The infrastructure for public electric vehicle charging in the
United Kingdom has recently exceeded 6,000 locations – all provided
by a variety of providers and networks with different forms of
payment and chargers. Unfortunately, this still makes it necessary
for the EV driver to handle more than one solution to access
different charging stations, a challenge that is obstructing the
rapid adoption of electric vehicles. To overcome this obstacle for
EV drivers, Share&Charge initiated an interoperability pilot
with partners like Electric Blue, EVBox, EVDriver, Hubeleon, The
Phoenix Works and Volkswagen Financial Services to test blockchain
as a possible solution.
Being able to charge electric vehicles easily and quickly
whenever and wherever customers need to is going to be one of the
most decisive factors in adopting new electric mobility. This
means that a seamless charging experience with unrestricted
access and convenient payment solutions is essential for the
technology's success. However, in many markets worldwide, there
is the phenomenon of limited interoperability as well as
cumbersome payment implementations, since each stakeholder is
working on their own solution. This is also true for the United
Kingdom.
Emerging blockchain technology offers a simple and easy-to-use
solution that achieves interoperability when paying for electric
vehicle charging. The open, trust-building and decentralised
nature of a blockchain network allows companies to interact
cooperatively in a competitive market and secure peer-to-peer
token transfers to facilitate straightforward payment. The
initiative from Share&Charge with Electric Blue, EVBox,
EVDriver, Hubeleon, The Phoenix Works and Volkswagen Financial
Services is now carrying out a pilot scheme in the UK to analyse
whether this vision can be achieved.
Share&Charge focuses on running technical integration tests
with different charging stations and test vehicles from
Volkswagen Financial Services as well as comparing costs of
traditional roaming solutions with a new decentralised approach.
Share&Charge, the blockchain network for EVs, is expanding
its outreach from Central Europe to the United Kingdom. Dietrich
Sümmermann, CEO of Share&Charge's mother company MotionWerk
GmbH explains: "We see great potential in this first trial and
blockchain can be the crucial enabler. Therefore, we are now
setting up a foundation as new entity to allow all parties to
cooperate and jointly define blockchain based standards for the
best of the end customer." MotionWerk has been a blockchain
spin-off of the innogy Innovation Hub whose vision it is to
further support an open sourced decentralised future of energy
which strongly converges with the Internet of Things, Blockchain,
smart devices and e-mobility.
Further information about Share&Charge is available
at https://shareandcharge.com/uk-charging-network/
