Larger battery packs and more widely available public charging options are two things that should soon ease range anxiety and make electric vehicles a practical option for many more drivers. What’s often omitted from the conversation, however, is that a different sort of anxiety remains, centered around public charging, which for newbies can be downright confounding. Public chargers aren’t often well labeled for format, let alone power, and it’s not unusual to see someone pull out the charging connector, look back and forth to see what fits, and then simply let an unfamiliar charger run awhile to get a grasp of its speed. It isn’t that way at the gas pump, of course. You know whether or not you need to go high octane, the nozzles almost always look and fit the same, and if not, it’s a sign that something’s wrong (such as, you’re trying to use a diesel nozzle to fill a gasoline car).
A new system called Chargeway aims to set a straightforward language for understanding car-charging options. Simply put, the color corresponds to the plug design (J1772, CCS, CHAdeMO, or Supercharger), while the number corresponds to the power and the potential charging rate. The system would clarify charging times for everyone and help those traveling outside their normal territory to pick out the fastest charger from among those available.
The idea has been brewing for several years—since Chargeway founder Matt Teske and his wife Anna took their Chevrolet Volt to a resort about an hour away from their home in Portland, Oregon. Resort staff had assured them that there was an electric-vehicle charger on site, so they went to charge up before dinner. What they found instead was a low-amp, 110-volt household AC plug at the garden shed—a scenario that would have required that the Teskes bring their own battery charger/adapter and essentially leave the Volt plugged in overnight to get its 38 miles of electric range back.
While most other aspects of driving an EV were familiar enough, Teske found that charging on longer trips became a source of anxiety—especially after adding a Chevrolet Spark EV to the household.
“Public charging was what I felt was the trickiest part, even as an early adopter,” he said. “The only thing I was having to relearn was how was I putting energy into the thing. This one aspect that felt so different is what I wanted to solve.”
Setting a Universal Language for Vehicle Charging
Teske, a marketing and branding strategist with nearly 20 years of experience in the auto industry, said that he began realizing that there were wide gaps of knowledge and understanding among the engineers designing electric vehicles, the mass market they wanted to reach, and the dealerships tasked with selling EVs. And then came a secret-shopper study conducted last year by the Sierra Club, finding that about half of dealerships didn’t have any information on public charging; 14 percent of the time, the study found, dealerships didn’t even keep enough charge in the vehicles for a test drive.
“I’ve worked with dealerships and done dealer training through my career. They like cars they can easily sell, and if they can easily sell something, they’ll do it all day,” Teske said. “There’s a massive disconnect at the dealership about explaining vehicle charging.”
Adopting a straightforward system like Chargeway’s could make a difference. For instance, for manufacturers, it would clearly differentiate a boost in charging speed for newer versions of electric vehicles. It could benefit charging companies, improving charger etiquette by discouraging drivers with slower-charging yet backward-compatible vehicles from becoming “charger hogs” at the few fastest chargers. Teske thinks public utilities could especially benefit from his labeling language, since they can’t advertise in a traditional sense. “It gives them a type of customer experience similar to just rolling up and getting 87.”
Teske reports positive responses so far from regulators, agencies, carmakers, and industry groups. He’s in the process of forming an initial coalition to bring all interested parties to the table on how to implement it. “There’s a lot of opportunity to create what would be a digital solution in the long term—having this visual identity represented in vehicles and smartphone apps,” he said.
As fast charging graduates past 50-kW speeds to faster 100- and 150-kW speeds and even to 350-kW and beyond, the numbers 4, 5, and 6 could be applied to that hardware. Teske’s idea, while not technologically disruptive in any way, is absolutely game changing, as it cuts through the clutter.
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