is a thing called Autocharge.

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To the uninitiated, Autocharge can look and feel very much like plug and charge.

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You plug your car into a charger and it starts charging.

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No authorizations, no presenting of payment methods, et cetera.

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The key difference, or the key differences, are twofold.

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First, Autocharge is much less secure

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as an option.

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it uses technology that can be relatively easily spoofed, meaning that somebody can plug

their car in using your car's details and you end up paying for it.

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And secondly, it's limited to one CPO at a time.

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Now that might not sound like a problem, but imagine this.

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Fastned do AutoCharge, Osprey charging do AutoCharge, Gridserve do AutoCharge.

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But they're incompatible.

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If you set up AutoCharge on a Fastned device, you can only use it on a Fastned device.

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Same for Osprey and the same for Gridserve.

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It's effectively like using their specific apps without the ability to transfer to other

ChargePoint operators.

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Now with Plug and Charge, once it's set up, you can use it on whichever ChargePoint

operator has enabled Plug and Charge on their devices.

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Set it up once, use it everywhere.

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There are a few wrinkles around that and we'll get to that during our conversation with

today's guest.

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Hi, thanks for having me on the podcast.

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My name is Marc Multin.

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I am currently working at Believ, which is a London based charge point operator.

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My role here is the director of technology strategy and innovation, which means that I

look after all the innovative topics from AI, vehicle to grid, cybersecurity, data

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platform, these kind of things.

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Excellent.

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Now I'll come and talk about Believ and what they're doing with Plug and Charge in a

little while, but just as kind of an opening question, Tesla seems to have got Plug and

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Charge sorted.

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They've had it since day one.

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What's taking everybody else so long?

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Well, it's way easier for Tesla because they have a closed ecosystem, right?

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They have the hardware under control, both the vehicle and the charger.

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They have the software under control.

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So to create this very streamlined user experience, it's much more straightforward,

especially when you are a company that is very good in doing software.

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With Plug and Charge, which is an open standard,

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The challenge here is that you have to make sure that this technology works across a wide

variety of manufacturers, both on the vehicle side and on the charging station

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manufacturer side, plus the cloud-based stakeholders from the chargement operators to the,

what you call the public key infrastructure provider, mobility service providers.

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So you can see there's a lot of actors involved that need to work in concert to make this

work like clockwork.

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Good.

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And there are a couple of companies sort of at a high level that are trying to put all

that together.

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Hubject is one of them.

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And, you know, when I have conversations with people, say that Hubject have kind of got

the solution sorted, but in reality, they're not the only player in the plug and charge

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game.

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I mean, we had a ChargePoint operator on the show last year and he said, there's a number

of options out there and both from a customer experience and from an implementation

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perspective.

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Some need updates to the actual sites themselves.

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Some need updates to the back office or the app.

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So again, they all need a full review.

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And I noticed that Hubject recently announced that they've partnered with some of the

other companies like Gireve and is it Irdeto?

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think the other one to create a unified offering rather than individual competitive

offerings.

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Are you able to talk a little bit about why that's a good idea?

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Why reducing customer choice

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in this case is a good thing.

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So Hubject has been the earliest provider of what I mentioned, a public key

infrastructure, which is basically an ecosystem, let's put it that way, that helps all the

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stakeholders, charge point operators, mobility service providers, car manufacturers, and

so on, to create issue.

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manage, revoke those digital certificates that need to be in place to make this seamless

plug and charge journey work.

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I think they started a journey back in 2017.

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Back then the market wasn't really ready, but they started basically the whole cloud-based

services around that.

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And I think it was 2021 when the first plug and charge enabled vehicle really came to

market with the Porsche Taycan, so it took some time.

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And no one really was interested in providing that service until then on a

production-ready scale.

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So Hubject was naturally just the first mover.

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And over time, there have been kind of like hesitation as to, do we really want to trust

Hubject as the only entity?

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There need to be more.

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There's maybe some kind of potential monopolistic kind of outcomes.

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Not that Hubject would really...

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be unfair in any prices, but the market wasn't just really comfortable with just having

one provider, to put it that way.

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That's why other providers emerged over the years.

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One of them is Irdeto that you already mentioned.

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They are a big company, cybersecurity-wise, in other fields than e-mobility, robotics,

health, and whatnot, transport.

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And Gireve, which is another player on the EV roaming side, based out of France.

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they are also now providing the means to make plug and charge work.

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So now we have basically three players, Gireve, Irdeto and Hubject, whereby I would say,

not knowing the numbers exactly, but I would say,

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more than 90, 95 or even more percent of the cars on the roads have the digital

certificates for Hubject in their cars, which is necessary to do plug and charge.

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Hubject developed its own kind of like protocol to interact with their public

infrastructure system.

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I think they call it the Open Plug and Charge Protocol, or PNC.

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And...

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Irdeto and Gireve were working with Hubject to make their system work with Hubject's system.

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kind of like work on that protocol.

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There's even a CharIn initiative to evolve this protocol into one that is governed by

CharIn.

