What is "plug & charge"?
An agreement between several players
The plug & charge protocol is the result of an agreement between several parties on a standard. Various elements interact in the operation, and each element is managed by a different entity.
You connect a charging cable to your vehicle, which will have been manufactured by a carmaker (Renault, Volkswagen, Kia, Audi...). Then you're going to connect your electric car to a charging station made by another manufacturer, operated by an operator like Freshmile or Ionity... All these players in your recharging process need to act together and get their act together, so that you can drive away with a full battery without having suffered any inconvenience, and in the simplest way possible, while avoiding the risk of someone ill-intentioned posing as you to recharge their vehicle at your expense.
This agreement is reflected in the adoption of a technological standard: ISO 15118.
For example, the players agree on the different certificates to be used (which makes it possible to uniquely identify that it is your vehicle, linked to your recharging contract, that is connecting and not another).
ISO 15118 standard
In use and on paper, the technology may seem very simple. Behind the screen, it's nothing of the sort.
The electricity grid is a sensitive infrastructure. Just imagine someone pretending to be you and connecting to your recharging contract at your expense. You'd immediately lose confidence in the technologies you're using (car, charging station, operator...).
During a recharge, your electric vehicle and the charging station exchange a large volume of information.
To guarantee the security and integrity of this information, your electric car and the charging station need to exchange data in a completely secure way, to prevent potential attacks or malicious actions against you through ill-intentioned use of the information exchanged.
To achieve this, the Plug & Charge protocol must be able to :
- Encrypt and decrypt the data to ensure that no third party or malicious actor is able to retrieve the information. This guarantees confidentiality.
- Detect whether a received data message has been altered between sender and recipient. This guarantees data integrity.
- Check that the person you are talking to (the electric vehicle or the charging station) is who he or she claims to be. This guarantees authenticity.
The ISO 15118 standard (on which the Plug & Charge protocol is based) specifies a set of cryptographic algorithms that guarantee the necessary level of confidentiality and verify both the integrity and authenticity of exchanged data.
In a nutshell, you pay for what you use for your refill, securely.
The protocol in practice
Plug and charge!
When you take out a contract with a recharging operator, if your vehicle is compatible, the Plug & Charge protocol enables you to recharge your electric car without even having to take out your bank card - even easier than at the gas pump! Your vehicle authenticates itself via the unique digital certificate, and you're automatically billed. Don't waste any more time looking for one of your three electric car charging cards. Just plug in and charge!
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Advantages and disadvantages
Plug & Charge is so easy to use, and the convenience it brings is something you won't want to do without. You can forget all about the hassle of recharging cards and activating charging points. You can save up to a good fifteen minutes per charge, so you can resume your journey with a smile on your face.
On the other hand, there are still a few challenges that Plug and Charge has not yet met, or is in the process of meeting.
The first is the democratization of this protocol. For everything to work as planned, we need
- Your vehicle is designed (physically) for plug & charge operation
- The terminal you are connecting to allows this
While more and more carmakers are adopting the protocol (BMW, Stellantis, Volkswagen...), few public charging stations offer it to date. However, the democratization of the protocol has accelerated in recent years. Automakers are betting on using it, and kiosk operators are increasingly integrating it, such as Ionity, which recently launched it on its network.
Please note that recharging at public charging stations is not the only way to recharge. Don't hesitate to contact us here so that our experts can find you the best recharging solution, fully customized and adapted to your needs!
In a nutshell
The Plug and Charge protocol, based on the ISO 15118 standard, is a major technological advance. The process of recharging an electric vehicle has been greatly simplified, and deployment of this innovation is imminent.
What's more, the ISO 15118 standard opens up the field of possibilities for future innovations or those currently being deployed, such as V2G (vehicle-to-grid: a technology that enables electric current to be fed back into the grid from an electric vehicle's battery) or induction charging (wireless charging). We hope to see these next innovations appear very soon, and will tell you more about them as soon as we've had a chance to test them.
Finally, and more generally, if you would like to know more about electric vehicle charging, I invite you to download our white paper which will answer all your questions. If you still haven't found the answer you're looking for, please don't hesitate to contact one of our advisers just here.
What do you think of Plug & Charge? Have you ever wasted time trying to activate a charging station? Tell us all about it in the comments section.
