EV charging- Can we get a standard system?
What one charging company has to do so you can charge
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Not all electric vehicles (EVs) are created equal. Neither are their batteries. That’s why one driver’s experience at a public charging station could be quite different from the next EV owner who pulls in.
There is no standard system. Batteries have different capacities and can accept electricity at different speeds. So even if a vehicle is hooked up to the quickest DC Fast Charger, it may not be able to take as much electricity as the charger can offer.
(Credit: Electrify America)
Making sure your EV gets the right amount of power, requires a lot of work behind the scenes. I had a chance to see some of that work at Electrify America’s (EA) Center of Excellence Lab. In a nondescript industrial park, software engineers are plugging chargers into a variety of vehicles. EA likes to say it is vehicle agnostic. That means it has to make sure every model can use its system.
SOFTWARE HANDSHAKE
“We have dozens of different EV makes and models all with their own different software as well. And we have our own chargers that use their own software that we need to make sure work very well with all the payment systems,” said Anthony Lampkin, the Senior Director of Operations for Electrify America.
A vehicle being tested at Electrify America's lab.
Watching over the engineers is Matt Raba. He is the charging software lead at the lab. “There's a lot that can potentially go wrong. And that's again, why we orchestrate it all here to make sure that we're getting it as right as we can get it,” Raba told me. “We're constantly making sure that the communication between the car and the charger works seamlessly for the customer,” he said.
Electrify America is owned and run by Volkswagen. The German automaker agreed to invest $2 billion as part of its settlement of the “dieselgate" case with the US government. EA has 800 charging stations today and hopes to more than double that to 1,800 stations.
(Credit: Electrify America)
“We really believe that ultra-fast charging is really what's going to give customers that experience they're used to,” Lampkin says, using EA’s term for higher-kilowatt charging.
FAST CHARGING
Today 350kW is the fastest charging available. “We really feel that 350 kilowatts is going to continue to be the standard in future,” he added. A 350kW charge should be able to fill up a battery in 20-30 minutes.
Electrify America CEO Giovanni Palazzo at one of the company's charging stations. (Credit: Electrify America)
The CEO of EA told me he believes charging needs to get down to four or five minutes, similar to a stop for gasoline today. That may be possible because, as Lampkin says, “they're discussing a megawatt charging standard. So I think you'll see us charging speeds upwards of a megawatt.”
While 70% of EV owners are expected to charge at home, these stations will be the charging spot for apartment dwellers and those on long road trips.
“We're trying to build range confidence and drive toward the freedom that you have with your current traditional internal combustion engine vehicle… and give people the confidence that they can go out and buy an EV and not have to worry about where they need to charge in public,” Lampkin said.
WILL THERE BE STANDARDS?
It’s unlikely we will see standards anytime soon that would make batteries uniform. But there are some changes that could make setting up public charging stations easier. Already the industry seems to be whittling down the type of connectors.
Lampkin says there is more work to do on standardization including where your car’s plug is located. EA would like to see standard port placement, “because from a site design standpoint and ergonomics and a cable management standpoint… it is a bit more complex trying to manage all the different vehicles and the different port placements.”
Electrify America's Center of Excellence Lab where engineers make sure every EV on the market can use one of the company's public chargers. Full video is here.
When you get to that station, you want to make sure its software will talk to your car’s software. That is why in this industrial park, EA is making sure its chargers are speaking the right language to your EV.
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(Cover image credit: Electrify America)