With the undeniable dawn of Electric Vehicles upon us finally, it’s critical to realize that achieving that goal would require the hands of all to be put together to make that future a reality. Out of all the different promises of a dystopian future, EV really seems to be the one with the most promise, with a lot of cogs having to fall into place for the general customers and skeptics to slowly stop resisting and start accepting the future of Transportation.
One has to realize that even after all this, the amount of cooperation and capital in every step of the ladder from the consumers, to the manufacturers, and even the governments would have to be immense. Fortunately, technology has finally caught up with the expectations and the final product has been able to compete toe-to-toe and even beat out the Century-old and trusted Internal Combustion Engine in a matter of just a few years. The last straw finally being the Governments all around the world actively encouraging mass EV adoption, through active legislations, rebates, and tax exemptions. The chasm has been successfully crossed in almost all 1st world countries.
With the biggest obstacles out of the way, we still have a long long way to go. Only recently in countries such as US and a few in Europe have we began venturing from the Early Adopter to the Early Majority status in the Technology Adoption Curve. Realizing the final objective will involve networks and scale that can cover the entire planet, with one of the biggest challenges and the biggest talk points of skeptics still yet to be solved. The Electric Charging Station Concern.
We’re all aware of the role of an EV Charging Station. Electric Charging Stations were the center of quite a bit of controversy in the initial days when there was just Tesla in the market. Slowly as Tesla expanded and added thousands of new Supercharger stations across the entire country, the conversation slowly started taking a backseat. But with more and more brands starting to launch their own EVs, and Tesla choosing to make it’s network proprietary, the conversation has stirred up again with 3rd Party charging networks such as Electrify America & Ionity offering sub-standard service.
With Better Technology and Developments in Battery Tech, Manufacturers have managed to end the debate around the “Range-Anxiety”, where the main contention was around the significant sacrifice in driving range in Electric Vehicles as compared to the traditional ICE Vehicles. As we’ve finally managed to end that problem, a fresh new worry has now been emerging; popularly known as the “Charge-Point Angst”.
Imagine you’re on a long road trip out in the middle of nowhere, and your car alerts you that you’re left with only 10% of your battery. Naturally, you start panicking and check your maps, Much to your relief there’s a single charging point just within range of you, you start driving and finally reach the charging station at just 2% battery left, just to find out that it’s actually out of order or, or is unable to take payments. This fresh new worry is not a simple hypothetical or hyperbole from the Traditionalists or Skeptics, but a problem that is popular enough to have it’s own phrase coined, and the consequences of each occurrence are serious enough for stories to circulate.
A May 2019 survey by ZapMap showed almost a quarter of chargers were out of service in the United Kingdon, of this 25%, 7.5% were broken/not working while 16% were not communicating their status. The existence of this problem suggests a few possibilities, one being the Charge Point Operator is entirely unaware of its problem, or that he’s unable to rectify it. Both of which aren’t good, and require substantial effort on the part of the Operator to keep check of.
The IoT Solution
While almost all Electric Charging stations use some rudimentary form of IoT to indicate their status, there needs to exist a strong foundational groundwork for these networks, for them to be able to pave the way for the future. In order to eliminate this complexity, emphasis needs to be laid on solving the root cause of this uncertainty.
A major cause of concern is the delayed information relay; operators generally get to know the status of their Sites hours after the problems start occurring, for this revamping existing networks for Real-Time Information exchange is essential to provide a better customer experience.
We realize this isn’t a straightforward process, one which requires planning right from the stage of conceptualization, but if implemented at scale and kept a careful eye on it can easily result in immense savings and increased reliabilities. And in long term certainly play a key aspect in leveraging your EV Charging station brand over all the competition that will inevitably sprout up to jump on this valuable opportunity.
