Mainstreaming Electric Vehicles: eDRV Joins the Open Charge Alliance

Photo by Kelly Lacy from Pexels.

More than 3 million electric vehicles (EVs) are expected to be on the roads across Europe and the United States by 2025. The ongoing coronavirus crisis will likely put a dent on short term sales. But recent news from China, Germany, and the U.S. underscores that long term trends remain in favor of electrification.

At eDRV, we’re thrilled to be a part of this growth, and this month, we have joined the Open Charge Alliance to begin testing with and contributing to the open standards that make EV charging a seamless and convenient experience for drivers.

Growing demand for EVs increases the need for a well-developed, accessible charging infrastructure. The estimated requirement varies significantly across countries. On average, a public or semi-public charger is required for every 5 to 10 EVs. As a result, charging stations such as the ones found in malls, offices, or multi-tenant apartment buildings will likely constitute the fastest-growing segment for EV charging through 2025, even in mature EV markets like Norway and the Netherlands.  

The Open Charge Alliance is a non-profit consortium created by leaders in the EV infrastructure industry. The Alliance defines one of the most widely used communication protocols -- Open Charge Point Protocol (or OCPP) -- for networked charging stations and central management systems. OCPP is open, royalty, and patent-free, and has become the de-facto communication standard for hundreds of charging networks across the globe.

The majority of existing networks in Europe and North America run on the older OCPP 1.6 version. Over the last few weeks, we have been working on our implementation of OCPP 2.0.1 and testing with major global EV charging hardware vendors such as Alfen, BP Chargemaster, and others. OCPP 2.0.1 makes several improvements, most notably, security, driver authorization, enhanced smart charging, and added support for plug and charge made possible by ISO15118. By joining the Alliance and testing deployment, we are making it easy for customers to deploy advanced functionality like reservations and plug and charge.  

By utilizing advanced functionality for EV charging and making it easily accessible via eDRV’s APIs, we believe that commitment to open standards and effective collaboration with all the players in the EV charging industry will make EVs go mainstream.