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So the idea is to have more choice for companies.

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Those who for whatever reason don't want to work with Hubject can go to Irdeto or Gireve.

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Honestly, it's good to have this optionality in the market.

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It also helps Hubject to kind of like get out of this, they are the monopolist in the

market kind of corner.

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And, you know, in the end, the company with the best proposition wins, know, or wins the

majority of the market.

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So

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But did they not hear that they're working together to provide a unified offering or have

I misread that somewhere?

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It is more of an interoperability play.

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So without going into too much detail, but let's say a mobility service provider that opts

to work with your life or a data can provide a digital contract for vehicles that are

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working or for the car manufacturers that are working with hub, for example, this kind of

interoperability is what this is mainly about.

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So they're not locked into one system.

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Yeah, now that makes sense.

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That makes sense.

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So help me understand why some OEMs have implemented plug and charge in some countries and

not the others.

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For example, I understand that in Germany, ARAL/BP pulse have implemented plug and

charge, but nowhere else.

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Applegreen is implemented in the US, but not in the UK, although I understand they're

close to doing so.

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What are the drivers behind why a company would put it in in one location or one country,

but not the other?

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It's a good question.

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I guess it also depends on market maturity.

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Obviously, plug and charge is more evolved in Europe, I would say, than anywhere else.

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UK is further behind.

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The US market is generally behind the European market by a few years, but catching up to

plug and charge, obviously, as well.

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I'm not exactly sure.

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Maybe it's due to some economics.

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Also the amount of players available in a specific market that offer plug and charge.

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For example, if you do offer plug and charge as a charge point operator in a certain

market, you want to make sure that there are enough mobility service providers that also

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offer plug and charge.

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Otherwise, there is little benefit for the EV driver that it's charging at your charges.

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Are you comfortable talking about the believe position on ISO 15118 and the timeline for

implementation?

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Position yes, timeline, I can't be too detailed.

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So we definitely support plug and charge.

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It's not yet active at our charging infrastructure, but we definitely do want to provide

this for our network and any driver customers.

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Our network is primarily focused on AC charging.

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And the idea is that we want to provide everyone access to charging infrastructure that is

reliable and affordable.

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That means mostly in front of the people's houses who don't have an off-street charging

possibility.

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I would say roughly maybe around 90% of our charging infrastructure is AC focused, but we

also do destination and depot charging, not depot, hub charging as well.

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So fast charges, ultra rapid charges.

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Naturally, you find plug-in charge usually with DC charging infrastructure because there's

a specific hardware component and it needs to be

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in DC chargers to be able to digitally communicate with the vehicle, whether it's ISO

:

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But that component, it's called a power line communication modem, is a prerequisite for

ISO:

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It's not super costly, and the prices went down quite a bit over the years.

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But for AC charging infrastructure, AC chargers are just very simple boxes with bit of

electronics and a smart meter.

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So usually they don't warrant the necessity for this digital communication.

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That's why you rarely find it in AC infrastructure.

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Also car manufacturers have supported plug and charge for DC only in the early years, but

are now offering it more and more for AC as far as I understand.

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That being said, that's basically one of the reasons why it's not yet rolled out too much

in our network because of focus of AC.

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But we do want to implement it.

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have...

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Currently other priorities, Once that is all basically transitioned properly and the

roadmap priorities are clarified, the plug and chart will bring us to market, whether this

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will be this year or early next year, I can't say for sure at the moment.

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And is the intention to put that on all types of hardware that are supported by Believ or

is it going to be just hardware from certain manufacturers?

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We will start probably with hardware from certain manufacturers that bring the necessary

hardware equipment, which means on the one hand side, the power line component, the home

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plug GreenFi modem, and on the other hand side, also the necessary chipset that provide

the required cryptographic operations that are necessary for plug-in charge to work.

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So the question is, A, do we want to retrofit all the chargers?

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B, are they even retrofitable?

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Depends also on the charger manufacturer.

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My guess is that we will start gradually with a certain manufacturer or two, it out, see

how it goes, and then decide on the demand, based on the demand, what we do with the

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existing charging infrastructure.

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When I look at the state of plug and charge specifically in the UK, talk to me a little

bit about the barriers to implementation when it comes to plug and charge.

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Is it the vehicle OEMs?

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Is it the charge point operators?

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Is it the hardware?

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What's basically slowing it down?

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You know, I'm asking myself the same question over and over in recent years, because it's

not rocket science at all, right?

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The software is there.

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are software stacks, be it open source, such as from Pionix with Everest for software on

the charging station side, or EcoG based in Munich that have their own charging stack,

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EcoOS, I think.

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There's Vector, by the way, all of them based in Germany.

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And the two other players, think on the market that provides battle tested software

stacks, at least on the charging infrastructure side and some also on the vehicle side.

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So the software stack doesn't need to be re-implemented.

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We don't need to reinvent the wheel, right?

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You just need to integrate the software stack into hardware.

