6

I am an Engineer, at a company that provides transportation related products and solutions.

Recently I was asked to design an EV car charging station. I quickly realized that car charging lacks standardization between car makers (different plugs, voltages, amperages, communication with the car etc).

I am aware of some of the new standards related to the matter, but at least for the time being the car manufacturers do not seem to follow them.

After discussing the matter with the project manager, I was told to design a charging station that will be able to charge as many cars as possible, taking into account the current market status.

Is anyone aware of any valid market share chart of the current electric cars in Europe?

Is there any compatibility list between different cars, regarding plugs or electrical characteristics? Or at least any list of manufactures that have already produced cars according to any standard?

Improve this question
2
  • Why not make a multi-headed recharging station ... one which could charge say three different vehicle types, but only one at a time. You'd still have to figure out how each are charging, but I'd think the internals of the station would be similar between different cars, or it could be self sensing (different charge cord, different charge conditions). Just thinking out loud.
    – Pᴀᴜʟsᴛᴇʀ2 ♦
    Sep 10, 2015 at 22:13
  • Unfortunately this is not the case... Not only the plug is different, but also charging voltage/current, the chemistry of the batteries and thus the charging method etc. Such a charging station would be ideal but cost and complexity is beyond the scope of the project.
    – user3634713
    Sep 11, 2015 at 10:57

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1

Might I suggest you take a look at IEC 62196 as a place to start.

As regards model popularity, by far the most popular electric vehicle in the UK has been the Nissan Leaf in recent years. The website How Many Left shows how many of each vehicle make and model are registered in the UK and it seems to indicate over 8000 are registered here, compared to just 4 Golf GTE's. The Renault Zoe looks reasonable popular too with around 1500 registered. Nissan and Renault being the same parent company would lead me to suspect that they use a common charging specification although it wouldn't surprise me if this was not the case.

I would suggest that How Many Left would be a good place to get headline figures for specific vehicles on your hit list but remember that this is based on UK only data and that the data is implicitly out of date as there is a delay in it being released by the government here.

I would assume that other countries have similar websites so some searching may bear fruit for you.

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .