Introduction

Copy linkWhy pair EVs with smart chargers?

Scaling and optimizing a managed EV charging program is challenging:

• Many vehicle brands or models lack the capabilities needed for managed charging. For example, Jeeps cannot stop charging.
• Even with a capable vehicle API, charging commands can still fail unexpectedly. This is because of a lack visibility and control over the other asset in the charging equation. A conflicting schedule set on the charger, an incorrect charger mode, or the vehicle going offline can all cause commands to fail. This leads to a poor end-user experience and missed opportunities to capture value.
• The logical workaround - integrating with smart chargers - requires your team to manage two separate integrations. This creates a significant, ongoing burden as you must build and maintain logic for managing unified data, controls and command orchestration across a wide range of devices.

Copy linkWhy not just integrate with the charger?

A charger-only integration is a good starting point for reliable control, but it operates with limited information. You cannot leverage the vehicle's State of Charge (SoC) and usable battery capacity, which results in:

• Limited optimisation potential: Without knowing the vehicle's SoC, you can't precisely calculate how much energy the car needs or when it's full. This limits the effectiveness of your managed charging programs and creates a risk of under- or over-charging by the user's departure time.
• A poor user experience: Users expect to set a desired departure time and target SoC (e.g. 80%) and have your app manage the rest. Without vehicle data, you cannot show the user their current battery level or provide the assurances users want around charging completion, leading to frustration.

Copy linkIntroducing EV Charger Pairing

EV Charger Pairing automatically pairs a user's vehicle AND charger, unifying control through the Vehicle API to overcome vehicle limitations, increase reliability, and expand the reach of your managed charging programs.

How it fits into Enode's model:

• Devices: The physical hardware owned by the user, in this case their vehicle and smart home charger.
• Assets: Enode's representation of these device in the API once a user has linked them.
• EV Systems: A core component of EV Charger Pairing is the EV System, a logical system that augments the Vehicle API. It's created when a vehicle and charger are linked to the same user, immediately unlocking vehicle capabilities (like startCharging for incapable vehicles). It's activated when the two devices are physically plugged into one another, enabling unified steering, synchronized charging state, and returning the pluggedInChargerId and pluggedInVehicleId.

Copy linkKey benefits

• Increase your market reach: Start onboarding users whose vehicles are otherwise incapable for managed charging by leveraging the capabilities of their charger. You no longer need to turn away customers due to their choice of vehicle.
• Improve control performance and reliability: Even for capable vehicles, a paired charger provides faster plug-in detection and a fallback for control commands to improve reliability.
• Capture more flex value: More reliable data and controls enables more sophisticated flex optimisations and value capture.
• Simplify integration: Offload the complexity of pairing logic, merging data, and control routing across a large range of unique devices to Enode so that you can focus on your core product.

Copy linkPairing in practice

Reliability and performance varies across vehicle AND charger OEMs. Here are a few illustrative examples how leveraging charger pairing can help you overcome common technical challenges.