The U.K.’s Elektromotive, a maker of electric-vehicle battery rechargers, says proposals by the ACEA, the European auto makers’ group, to adopt a common standard for EV plugs and sockets by 2017 are too little and too late.
The Brighton-based company says the continued lack of agreement across Europe on a shared standard is delaying the rollout of recharging points and holding back volume sales of EVs to consumers and businesses.
Critic says region needs compatible EV recharging hardware.
“While consensus from car manufacturers is both necessary and very welcome, the proposed timescales for implementation need to be much shorter,” Elektromotive Managing Director Calvey Taylor-Haw says in a statement.
“We have a range of EVs on the market right now, and many more are due next year. To give people across Europe sufficient confidence in the EV market so that they will actually buy these vehicles, we need widespread agreement on standards – right now.”
Taylor-Haw says auto makers are only part of the picture.
“More pressing is the need to ensure European governments reach a similar consensus, enabling the EV market to bring forward the deadline for when common standards can be implemented,” he says.
Taylor-Haw says a counterproductive situation already exists, with most countries backing one socket standard – IEC 62196 type 2 – and a few others supporting the alternative – IEC 62196 type 3.
“The most notable example of going against the tide is France, which is supporting a different socket standard to the IEC 62196 type 2 advocated by the ACEA and already adopted and used in most neighboring markets,” Taylor-Haw says.
“At a time when the driving range of EVs is improving, allowing users to cover much greater distances, we have a situation where EV owners in one country could cross a national border and then find they can’t recharge their vehicle due to the sockets being different.”
Taylor-Haw envisions a future in which owners would have to carry a range of recharging leads with different plug formats in the trunk of their EV.
“This would be a great shame, considering the rare chance we all have to standardize,” he says. Governments and the International Electrotechnical Commission need to come together, now, to hammer out an agreement. Only then will we see real momentum in sales of EVs.”
Elektromotive says under existing conditions, EV recharging stations must be retrofitted with sockets compatible with the new European-standard plug once it is approved. That is making the recharging units more costly to manufacture and purchase.
Some governments, local authorities and businesses are holding off on issuing tenders for new recharging networks until the socket-standards issue has been resolved, it says.
Taylor-Haw also calls for agreement on common standards for secure access to the various charging stations being made by different manufacturers.
“EV users must have the freedom to charge their vehicle at any publicly available recharging point, regardless of who manufactured it,” he says.
“We must also consider how, in the future, EV users might want to switch energy suppliers for charging their vehicle.
That means having back-office billing data processed in formats that can be easily shared by suppliers. As with EV plugs and sockets, we are still a long way from settling on the required common standards.”
Elektromotive’s first Elektrobay charging station was introduced in 2006 in Westminster, London, and more than 200 units have been installed throughout the capital.
Another 655 Elektrobay stations operate in other U.K. cities.
The company also has more than 1,700 stations installed in Australia, New Zealand, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hong Kong, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, South Korea, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden.
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