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So from that perspective, I think it's mainly demand driven.

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It's less a complexity issue from my perspective.

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But then again, it also depends on, you know, what's the current, how much capabilities do

these companies have in-house and what's the priority on their roadmap.

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It's mainly a priority aspect oftentimes.

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Again, we need to charge our manufacturers, we need to car manufacturers, we need to point

operators that have the right charge point management system that supports plug and charge

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with that, meaning the right protocols.

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As in ISO15118, which is supported by OCP 2.0.1 natively.

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There is a hack for 1.6, but it's not necessarily recommended.

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then, yeah, the e-mobility service providers also need to be implementing that.

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There are some players also in the UK market that do all of that.

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And I think there's already plug and charge in rolled out.

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For example, Octopus Electroverse supports plug and charge.

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I think plug surfing also supports plug and charge.

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I'm not 100% sure.

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And then I know Ionity is offering plug and charge internet work in the UK as well.

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I do believe Mer does it as well and MFG.

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But there is a website actually from Hubject where you can look up the current state of...

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live and approved MSPs, Chargepoint operators and so on.

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Yeah.

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And I'm going to put that in as a link on the show notes so that people can follow that.

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actually very, very interesting because as you say, it talks about the companies that can

do it.

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talks about the payment services that could do the eMSPs and, you know, it breaks it down

into all the different components.

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One of the things that it does have on there, if I remember correctly, is which vehicles

currently

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have plug and charge on it, plus support, the plug and charge protocol.

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Now there's, there's a very large number of vehicles out there.

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lot more than I think people really realize, but there are a couple of anomalies out

there.

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For example, other than some of the Polestar range, there are no Chinese companies on the

list.

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And even Polestars just doing this on the Polestar 3 and not the 2.

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And it's only this week or last week announced that it's making it available on the Polestar four.

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So.

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What is the issue here?

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How is it being dealt with?

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Why is it that China, one of the biggest manufacturers of electric vehicles on the planet,

is hesitant to go and allow plug and charge protocols on their vehicles?

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You know, Gary, it's a good question.

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I don't really know.

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I know that in China, they have different protocols, right?

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They have, for example, not ISO15118 necessarily, but they do support GBT or now...

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What is it called?

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Xiaoj, or Xiaoji, I think is a new standard when it comes to EV to charger communication.

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So they don't necessarily follow that ISO15118 standard in China.

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Obviously, when they want to export cars to the European market, they need to also offer

those technologies.

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Maybe that's the reason why they haven't done it yet so far.

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Because it's more about bringing the cars into the market and wowing them with the

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in-car experience and maybe less so with the plug and charge but I'm sure it will come.

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Yeah.

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It's like the old joke, you know, the beauty of standards is there are so many of them all

around the place, you know.

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And then there are too many standards.

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Let's unify them with yet another standard.

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That's another joke.

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So how do we handle people like me, for example?

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Now I've got an EV that's a couple of years old.

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The latest version of my car may potentially be plug and charge compatible, but the

version that I'm on isn't.

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Is there a potential retrofit route?

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Is it hardware based?

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Is it software based?

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What do we know about that?

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So part of it is hardware.

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But if your car is able to do DC charging, assume it is, then the necessary communication

modem, the power line communication modem is already installed.

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The question is, is the necessary crypto chip installed to support the cryptographic

operations that are required for plug and charge?

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Then often it's also a question of, yes, your car does support plug and charge, but only

with a certain firmware version.

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And so it's worth asking your dealership which firmware version you should have and then

get that latest version updated.

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And then somewhere in in-car infotainment system or HMI interface, there is then likely an

entry for Plug and Charge where you then can install a new contract certificate.

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This is basically the digital token.

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that identifies your e-mobility energy contract with your chosen energy provider.

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And then you can install it.

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Some car manufacturers are better than others in making this easy to navigate.

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One good example that I also provided in my article on my newsletter, currentaffairs.io is

BMW.

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They do a very good job in that.

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But more and more car manufacturers are improving their experience.

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let me sort of jump on that and play -

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Are you familiar with the phrase, playing Devil's Advocate?

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Companies like Hubject and the others that you've talked about, they've been active in

this space for several years.

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They've made great strides in many aspects of onboarding the various players and the

technical bits that cover the different parts of the plug and charge ecosystem.

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But at end of the day, especially in the UK, we still have a very, very limited number of

charge point operators and vehicles that can use plug and charge.

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Is it actually a non-starter?

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Should we really be pursuing this?

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It is the most secure and the most user convenient way to do EV charging.

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I'm 100% sure of that.

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Of course you can use RFID cards, you can use apps, which obviously people hate unless the

apps is...

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The app is an amazing experience and has great added value, but no one likes to download

5 to 10 apps or carry around the same amount of RVD cards.

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So if you've all been there and heard those stories, then of course, there are some

charges that do have credit card terminals.

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So you can use a debit and credit card, which you can also ideally use your smartphone and

just tap it with NFC payment.

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It's very easy.

