Meet ChargeX, an EV industry consortium that was announced today by the US Department of Energy (DOE) – and its mission is to improve public EV charging reliability and usability by June 2025.
More specifically, ChargeX’s plan is to make sure that customers achieve first-time plug-in success every time they use public EV chargers.
The consortium is made of up nearly 30 companies and growing, including Tesla, Electrify America, ChargePoint, General Motors, Ford Motor Company, and Tritium. It’s led by the DOE’s Idaho National Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
The group is going to build on the foundation for charging reliability established by the minimum standards for projects funded under the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Formula Program.
Here’s the plan. ChargeX will form three working groups, and they’ve got two years to achieve success:
Define the Charging Experience: The national labs will work with ChargeX members to define and publish KPIs that measure the customer charging experience, set targets for each performance indicator, measure performance of charging networks in the US, and provide a blueprint for recognizing charging excellence.
Triage Charging Reliability and Usability: ChargeX members will work to understand the root causes of public EV charger problems, and then quickly identify solutions. This group will pay particular attention to issues related to payment, user interface, and communication between EVs, chargers, and cloud services.
Develop Solutions for Scaling Reliability: National labs, with input from ChargeX members, will design new diagnostics and testing tools to ensure successful charging and scalable interoperability testing as the number of EVs and EV chargers continue to grow.
ChargeX’s standards and reliability program manager Sarah Hipel said:
Many companies are working hard to bring sophisticated electric vehicles, chargers, and charging networks to market, but it takes strong collaboration across the industry to ensure that the national charging network is reliable and user-friendly for all.
The ChargeX Consortium, paired with other Joint Office efforts, will amplify and safeguard public and private investment to grow and improve the quality of the nation’s public charging infrastructure.
Read more: Here’s how the US can make EV road trips seamless
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