Following on from successful meetings at eCarTec in previous years, CHAdeMO Europe hosted its seventh Annual European Member Meeting in Munich on the 19th October 2016. With twenty-nine organisations represented from across the Electric Vehicle sector, the meeting brought together the leading names in the industry to discuss the future of Fast Charging in Europe.
Our fist speaker was Dave Yoshida, the Secretary General of CHAdeMO Association. He gave an update on the current situation for CHAdeMO globally as well as its plans for the future including high power CHAdeMO protocol as well as CHAdeMO-enabled V2G operations, which will play an important role in smart grid systems of the future, with electric vehicles becoming more and more common. According to the SG of the Association, CHAdeMO’s strategy is to grow its global certification support network as electro mobility expands globally. Vehicle certification and charger maintenance monitoring programme were suggested as potential new development areas. He has also reported on CHAdeMO electric bus charging test in Malaysia as well as the possibility of e-motorcycle charging.
Next was CHAdeMO European Member Liaison Officer, Natalia Kozdra, who presented the association’s new website, currently being built by CHAdeMO, and explained its new features that aim to increase the visibility of the members. Key among these are the product pages that allow manufactures to showcase their CHAdeMO products directly on CHAdeMO’s website and enable website visitors to contact companies directly. This presentation gave members a preview of the new look for CHAdeMO’s branding more generally and called for input from members to make the website a reflection of their preferences.
Jorma Autio, VP, Head of Solutions Business at Delta Energy Systems EMEA gave a presentation on Delta’s experiences of high power charging. He asserted that EVs will cost the same as internal combustion engines by 2020, quoting advances in battery technology as being critical in the adoption of EVs by mass market. He presented his company’s high power charging station, which allows for charging of up to four vehicles at once with up to 150kW of power. While some practical problems such as the optimal length for cables and users blocking the usage of charging bases for too long still need to be addressed, he was positive about the need for faster charging power and Delta’s ability to deliver.
The Belib’ semi-fast vehicle charging network in Paris, established by the City of Paris, has been open to EV drivers since January 2016. Lafon Technologies, a CHAdeMO member company, delivered chargers to the project. Lafon’s Export Business Manager, Bertrand Kuhn, presented basic information about Belib’ and its plans for expansion. 60 charging stations are planned by the end of 2016, with another 30 to follow in 2017. Each station is equipped with two CHAdeMO and Combo 2 connectors as well as two Type 2, Type 3 sockets schuko sockets, to be able to serve all EVs on the market and with a creative pricing scheme that discourages long parking during the day. Per Lafon’s representative, the biggest share of charging sessions was delivered by Type 3 plug (40%), followed by CHAdeMO (26%), then schuko (25%), with the Type 2 and CCS being used the least, 7% and 2% respectively.
Marcus Fendt, The Mobility House’s Managing Director, gave feedback on the company’s V2X project experience and hopes for the future of the vehicle to grid market in Germany. The Mobility House links electric mobility with energy market by positioning itself as an aggregator of EVs that plans to sell grid services such as demand response management and frequency balancing once EVs and V2G technology become mainstream. With problems of periodic energy overproduction affecting the German grid, Marcus explained how vehicle-to-grid could be the solution. V2G technology, enabling the usage of EV battery as ‘storage on wheels,’ may bring real savings to consumers while providing important services to the grid.
Selvam Kandasamy, Head of Embedded Systems at Mahindra Electric, joined CHAdeMO member meeting to present Mahindra’s new e2o vehicle, recently launched in the UK. He explained the background behind the product and Mahindra’s place in the Indian EV market more generally. A small hatchback, equipped with CHAdeMO inlet in Europe, will be able to benefit from most of CHAdeMO charging stations in Europe and is aimed at city drivers.
Natalia Kozdra presented CHAdeMO’s paper on multistandard charger usage breakdown by plug type in Europe, where multistandard chargers are now the de facto standard. CHAdeMO received data from four European fast charger operators (Rapid Charge Network in the UK; Fastned in the Netherlands; Clever in Denmark; Smatrics in Austria) and compared the charger usage (kWh delivered and sessions charged) by connector type with EV market breakdown in each market. The paper found that each market was different and only some showed some correlation between the EV market and charger usage by connector. However, given that their data collected was limited, it was hard to draw many more conclusions beyond that.
Hervé Borgoltz, CEO of DBT-CEV, spoke about how his company was anticipating the arrival of EVs with larger batteries and operators upgrading their networks to faster charging. He presented the history of DBT and their 24 years long involvement with e-mobility and showcased their new generation fast charging product. Currently enabling up to three cars to charge simultaneously at 50 kW, the modular device can be upgraded to allow 150kW charging of a single EV. Equipped with remote testing and fault prevention, DBT positions the device as a robust answer to operators’ future needs of high power charging.
On top of industry presentations and updates from CHAdeMO association, European Member Meeting was also an opportunity for new CHAdeMO members to present their company and products.
Comemso’s Anita Athanasas presented their new CHAdeMO analyser/simulator. The analyser, existing both in the lab form as well as a portable suitcase-size device enables the user to check the charger for standard conformity, interoperability and reliability. It exists in three standard versions: CHAdeMO, CCS and GBT and for each of the standards it uses the same interface. For CHAdeMO protocol, Comemso has created a testing automation according to 1.1 version of the protocol. Additionally, as she explained, Comemso is working on the vehicle-side testing.
Robert Weber, Head of Sales & Technology at Cosinus talked about isolation monitoring for EVs and charging infrastructure developed by Cosinus and gave a practical demonstration of the technology. Quoting the results from the German Federal Road Resource Institute, he emphasised the importance of periodical testing of Isolation and isolation monitoring for EVs as well as for charging infrastructure.
Roberto Maceratini from Bitron gave the members gathered in the room an overview of the company and explained their involvement with fast charging market. Being an engineering company, Bitron helps other companies bring their ideas and designs to production and their most recent project involved developing a multi-standard charger for Italian utility company Enel.
The Annual CHAdeMO European Member Meeting was again a great success. Apart from getting updates about the Association and its near-future development plans, members welcomed the opportunity to network and exchange with key e-mobility stakeholders as well as CHAdeMO experts and management. The meeting reinforced the value of the association on the continent’s e-mobility landscape and its contribution to the development of the European e-mobility market.