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It's not necessarily the cheapest way to charge because the point of plug and charge is

that you are connecting the charge point operator with the mobility service provider in a

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kind of like a roaming agreement and you allow the EV driver to charge based on a contract

that they have decided to opt into.

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So let's say for use in the UK, an Octopus Electroverse is a very common example.

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and as a mobility service provider that offers plug and charge.

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They offer fairly good prices.

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So you want to make sure that when you charge, you are leveraging that tariff that you

feel comfortable with instead of charging with debit or credit card, which is often the

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highest cost of, I don't know, 50, 60, 70 or more pence per kilowatt hour.

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And that's quite expensive.

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So there's the cost.

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aspect, then there's the reliability aspect, whereby plug and charge is more reliable than

payment terminal payments or RFID authorizations.

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And it's just as easy as plugging in.

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mean, that's how it should be.

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We talked about the Tesla experience at the very beginning.

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That's what we are trying to replicate, but across all charger manufacturers and across

all car manufacturers.

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It's just harder.

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again, if you don't have it under control, because it's different software, different

hardware, different entities that work on different timelines and have different

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priorities, that doesn't make it easier.

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And you've sort of coincidentally sort of moved on to the next part of the topic I want to

talk about, which is the actual pricing model.

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Because as you've already said, if you use plug and charge through the Octopus

Electroverse, you get a certain pricing on the charge that you use.

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And I know because I'm an Electroverse home charger, I also get an 8% discount and that's

fantastic.

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But if I go to Ionity,

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Ionity do some specific subscriptions which allow me to radically undercut the price that

I will be paying if I was paying via the Electroverse.

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So if I'm using Plug and Charge via the Electroverse EMSP and I go to Ionity, how can I

get the subscription price?

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Can things like that be incorporated into the Plug and Charge ecosystem?

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How would that actually work?

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Good question.

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So Ionity is first informed as a charge point operator.

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They haven't tried to see if they are.

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Are they acting as a mobility service provider as well?

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Do you know that?

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I don't know, but as I say, they do have their own subscription service, which allows

discounted.

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So presumably as a, as a plug and charge user, I would like to have the option of taking

advantage of that subscription whilst plug and charging.

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So the question is, do they offer a digital contract certificate?

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Because that's what you need to install into your vehicle to unlock plug and charge.

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If so, then you can activate that through your vehicle, either the app that comes with

your vehicle or that app that is provided by.

296

:

the charge point operator, or sorry, through the in-car HMI interface.

297

:

And that's the only way.

298

:

Otherwise you need to make sure that you authenticate when you plug in using RFID card or

an app.

299

:

That is then up to Ionity or a charge point operator in general to make sure that you can

authenticate, you have the choice when you plug in and your card does support plug and

300

:

charge, that it gives you the option to say, yes, I want to use the

301

:

pre-configured plug and charge contract that's installed and activated in my vehicle or

alternatively I want to use a specific RFID card which runs on a different contract or the

302

:

app.

303

:

So that is definitely the only way to do it and is also currently being discussed in the

industry what's the best practice because

304

:

There have been cases in the past where, worst case, the customer gets double charged, you

know, they plug in.

305

:

The plug and charge contract is basically activated and they also authenticate using the

RFID card from a different mobility service provider and all of a sudden they get charged

306

:

twice.

307

:

That's the worst case.

308

:

Shouldn't be the usual experience.

309

:

That's if the chargepoint operator doesn't implement things correctly and the charging

station manufacturer doesn't do the software handling the right way.

310

:

But the user experience is really important when it comes to plug and charge, which you

need to make sure that if your charger has a screen, that you prompt the user.

311

:

For example, you plug in, the charging station realizes the car can do a high level

digital communication.

312

:

can do plug and charge.

313

:

It should maybe prompt the user, okay, your car supports plug and charge.

314

:

Do you want to use it?

315

:

Maybe give the user half a minute to decide.

316

:

If the user didn't say anything, you go forward with plug and charge.

317

:

If the user says no, actually want to use a different contract, please authenticate with

your RFID card.

318

:

That could be one option to make it very clear and give the user the choice that they want

to have.

319

:

And how would that work?

320

:

Let me see if I can give a situation.

321

:

So there are two main chargers in the town near where I live.

322

:

So let's assume that I have plug and charge enabled on my vehicle.

323

:

Unfortunately, I can't because it's Polestar 2, which doesn't have that enabled, but let's

assume I'm in something - a BMW - that could.

324

:

If I go to Osprey, I would like it to be able to use the Electroverse.

325

:

as the eMSP so that when I plug in it recognizes that I'm Octopus Electroverse and it will

start charging at the rate that's negotiated between Octopus and Osprey.

326

:

But if I then go down half a mile down the road to the Ionity, assuming I've got a

subscription which gives me the lower rates and assuming that that's put into the system

327

:

somehow,

328

:

when I plug in, will it recognize that this is Ionity and I've got a cheaper rate to use for

that?

