Where Transportation and Energy Meet and How it is Changing Cities
Comparing chargers to gas pumps is no longer appropriate (or accurate); chargers are not just “power faucets,” they can have significant information processing and analysis capabilities and have multiple high-level connectivity options to various entities. Clearly, the charger talks to the EV (mostly over power line communications, PLC), but at home, for example, the charger can talk to the Smart Home Energy Management System (EMS) that views the EV as an additional smart appliance (albeit one that can double a family’s energy bill). In fact, we have created a “modular brain” (a HW module with embedded SW) that transforms the “dumb” charger to a smart and connected one.