It will bring a better experience and more services to users. In addition, it will save costs!
Industrial representatives from all electric mobility players gathered in a first plennery session. Their aim is to support the deployment of the new-generation electric mobility. Ultimately, any AC and DC terminal installed in France should be compatible with the ISO 15118 vehicle-terminal communication standard, but also secure and interoperable.
If you have ever owned an electric vehicle, you know the pleasure of less polluting the air… but also the complications of recharging. Today, electric vehicle charging system is at a crossroads. The price of electric vehicles becomes accessible, the batteries are breaking distance records. To allow a better user experience and more services, the major remaining obstacle is the maturity of charging systems. If overcame, it will bring smart charging, plug & charge (see definitions below) and later on, bidirectionnal charging systems (the car recharges the network) or even wireless systems.
To achieve this, the main French and European players are converging towards compliance with a standard for communication between terminals and vehicles, the ISO15118 standard. However, to enable the emergence of terminals compatible with this standard, and therefore an open market, it is necessary to bring all the players around the table and agree on the final specifications. One major point remains to be defined: that of cybersecurity (PKI).
General mobilisation
To this end, the main organisations representing the sectors involved in electric recharging joined forces on 7 July 2020 in the form of an Initiative for New-Generation Electric Recharge: AFIREV (Association Française pour l’Itinérance de la Recharge Electrique), AVERE (Association nationale pour le développement de la mobilité électrique), PFA (Plateforme Française de l’Automobile) and the VEDECOM Institute (research and innovation on the mobilities of the future), the latter being tasked with coordinating the initiative.
Several workshops then gave rise to a plenary meeting on 17 September 2020, bringing together around fifteen French industrialists from each sector: energy specialists such as Enedis, car manufacturers such as PSA Group, such as Schneider Electric, charging infrastructure and e-mobility services operators such as Freshmile, technology and services for e-mobility suppliers such as Trialog.
Electric Charging Initiative partners ©VEDECOM
The circle will gradually be extended to all manufacturers in order to deploy the ISO 15118 standard by 2023.
The plenary session enabled the participation of other institutional actors such as the French Ministry of Ecology (DGEC), which supports and accompanies the Initiative. It will ensure that the specicifications defined by the Initiative for the developpers are consistent with the French “Objective 100,000 charging stations” plan. The Ile de France Region was also participating. The local authority is working since 2029 on the deployment of more than 5,000 charging stations by 2022, notably with the help of the IRVE label: a system that complements national aid such as Advenir. Finally, the initiative is working together with existing French and European working groups on this theme.
3 years to manage the deployment of a standard
If one wants to implement 15118 standard into charging systems and allow plug & charge service, it is first necessary for the charging stations manufacturers to make them interoperable, i.e. able to recognise any electricity supplier and any charging infrastructure operator. It is also necessary for charging infrastructure and e-mobility services operators, as well as for technology and service providers, to learn how to make this standard work, how to implement new blocks in their information systems. This first step will allow cardless charging and plug & charge. Finally, they need to improve the security of the connection.
To achieve this, VEDECOM, as the project’s prime contractor, has proposed a two-step calendar:
- First step (2020): define the adapted cybersecurity architecture (ISO 15118 PKI) for Plug and Charge (PnC).
- Second step (by 2021-23): define a standardised, interoperable and industrialisable PnC and Smart Charging system to support a collaborative deployment. Some tests will be carried out on pilot sites. Various documents will be produced by the working group, training and technical workshops will be proposed in 2021 and 2022. At the end of this stage, all the players will benefit of all necessary tools and knowledge. By 2023, the planners and operaters will be able to start the deployment of the new-generation electric charging.
What will ISO 15118 bring in charging systems?
- Plug & Charge (PnC): this solution automatically identifies the user’s service contract by simply connecting the charging cable between the vehicle and the terminal, with a high level of security and a simplified user experience. It therefore avoids the need for multiple badges: “you plug in the cable.. and the charging process starts automatically”.
- Smart charging: this solution enables to program a recharging schedule that is negotiated between the terminal and the vehicle and optimised according to their technical constraints, the needs and requirements of the driver and the network electrical constraints.
Plug & charge preconditions :
- a service contract installed in the electric vehicle
- an electric vehicle and a PnC-compatible terminal
- interoperability so that any vehicle can be recharged at any charging station
Discover the main partners of the initiative:
- PFA (Plateforme Française de l’Automobile)
- AFIREV (Association Française pour l’Itinérance de la Recharge Electrique)
- AVERE (Association nationale pour le développement de la mobilité électrique)
- VEDECOM Institute (research and innovation on the mobilities of the future),