⚡ Why Open Source Charger Management Software is here to stay!

Happy Wednesday. This is Electric Avenue. The only e-Mobility newsletter that equips you with top secret knowledge - like the ancient Ninja warriers had 🥷.

Here’s what we have for you today:

• 1 Poll: Charger Reservation 📊

• Why Open Source Charger Management Software is here to stay!⚡

• 3 Links 🔗

• Meme of the week 🤡

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Let's get into it!

1 Poll: Charger Reservation 📊

In our electric camping roadtrip post, we asked y’all to vote if you would like to reserve public fast charging stations. Here are the results:

✅ 55% voted that they would like to reserve a public fast charging station! 

This was a close one, showing how controversial this topic is in our industry. We also received some write-ins with people’s votes:

#1 - Voted ✅: “As long as there are some charging stations that also cannot be reserved for impromptu people stopping there. Also if you miss your reservation time you should have to forfeit it.”

#2 - Voted ❌: “What you want is certainty - and reservation isn't certain to provide you that (e.g. the station can still be ICE'd or otherwise blocked). Not talking about the downsides for a CPO (such as having to take into account buffer times between users) That certainty can be provided with even greater reliability with forecasting tools, e.g. such as PUMP, Moovility, and Tesla are using.”

#3 - Voted ❌: “Reservation does not make sense, especially with DC chargers, as charging times are getting shorter and shorter. Taking money for reservation is simply undemocratic! People who drive a company car can just spend the money, other people who can't spend so much money are disadvantaged in this.”

What do y’all think about this topic? Leave us a comment on the web version of this post.

📣 Do you want to share your thoughts on public fast charging reservation in a guest post? → Drop us an e-mail at [email protected]

⚡Why Open Source Charger Management Software is here to stay!

The e-mobility revolution is not just about cutting-edge vehicles, but also the technology and software that makes charging those vehicles smarter, more efficient, and interconnected. Open source has increasingly become a discussion point within the industry, and for good reason.

We have not been shy about our love for free & open-source software (FOSS) here at Electric Avenue. In fact, we specifically called it out as one of several solutions in our post on Why Charging Sucks - and what to do about it. At the time, we were talking about EVerest, the open source embedded OS for chargers, as an example for this.

Well, this week another major FOSS release happened with US-based software company S44 releasing Citrine OS - an open-source cloud-based Charging Station Management System (CSMS). Citrine OS is available on Github under the flexible Apache 2.0 License and supports the latest OCPP 2.0.1 charger-to-cloud communication protocol - enabling compliance with public funding requirements in the US, Korea, and other parts of the world.

We took this as an occasion to review where we currently stand in regards to Open Source initiative for the CSMS part of the ecosystem: In doing our research, we counted a total of 6 FOSS charger management system projects - see below for the official GitHub repositories.

Open Source CSMS Project List:

• Citrine OS 

• maeve-csms 

• EV-Server 

• SteVe 

• ChargeGrid 

• ChargeAngels (Added on 26th of October 2023)

As you can see, the projects differ in their licensing models, supported OCPP versions (protocol for the communication between charger and cloud) and the used programming language. Some projects also “loose steam” 🚂over time, while others attract more and more developers as contributors.

📣 Hit reply if you know more projects and we will update the online article.

3 Thoughts about Open Source in E-Mobility 💭

Collaborative approach enables interoperability 🫂: Open source allows for collective intelligence. Multiple developers and industry experts can collaborate, enabling rapid technological advancements. As the e-mobility ecosystem grows, it's essential for different systems to communicate seamlessly (vehicles —> chargers —> charger cloud backends —> energy management systems/the grid). Open source systems, built on universal standards (sharing the code and not only a PDF specification), will enable better compatibility between various stakeholders. An open-source system can be audited by anyone (on the code level!), which leads to more secure, reliable, and trusted systems.

Lowering barriers & cost efficiency 💸: By utilizing open-source platforms, companies can focus on building their unique selling proposition on top of a reliable open-source system as a base layer. It enables companies to have a faste time-to-market without the high costs of proprietary systems and while simultaneously avoiding vendor lock-in. This can reduce costs for end-users too.

Open Source must be done Right 🔎: Commercial companies will only adopt and contribute to an open-source system if there are no major road blocks causing concerns. Among those concerns are:

• Intellectual Property ©: Companies want to build proprietary features on top without the need to contribute them back to the FOSS project -> the licensing scheme must enable this (e.g. Apache 2.0).

• Quality and Security 🔐: To avoid vulnerabilities or suboptimal solutions from FOSS, companies will want to favor projects accredited by neutral and trusted organizations (e.g. Linux Foundation). Those foundations help developers to manage and scale open-source projects and ensure neutral governance of the project.

• Support Challenges ☎️: Relying on community support can be unpredictable, especially for businesses that require guaranteed uptime and rapid problem resolution. They will favor open source projects where they can get implementation and maintenance support from commercial vendors with professional Service Level Agreements.

We at Electric Avenue think that open-source disruption can not be stopped in the e-mobility industry (drawing the conclusion from other industries). However, there is no necessity for multiple open-source systems providing the same functionalities. Eventually, competing systems may merge and collaborative efforts could be channeled into one project. Only time will tell which project will win the race, but these are exciting developments😊

3 Links 🔗

• Losing confidence: Genesis, the premium brand of Hyundai group, seems to have pulled the plug on its wireless charging efforts. The company was working with Witricity to add wireless charging as an option to its GV60 EV in Korea in 2021. But now reports suggest that the handful of pilot wireless charging pads Genesis had installed are being dismantled - and a planned rollout of 75 wireless chargers across malls and other destinations in Korea never happened. (Link - in Korean)

• BMW goes NACS: BMW with its brands MINI and Rolls-Royce is the the latest automaker group to officially announce the adoption of Tesla’s NACS connector in North America. There is one similarity to Hyundai/KIA’s NACS announcement from two weeks ago: BMW/MINI/RR drivers will only receive access to Superchargers in early 2025, not 2024 like Ford, GM, and other brands. (Link)

• Volvo goes DCS: Back in 2020, Volvo announced that it’s public charging payment service in Europe would be operated in cooperation with Berlin-based eMSP Plugsurfing. Now the company switched its offering to rivaling eMSP provider Digital Charging Solutions (DCS) - a joint venture owned by BMW, Mercedes, and oil giant BP. (Link)

🔗 Most-clicked link last week: McKinsey’s article on public fast charging station operators’ levers to become profitable (Link)

Meme of the Week 🤡

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That's a wrap for this week! Let us know how you feel and leave some feedback (We read every single one of these 🙂 ):

Reader Review of the Week

Selected ⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️ Freakin´ awesome on ⚡️ 4.000 km Roadtrip with Camping in a Tesla Model Y ⛺️ and wrote:

“Really great experiential post!”

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DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial or tax advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. The Electric Avenue team may hold investments in or may otherwise be affiliated with the companies discussed. . Fundin