As electric vehicles go mainstream, charging must evolve

The electric vehicle (EV) market is entering a new phase of maturity, moving beyond the early adopters and into the mainstream. This entails a radically different set of users with significantly different requirements when it comes to the charging experience. Charging—in terms of cost, accessibility, time requirements, and ease of use—is frequently cited as an obstacle for greater EV uptake. “EVs have not yet reached the tipping point of mass adoption, but we are getting closer in some markets,” says Floris van de Klashorst, Global Head of Products and Platforms at charging expert ABB E-mobility. Successfully meeting the charging needs of the mass-market consumer will be pivotal in the realisation of an electric future.

The first commercial EV charging station in Europe, located in the Netherlands, opened in 2010 and featured a 50kW charger by ABB. “The first generation of chargers were designed for an early-adopter market,” van de Klashorst tells Automotive World. “These were very industrial units, and attention was primarily directed on power and delivery. They were not terribly consumer-centric.” For this initial generation, the industry was focussed on understanding the workings of the technology, the use cases, and how drivers could incorporate it into their daily life. Learnings along these lines have been significant, but certain aspects have been neglected.

“Early adopters are a great proving ground for new tech and new services; they are very forgiving and like to tinker,” he continues. “They are great for providing feedback. But when it comes to mass adoption, we need to put more focus on the user experience. The technology must work all the time, and it has to be easy to use. The chargers also need to fit into public spaces in an attractive manner.”

Setting new standards

As the industry enters the EV 2.0 era, charging providers are zeroing in on hardware reliability, user experience, and societal integration. When it comes to public fast -charging for light vehicles, ABB’s A400 All-in-One charger is an example of “the best possible charging experience” for customers. That’s according to the company and its charging operator partner Fastned.

The latter is piloting the A400 at its largest charging location in the Netherlands, Den Ruygen Hoek-West, on the A4 highway. The pilot will provide real-time feedback on performance and usability. Yannick Schuermans, Director of Operations and Analytics at Fastned, believes the new unit “has the potential to set new standards in hardware reliability and user experience, which have historically been underserved in the industry.”

The A400 stands out from previous generations in that it has been developed with a consumer-centric design approach. A 32-inch screen and interface guides drivers through the entire charging experience. “The market is still learning, so we have put considerable emphasis and direct a lot of user testing into the dialogue between user and charger solution,” says van de Klashorst.

To reduce error messages and service interruption, ABB E-mobility has implemented an intelligent software event manager, which oversees the many subsystems within the charger and evaluates all the incoming data for the system as a whole. “Early systems were not very respectful to the user, simply presenting an error and leaving it up to the user to figure it out. No problem for an early adopter market, but not acceptable for the broader audience we have to serve today.”

The A400 has also optimised power efficiency close to 100%. “Our products are highly efficient,” emphasises van de Klashorst. “But we didn’t stop there. We also addressed the role of the charger within the public space. Many of the existing chargers in the market were intimidating. We want to make our chargers friendly. It sounds odd to use that term for cold metal, but it’s clear that some machinery is pleasant to interact with and some is not. This is a soft side of charger design that we feel is very important; we want our cities and our places to be beautiful and not polluted by poorly designed products.”

Asset management

The A400 is rated at 400kW, which serves most EVs on the market today that typically demand charges below 200kW. For charge point operators (CPOs), it makes sense to have the ability to share the power between cables to optimise their investment. “CPOs have typically overinvested in products in the past, having unused kilowatts because the power couldn’t be shared,” van de Klashorst observes.

All charging solutions should be tailored for specific use cases, and these can vary widely. But whether it’s a single family home charger, a motorway fast-charging station, destination chargers at a shopping centre, depot charging for fleets or the emerging public network of Megawatt Charging Systems for heavy trucks, everyone wants an intuitive and reliable experience.

“In the past, the industry has approached this market too much like a vending machine business: a charger was installed, connected, and left to do its job. But we realised that we need to approach high-performance chargers much more as a node in a network.” Users want to charge as quickly as possible, and operators want to optimise profit. ABB E-mobility breaks down the management of chargers into two domains: power and the experience. The aim is to maintain stable power delivery while allowing for rapid updates and new features on the human-machine interface.

“We can guarantee performance because we manage these chargers 24/7. It’s not a case of a single machine plugged in somewhere. It’s a connected asset that we constantly monitor, update, and improve. Like a mobile phone, it improves over time,” he explains. ABB E-mobility enables that by developing key parts of the charger technology in-house. “This means we have more insight into the charging logics—how we charge and communicate with the vehicle. We have better diagnostics and can monitor many more points in the process, allowing us to better tailor the charging experience for different vehicles and improve battery health.”

The tipping point

ABB E-mobility is one of the world’s largest providers of charging solutions and has electrified more than 10,000 sites across 85 markets. With its global reach and market influence, the company is helping to shape the future of e-mobility. One of its earlier charging models, the Terra 360, made Time magazine’s top 200 best inventions of 2022 list. Could the A400 do the same? “We definitely hope so,” states van de Klashorst. “We designed it to be a winner in the market and in line with how the industry and user demands are changing, especially as EVs become much more of a mass-market proposition.”

Today ABB describes itself as a one-stop shop for hardware, software, connectivity, and services. In terms of charging, it serves as an example of the innovation and reach that could make a real difference in the market’s evolution. But the wider success of e-mobility hinges on more than just charging innovation. “There is not a single crucial innovation in this world that has not been supported by fundamental research at universities, government incentives, or both,” warns van de Klashorst. “We don’t have scale yet. Government support through incentives are a good example of an effective instrument to help achieve the scale that the industry needs to reach our environment goals.”