Future-proofing EV Charging with the Right EV Management Platform

Posted By Driivz Team

June 6, 2021

The electric vehicle charging industry is thriving, there is no doubt about that. Business opportunities abound, while technical challenges keep industry players on their feet. For EV charging providers a critical phase is selecting the right EV charging management platform that connects and serves the eMobility and energy management worlds with an eye toward the market’s unique attributes. The ideal platform would tackle today’s challenges while future-proofing the EV charging business for tomorrow.

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Based on our experience with leading EV charging industry players, we’ve created the ‘Decision Maker’s Guide to Selecting an EV Charging Management Platform’, a thought leadership whitepaper, that’s a deep dive on how to choose an EV charging management platform, covering industry challenges, requirements, and the three potential implementation approaches – buy, build, or both. The highlights of the whitepaper will be covered in a three-blog series. 

In this first part of the series, we will review the challenges of today’s EV charging industry.

The EV charging market is unique. Due to its exceptionally rapid growth, evolving charging behaviors and standards, existing and still-to-be-discovered energy constraints, its challenges are complex. Let’s examine the top five challenges EV charging industry players face today:

  1. Rapid market growth and expanding requirements. The increasing demands of private EV owners and EV fleets mean EV charging providers must quickly build and manage an ever-increasing number of charge points. Networking and proactive management to avoid performance degradation and high maintenance costs are crucial. eMobility providers who are growing via mergers or acquisitions require the ability to migrate and integrate disparate systems, comply with a variety of regulations across regions, and support the existing and new network hardware infrastructure.
  1. Fast-evolving market. Charge point operators, eMobility service providers, EV charging hosts, and electric vehicle service providers have uniquely different and ever-changing business and technological requirements. Support for a dizzying number of charger types and varying charging scenarios is needed.
  1. Earning customer satisfaction and loyalty. EV drivers demand a frictionless charging experience and the ability to charge anywhere – home, office, at retail hosting sites, on the road in their home region or country, as well as abroad, where EV roaming, as well as multicurrency and multi-language support, is critical. EV drivers expect it to be easy to plan their journeys, get real-time status of charger availability, make reservations, and easily pay their bills or report issues.
  1. Ensuring power availability and quality. The total amount of utility-generated energy is finite, so as more energy is required to serve the increasing number of EVs on the road, the greater the risk becomes of over-straining the grid. Demands may cause local transformers to exceed their capacity at peak hours, potentially requiring costly upgrades of the infrastructure. At the same time, grid utilization should be always maximized.
  1. Achieve simplicity in a complex environment. Managing EV charging in an optimized way is complex– ensuring hardware compatibility and availability, supporting myriad business models and verticals. Furthermore, integration of all back-end systems, the grid, and other parts of the infrastructure, requires continuous innovation and interoperability. Having said that, EV charging providers as well as EV drivers expect a smooth and intuitive user experience.

Now that we have assessed the challenges facing today’s EV charging industry, we will define the imperatives of an EV charging management platform that addresses these challenges in Part 2 of this series. Stay tuned.   Download the whitepaper now.

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Download our Whitepapers

The Decision Maker’s Guide To Selecting An EV Charging Management Platform

Building grid reliability and resilience for EV adoption

The Road to Successful Fleet Electrification

The Decision Maker’s Guide to Selecting an EV Charging Management Platform