329

:

Or will I physically have to go and change something within the vehicle to say when I plug

in at Ionity, I want it to use this plug and charge tariff rather than the Electroverse

330

:

plug and charge tariff.

331

:

Does that make sense?

332

:

Yeah, it makes sense.

333

:

first of all, either your car, there's three situations, either your car does support plug

and charge or it does not.

334

:

If it supports plug and charge, the question is, does it support multiple contracts to be

installed at the same time?

335

:

Does it allow you to choose between different mobility service providers?

336

:

And if so, how do you configure that?

337

:

Is it through the app that a car manufacturer provides you with or is it through the

in-car

338

:

HMI, human machine interface.

339

:

So usually you just have one default contract.

340

:

I'm not sure how they allow you to change that in ways of before you plug in, you go into

plug and charge setting and you say, now choose this certificate or this MSP instead of

341

:

that one.

342

:

That should be always be the case if several

343

:

mobility service providers are supported.

344

:

Maybe some car manufacturers even allow more advanced mechanisms such as geofencing where

you say within this location or this address by default use for example my fleet mobility

345

:

service provider contract but in any other location use my private one which is the second

one that I have installed.

346

:

So these kind of mechanisms should be provided.

347

:

by the car and then you can choose yourself.

348

:

And the way it works, how does a charging station know what plug-in charge certificate you

have or MSP provider you want to use?

349

:

The moment you plug in the car in the charging station, they establish a digital

communication link and the charging station will then basically provide, it's on a very

350

:

high level, the vehicle with the option to do

351

:

plug and charge or to authenticate through what is called external identification means.

352

:

This can be anything from RFD card, app, credit card, whatever.

353

:

And then the car can see, okay, so the charging station supports plug and charge.

354

:

My user, my driver has a plug and charge contract installed and activated.

355

:

So they want to use it by default.

356

:

Then I'm going to send that

357

:

digital contract certificate to the charging station over the charging cable.

358

:

The charging station will do a few verification checks, you know, is the contract

certificate still valid?

359

:

Has it expired?

360

:

And then send it up to the backend to the ChargePoint operators, ChargePoint management

system, which can do some further checks such as index contract certificate, the unique

361

:

there is an identifier called the e-mobility account identifier, eMAID.

362

:

That encodes the mobility service provider and the country in which the mobility service

provider is active and your specific e-mobility contract.

363

:

So knowing that identifier using the roaming protocol, this can be OCPI or Hubjects or

ICP.

364

:

you know, this industry isn't very creative when it comes to naming protocols.

365

:

They all have an O in.

366

:

C and a P in. Then the charge point operator can connect to the mobility service provider,

ask them is this a valid contract or is there a valid contract associated with that

367

:

contract certificate.

368

:

If the MSP says yes, I associate it with Gary Comerford and Gary is still paying, then

it's acknowledged and then the charge point operator can tell the charging station, okay,

369

:

you're good to go, please.

370

:

and provide energy to the vehicle.

371

:

So that's basically how it works.

372

:

Now, since I last spoke about plug and charge on the podcast a couple of seasons back,

there've been one or two movements in the field.

373

:

And what I want to talk about specifically is auto charge.

374

:

Now, Fastned have had auto charge for a while.

375

:

In the UK, Osprey charging are trialing this.

376

:

Gridserve have also rolled it out via their app.

377

:

And each, in each case, because it's Autocharge, that solution is linked uniquely to a

single CPO

378

:

So Fastned auto charge can't be used on Gridserve and vice versa.

379

:

It's also restricted to a subset of cars and a subset of hardware.

380

:

Now I've spoken to some of the CPOs in question and I know that at least one of them

should be listening to this because he is a regular listener and they've all cited lack of

381

:

uniformity problems with different hardware not being plug and charge compatible and cars

not having plug and charge compatibility.

382

:

Now, from my point of view, all of these problems also apply

383

:

to Autocharge and yet three major charge point operators seem to think this is a better

solution than plug and charge.

384

:

What are your thoughts on that situation?

385

:

Please.

386

:

I think public charging is not the best use case for Autocharge.

387

:

The reason being is on the one hand side, charge works is the car has a unique identifier,

so called MAC address.

388

:

And that MAC address is used to then register with the chargement operator, usually

through an app.

389

:

You plug in.

390

:

The app says, OK, you want to register for auto charge.

391

:

You say so.

392

:

And then the charging station records that specific MAC address and sends it back to the

CPO.

393

:

And this way, it links it to your car.

394

:

Now, there are some manufacturers.

395

:

One famous one is Volkswagen, and there are others as well.

396

:

that do not use the same MAC address for each vehicle, I think for kind of like privacy

reasons.

397

:

with every new session, every new time you plug in your vehicle, there's gonna be a

different MAC address.

398

:

So you cannot use AutoCharge for Volkswagen vehicles unless they will change that in the

future.

399

:

There are other vehicle makes that have the same issue.

400

:

On the other hand, it is not as...

401

:

cyber secure as plug-and-charge is.

402

:

Obviously there are now digital certificates involved, there is no digitally encrypted

communication using TLS, transport layer security.

403

:

So in theory, someone could have a listening device attached to the charging station, to

the charging cables, maybe in some way you wouldn't see and recognize, and read UMAC

404

:

address.

405

:

and then basically replay that information or use that MAC address for their own vehicle

and basically then end up charging on your bill.

406

:

So it opens the risk to fraud, financial fraud.

407

:

Now, it hasn't been regarded as a high risk because it's a bit more effort to do so.

408

:

It's called MAC address spoofing.

409

:

and no one has really exploited it at scale.

410

:

Doesn't mean it couldn't happen in the future.

411

:

So that's one reason why I would say it's not the best idea.

412

:

I do understand that if a charge point operator wants to provide this kind of like plug

and charge like feeling to their EV drivers, that they find it interesting to use auto

413

:

charge on the network.

414

:

But at least also make sure you call it auto charge and not plug and charge.

415

:

misguide the user.

416

:

um I do think that AutoCharge has a place.

417

:

It's not public charging, my opinion, but it's in fleet charging, where you do have, you

do know your vehicles.

418

:

They probably do have a unique MAC address.

419

:

You don't need to implement this whole cybersecurity aspect in a private depot that you

access control.

420

:

So I do get that that AutoCharge makes more sense there.

421

:

I do see AutoCharge as a

422

:

intermediary, transitionary technology.

423

:

I'm very sure every charge translation network will adopt Plug-in Charge for several

reasons, be it because the users will ask for it, be it because of regulation and

424

:

compliance reasons.

425

:

There's also the European Cybersecurity Resilience Act that will have a play at it, and

the UK will probably follow similar guidelines in the future.

426

:

So there's a natural pull to adopt this technology.

427

:

that makes a lot of sense.

428

:

the key driver for me, I mean, there's a security issue, I think where the charge point

operators are coming from is...

429

:

It's easy to set up AutoCharge.

430

:

If you've got our app, we can make that happen, providing you've got a compatible car.

431

:

Whereas from a plug and charge point of view, as you've already said, there are a number

of different things that need to be in place.

432

:

So if a charge point operator is looking at this, they're obviously going to say,

AutoCharge, it potentially locks customers into our network because we set AutoCharge up

433

:

for our network, not for everybody.

434

:

Whereas plug and charge is for every compatible network.

435

:

So I can understand why they're doing that.

436

:

But yeah, I take the fleet charging example.

437

:

think that's an excellent example there.

438

:

And the other thing is when you register your vehicle for Autocharge with one or several

charging operators, and then you end up selling that vehicle to someone else, secondhand

439

:

market, and then that other person, if you forget to deregister vehicle, can start

charging when you will, you know.

440

:

Yeah.

441

:

Excellent.

442

:

And I want to pick up on a couple of things that came up from the panel.

443

:

discussion that you were on, which I'll link to in the show notes.

444

:

Now, pretty early on in the discussion, there's a mention about the time taken for Plug

and Charge to authenticate and start charging.

445

:

Now, as we've already said, Tesla have had this for a while.

446

:

It's literally, you you plug in and within eight seconds on the Tesla, you are charging

and it's a lot longer for, or it was a lot longer for Plug and Charge.

447

:

Is this still the case or is that protocol, that handshake being reduced to a more

reasonable time now?

448

:

There's no real reason why it should take longer for plug and charge.

449

:

I mean, yes, longer than maybe tapping an RID card because there are some cybersecurity

some...

450

:

Cryptographic operations at play.

451

:

The question is how fast is the charging station?

452

:

What kind of processor and memory does it have?

453

:

How fast can it do these operations offline on the charging station?

454

:

What's the backend connection also to the chargement operator?

455

:

When you do plug and charge, you definitely need to make sure that you have a very good

connectivity and maybe also fallback.

456

:

if this cellular connection tends to be a bit scrappy, make sure you have maybe an

Ethernet connection as a default or backup.

457

:

or Wi-Fi or something like that because that can definitely impact the speed of

authentication because you need to transmit digital certificates or information about

458

:

digital certificates that are just bigger in size.

459

:

The data that needs to be transmitted is several kilobytes and that just takes more time.

460

:

over the cellular connection.

461

:

Then there's the authentication that's happening between the chargement operator's backend

and the mobility service provider and hubjects and intermediary platform.

462

:

Usually those cloud operations are very fast, but I can talk to hubjects or any other MSPs

implementation of how fast they really react, but that should not be the bottleneck

463

:

really.

464

:

There is a, I think it's a 300 plus page document that details the full ISO15118

specification.

465

:

And I think one of the comments that was made on the discussion that you led there was

that many OEMs don't implement the full specification.

466

:

Do we think those two things are related?

467

:

Is it the fact that it's 300 plus pages causing an issue?

468

:

So 360 something pages, the ISO 15118-2 standard, which is the one that is now being

mandated by the AFIER regulation and since beginning of this year.

