A New Open Charging Protocol Will Bring Tesla Supercharger Convenience to All EV Users

Tesla Superchargers are one of the reasons Tesla vehicles have been successful. The seamless integration means the car “knows” where the next supercharger session needs to be integrated into the route. Once at the station, a Tesla owner would just plug in his car and everything, including billing, is taken care of automatically. No credit cards, no phone apps, no ID is necessary, since the car functions like a giant hardware token to access the station.

Over the fence, most traditional carmakers that offer electric vehicles at the moment rely on third-party charging networks. Many have described the charging experience as horrible and this is one of the reasons people are still not convinced to buy an EV. Usually, you need to install an app on your phone and introduce your billing information to access the charging services. And you need to keep doing this for every different charging network you want to plug your car into.

This is not even the biggest issue, but the fact that many stations are out of order or offer only slow charging. Your car has not enough information to route you to the best charging station on your trip. Even so, you might find it is broken or already occupied, so EV owners rely on more phone apps to look for the best charging stations and announce their presence at the station. It’s understandable why every EV owner dreams of a charging experience closer to what Tesla owners benefit from.

This should not take long if all the parties involved will shake hands and offer a unified charging protocol for everyone to access. After all, every electric car is just a giant token, there’s no need for further credentials to access different services, some as basic as charging. Efforts have already started years ago to develop an open charging protocol.

As early as 2018, Hubject has partnered with Daimler to offer a seamless charging experience. The fact this protocol is called “Plug&Charge,” “Plug and Charge” or “Plug & Charge” tells us that these efforts have gone to waste for the most part. But new efforts into developing the dream charging protocol have sparked new optimism.

Hubject has further developed its protocol based on the ISO15118 standard and it calls it now Open Plug & Charge Protocol (OPCP). This relies on open-sourcing the system for all others to access and build upon. According to Hubject, there are already a growing number of operators and providers that offer charging services based on this protocol. We don’t know how many, but we know Virta, for instance, announced last year a charging solution based on Hubject’s protocol.

According to Virta, charging an EV is as simple as plugging it in, just like in the case of the Tesla Supercharger network. The car will send identification data to the station and the billing information is automatically looked up. Once it finds the relevant information in the database, the charging process begins. Sounds wonderful, but there’s still a long way to go.

At the time, only a few carmakers offer vehicles that support sending ID information via charging cable. The same is true about the charging stations themselves. As open as it may be, this new protocol is only as good as the parties involved are willing to play nice to each other for the greater benefit of the customers. Hopefully, this will happen sooner rather than later.