The European automotive industry association ACEA released last week a set of recommendations and joint industry specifications for plug and socket standards for slow or overnight charging of battery-driven vehicles, possibly setting the corner stone for Europe-wide standardisation.

Policy makers have been talking for months about the need to set standards in order to enable a European-wide electric vehicle market. The big names in the European car maker arena such as BMW Group, DAF Trucks, Daimler, FIAT Group, Ford of Europe, General Motors Europe, Jaguar Land Rover, MAN Nutzfahrzeuge, Porsche, PSA Peugeot Citroën, Renault, Scania, Toyota Motor Europe, Volkswagen and Volvo, united in the European automotive industry association ACEA, are laying now the grounds by agreeing on joint specifications for electric vehicle charging systems.

"We want to avoid a situation where customers have to carry a multitude of charging cables to use their vehicles in different cities, regions and countries, just as we see today with items like mobile phones," said ACEA Secretary-General Ivan Hodac in a statement to Reuters.


Joint specifications for charging systems

The agreement only covers one- and three-phase AC charging in the short- and medium-term and reflects the needs of passenger cars and light commercial vehicles. It is expected that further agreements will follow relating to quick charging and heavy duty vehicles.  

The agreements include for the first phase:

• Vehicle inlet: No restrictions on the type of vehicle inlet as vehicles with different types are already on the market or in a late development stage. Manufacturers will supply at least one cable with a type two plug or standard domestic plug to connect to infrastructure.
• Public charging: Type two industrial sockets will be allowed during this transitional period – if the vehicle inlet is of a different type than the connector on the fixed cable then the customer must be able to use its own cable that is delivered with the vehicle.
• Home charging: Standard home sockets are widely available but a third party certification of the household electricity grid should be conducted before the vehicle is first charged.

For phase two, ACEA suggests a uniform EU solution, reducing the solutions on the market while maintaining maximum flexibility for consumers and predictability for producers.

Current agreements for phase two include:

• harmonised solution for vehicle inlets using mode three charging will apply for new types from 2017;
• mode three uniform EU solution for public charging;
• mode three uniform EU solution for home charging, although standard domestic sockets or industrial sockets will still be allowed on the condition of third party certification;

A controversial, not yet clarified point is the fast charging of depleted EV batteries, for which no method has been defined so far. Fast charging will demand more important investments into infrastructure and would in a first time probably only be used by commercial EV fleet owners anyway, while private EV drivers are expected to recharge at home.

ACEA said that since Japanese and South Korean carmakers had been consulted and involved in the development of the joint industry recommendations, the proposed standards could go beyond the European market and become global standards. However, countries such as Japan and the USA have decided to use a pure single-phase connector. China has similar distribution grids to Europe and includes a type two connector for the vehicle and infrastructure in its new standard.