469

:

There are, I think, around 800 or so technical requirements.

470

:

So it's important that you implement those technical requirements correctly.

471

:

It's important that you test those.

472

:

and they are conforming to the test systems.

473

:

that go through the hassle of implementing all those thousands of test cases and you

better make sure that as a car manufacturer and charging station manufacturer you better

474

:

have your hardware tested before you release it to the market.

475

:

And then there's compatibility and there's conformance with the standard and then there's

the edge cases that come into play.

476

:

Because no standard is perfect.

477

:

There's always some room for interpretation and room for ambiguity.

478

:

That's why we have since many, many years, I think now since six to seven years, the

interoperability testing events, these testables that CharIn is organizing since I think

479

:

2019.

480

:

They But the idea here is that you bring together the charter manufacturers and

481

:

car manufacturers to some kind of round-robin testing over two days.

482

:

You have like two hour test sessions to make sure that when you plug in a car into various

charging stations that it works and you identify the edge cases.

483

:

You identify, wait a minute, yeah, this requirement says this, but it can be interpreted

in a certain way like the charging station manufacturer did and we haven't considered that

484

:

edge case and that's implemented to be more resilient, so to say.

485

:

Also, Habject has a test lab in Berlin and there is no official plug and charge

certification available yet by an official test lab like DECRA or others.

486

:

Unfortunately, they're working on it and hopefully this year we have something.

487

:

But until then, I would highly recommend to go to one of those established test labs such

as Habject to do some kind of accreditation because they have seen it all.

488

:

They know what kind of issues arise.

489

:

Make sure you have it tested before you release it to market.

490

:

That should cover a lot of issues.

491

:

And yes, to your question, you know, when I started working in the standards, that was

:

492

:

So the brightest minds come together to define the best possible technology.

493

:

It's not necessarily like that.

494

:

There's a lot of politics involved between the different companies that try to

495

:

sort of like ingest their own technology, own ideas, you end up doing compromises which kind of

like waters down the quality of a standard.

496

:

But it's with any standard, usually on this planet.

497

:

How do we solve the situation, which I believe also happens with Autocharge, where a

charge point operator might have some charges capable of performing this and others that

498

:

can't?

499

:

I mean, how is a customer supposed to know, for example, if they're at a charge point

operator with Circontrol units that aren't plug-and-charge available?

500

:

but they may be also at the same charge point operate with Kempower chargers that are

plug and charge compatible.

501

:

Is that purely an education issue or is there something deeper than that?

502

:

Well, the EV driver shouldn't need to know which charger make and model supports plug and

charge.

503

:

They can't.

504

:

It's just too much hassle and overhead.

505

:

That's where the roaming protocol comes into play.

506

:

The charge point operators, they know which chargers support plug and charge.

507

:

So they can communicate that through a roaming protocol such as the open charge point

interface to the mobility service providers who then provide the apps to the EV drivers.

508

:

And also, of course, some

509

:

Charging operators have their own apps for their charging network.

510

:

So it's important that within those charging maps, be it in your, in whatever app you use

or maybe online portal you use, this information is portrayed and communicated.

511

:

That's how you will know as an EV driver.

512

:

And yes, there's also a plug and charge logo that has been designed by CharIn several

years ago, like five years ago or so.

513

:

But I'm not sure if that is.

514

:

applied to every charger out there, I wouldn't count on it.

515

:

So using the roaming protocol is the better bet.

516

:

Yeah, that makes sense.

517

:

Now there was an interesting discussion on the panel about certificate authorization.

518

:

Now Plug and Charge runs on certificates, as you know via the PKI, the public key

infrastructure, to ensure authentication and security, which is why it's a stronger

519

:

standard than AutoCharge.

520

:

But some of these certificates can expire.

521

:

Will we ever get a situation where a certificate is expired, a customer doesn't realize

that, they plug in and nothing happens?

522

:

And because there's a failure, you don't know who the customer is via plug and charge.

523

:

So you can't sort of inform them, this is the problem.

524

:

What happens, will that happen?

525

:

And what happens in that situation?

526

:

Well, it shouldn't happen.

527

:

Because usually I would expect a mobility service provider issues those digital contract

certificates to have an automatic, an automatism implemented whereby they know when a

528

:

certificate will expire.

529

:

They should issue a new certificate in time, ideally with overlapping validity periods and

make sure that once that new certificate is

530

:

Created that they push the certificate to the car manufacturers cloud and through the car

manufacturers cloud It is then silently installed in your vehicle So there are mainly

531

:

there are two ways to install those digital certificates for for plug-and-charge

Specifically those contract certificates one is through the charging infrastructure And

532

:

which is something that has been baked into the protocol from the very beginning and the

other way is through the cloud

533

:

cloud cloud operation.

534

:

It turns out that the industry is moving towards cloud operation because it's just more

reliable, more resilient.

535

:

And you also don't have this effect of waiting for a long time at the charging station

when you need to install a new certificate because then you have to download all of that

536

:

and it takes time and confuses me with the user.

