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ChargeX Consortium Addresses Payment Reliability at Public EV Charging Stations

March 5, 2024

payment-ev-charger

The movement toward a clean transportation future is in full swing with EV adoption growing and new public electric vehicle (EV) charging stations launching regularly. As public EV charging becomes more widely used and available, successful payment processing is crucial for a convenient charging experience.

To help EV charging stakeholders troubleshoot failures and establish reliable payment processing systems, the National Charging Experience Consortium (ChargeX Consortium) has released the report, ‘Best Practices for Payment Systems at Public Electric Vehicle Charging Stations.’

The report examines different EV charging payment methods in use and proposes industry supported solutions for several possible payment issues, including:

  • Network issues
  • Integration, activation, and installation issues
  • Robustness of hardware issues
  • Customer experience issues
  • Maintenance issues

"As we continue to grow the national EV charging network, we also want to solve for legacy challenges which has the dual benefit of dramatically improving the customer experience today and future-proofing for tomorrow,” said Gabe Klein, Executive Director of the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation. “This new ChargeX report will help ensure that industry can work together to deploy solutions for common payment challenges resulting in improved uptime for customers—in other words, a charger that ‘just works.’”

The consortium also recently released the Recommendations for Minimum Required Error Codes report with guidance for 26 common EV charging error codes to expedite error reporting, diagnostics, and resolution across the EV charging industry as well as an implementation guide to help industry practitioners adopt the minimum required error codes uniformly and quickly. These resources highlight the ChargeX Consortium’s progress toward solving EV charging reliability challenges and sharing applicable solutions.

The ChargeX Consortium, funded by the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation (Joint Office), is a collaboration between Argonne National Laboratory, Idaho National Laboratory, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, EV charging industry experts, consumer advocates, and key stakeholders. Together, these industry leaders aim to significantly improve the customer experience with EV charging infrastructure across the United States.