537

:

So yeah, if it's badly implemented, yes, it can happen.

538

:

I would assume most do that job right and I would hope so.

539

:

Is there anything that we haven't talked about today that you think the listeners and

w about Plug and Charge or ISO:

540

:

Well, 15118 is constantly evolving.

541

:

And so we talked about the ISO15118-2 document, which is basically defining all the

application level relevant functionalities for plug and charge, for example, but also

542

:

smart charging.

543

:

And smart charging and plug and charge were the two main drivers why ISO15118 was brought

to life in the first place.

544

:

Basically, smart charging with ISO15118

545

:

The chargpoint operator knows how much energy the vehicle needs and when the vehicle needs

to be fully charged if the EV driver has provided a departure time, which is optional, but

546

:

they can.

547

:

So this makes smart charging a lot better and easier for the chargement operator.

548

:

They know how much energy they need to account for when they have several vehicles

charging at the same time at a specific site that has limited grid capacity.

549

:

Now, the...

550

:

Next version is ISO15118-20.

551

:

There are a lot of numbers I skipped here and don't want to go through all the other

documents.

552

:

It's not that relevant, but -20 is basically the newest version that enables true

bi-directional functionality.

553

:

not just charging the vehicle, but if you can finally also support the grid with energy

and frequency regulation.

554

:

And also there are other functionalities such as megawatt charging for trucks and ships

and airplanes, for example, that is unlocked with -20.

555

:

Also wireless charging and a bunch of other functionalities, better security.

556

:

But I think bidirectional charging and megawatt charging are probably the main drivers for

adopting ISO:

557

:

um I think I'm out of questions.

558

:

So unless there's anything else, thank you very much for your time.

559

:

I think it's been a fascinating conversation.

560

:

So the main thing that I took away from that discussion is that the standard is very much

in progress.

561

:

They're a lot further ahead in Europe than we are.

562

:

There are a couple of technical things that need to be ultimately sorted out, but the fact

that they've got a 300 and odd page manual to put the standard together means that they

563

:

thought about this in a great deal of detail.

564

:

Now, there are reasons, particularly why certain ChargePoint operators

565

:

haven't implemented Plug and Charge yet, they've prioritized it a little bit further down

the importance list than perhaps somebody like Ionity has.

566

:

Whether that's a problem or an issue, I'm not in a position to say.

567

:

All I can say is, I really wish that more companies, more ChargePoint operators would go

for the Plug and Charge option.

568

:

What do you think?

569

:

Would you like to see things stay as they are?

570

:

Go to Autocharge or go to plug and charge?

571

:

I think I know what my answer will be.

572

:

I hope you enjoyed listening to today's show.

573

:

It was put together this week with the help of Drew Hudart from Hubject.

574

:

And my guest, Mark Multin.

575

:

Thanks for their input.

576

:

If you have any thoughts, comments, criticisms or other general messages to pass on to me,

I can be reached at info at evmusings.com.

577

:

On the socials I'm on bluesky at evmusings.bsky.social.

578

:

I'm also on Instagram at evmusings where I post those little short videos in the odd

podcast extract regularly.

579

:

Why not follow me there?

580

:

Many thanks to everyone who supports me through Patreon on a monthly basis and through

coffee.com on an ad hoc basis.

581

:

Now, if you enjoyed this episode, why not buy me a coffee?

582

:

Go to coffee.com slash EV Musings and you can do just that.

583

:

KO dash FI dot com slash EV Musings.

584

:

Takes Apple Pay too.

585

:

Regular listeners will know about my two e-books.

586

:

So you've gone electric and so you've gone renewable.

587

:

Now they're 99p each or equivalent and you can get them on the Kendall store on Amazon.

588

:

Now check out the links in the show notes for more information as well as a link to my

regular EV Musings newsletter and associated articles.

589

:

Now I've spoken to a few of you and I know that you're probably driving, walking, jogging,

ironing or sat on the sofa watching this on your phone but if you can remember and you

590

:

enjoyed the episode drop a review in iTunes please, like, subscribe, leave a comment on

YouTube because it really helps.

591

:

If you've reached this part of the podcast and are still listening, thank you.

592

:

Why not let me know you've got to this point by messaging me at musingtv.bsky.social

with the words "Just plug. And charge.

593

:

#ifyouknowyouknow" nothing else.

594

:

Thanks as always to my co-founder, Simon.

595

:

You know I wanted his opinion on plug and charge and why it is that he can't take his electric

unicycle up to something like an ionity unit and recharge it there without all the faff of

596

:

authorizations and things like that.

597

:

And he told me.

598

:

You know, I'm asking myself the same question over and over in recent years, because it's

not rocket science at all, right?

599

:

Thanks for listening.

600

:

Bye bye now.

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About your host

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Gary Comerford

Gary has almost 30 years experience working with, primarily, US multinationals. Then he gave it all up to do his own thing and now works in film and television, driving and advocating for electric vehicles and renewables, and hosting the EV Musings Podcast.