Plug & Charge Integration Looks to Transform EV Charging Infrastructure
What you’ll learn:
- Netherlands based Irdeto and ChargeHub have announced a fully integrated Plug & Charge solution combined with roaming capabilities.
- EV drivers can roam across multiple charging networks through a single account and access to more than a 120,000 compatible charging ports across the U.S. and Canada.
With a wide range of chargers and protocols available, ensuring a secure and seamless EV charging experience across different networks can be complex. The public charging landscape in the United States and Canada is highly fragmented. The U.S. Dept. of Transportation estimates over 192,000 publicly available charging ports with approximately 1,000 new public chargers are being added each week, which can result in inconsistent experiences for drivers seeking electric-vehicle (EV) charging.
EV roaming can simplify these challenges, allowing drivers to charge seamlessly across different networks without juggling multiple subscriptions or apps. The objective of EV roaming is to facilitate roaming services for charging EVs and provide information to consumers about charging locations and prices. However, scalability remains difficult.
Simplified Charging Infrastructure
Netherlands-based Irdeto, a digital platform security company offering cyber services and technology solutions, and ChargeHub, a leading roaming interoperability hub, announced the next phase of their strategic partnership: A fully integrated Plug & Charge (P&C) solution combined with roaming capabilities—all accessible through a single integration.
This partnership brings to market a ready-to-deploy solution that enables charge point operators (CPOs) and e-mobility service providers (eMSPs) to simplify and scale their EV charging infrastructure while delivering a user-friendly experience to drivers. Irdeto’s Plug & Charge toolkit, part of the CrossCharge PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) platform, aims to ensure secure, automated, and efficient charging without requiring additional authentication steps.
PKI is a set of rules, policies, and technologies designed to secure communications between a server and its clients (the users). Cross-certification enables entities in one PKI to trust entities in another PKI. By using encryption, PKI helps safeguard the integrity and confidentiality of information shared online
With this new integration, EV drivers can roam across multiple charging networks through a single account on a wide range of eMSP options thanks to ChargeHub’s Passport eRoaming Hub solution. It already supports over 170 active EV roaming connections and access to more than a 120,000 compatible charging ports across the U.S. and Canada.
For EV drivers, the net effect will be similar to avoiding the need to buy a new SIM card every time they visit a new country. In fact, they won’t have to do anything once they plug in their vehicle because the authentication identification and authorization happens automatically. At the end of the month, they receive one bill for use of all the different charging stations.
This solution is said to ensure smooth interoperability across multiple networks, simplifying access. OEMs will be able to reduce the complexity of managing multiple systems through a single integration. A key benefit is financial efficiency—operators will receive a single monthly financial reconciliation covering both roaming and plug & charge enablement, saving time and streamlining billing processes.
End-to End Testing Speeds Time-to-Market
With end-to-end testing capabilities across both DC and AC charging, this collaboration accelerates time-to-market for OEMs and service providers integrating P&C and roaming. The combination of testing and ChargeHub’s network of 170 connections in North America offers what’s claimed to be unmatched scalability and reliability as the EV market grows.
Niels Haverkorn, SVP of New Markets at Irdeto, said, “With the rapid growth of electric-vehicle adoption, the need for secure, scalable, and efficient charging solutions has never been more urgent. Our collaboration delivers exactly that. We’re proud to offer an integrated solution that combines the simplicity of Plug & Charge with the convenience of roaming, benefiting both operators and EV drivers. At Irdeto, we are committed to shaping the future of EV infrastructure and this partnership is a significant milestone on that path.”
Scaling EVerest
Irdeto also announced a strategic partnership that integrates Irdeto CrossCharge with Pionix’s uMWC (Ultra Mega Watt Charger), which is based on the Linux Foundation Energy (LF Energy) EVerest Project open-source technology for EV chargers.
EVerest is an open-source technology for setting up a full-stack EV charging environment. It has a modular framework that includes everything needed to support a large number of charging business cases, from a non-managed home charger to a load-balancing, multi-satellite, bidirectional DC charging site.
Based on EVerest, Pionix provides a commercial version called Pionix BaseCamp. The enterprise-ready operating system for EV chargers comes with constant testing and regular updates, and it aims to ensure a reliable and convenient EV charging experience.
This partnership addresses a critical challenge in the EV market—namely, interoperability. By combining Irdeto's expertise in digital security with Pionix's knowledge and experience with the LF Energy EVerest technology, it seeks to deliver a robust, secure, and universally compatible solution.
Irdeto CrossCharge’s PKI, a certificate provisioning service (CPS), and certificate pools are at the core of this partnership. These services simplify certificate management for CPOs, MSPs, and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). By enabling secure authentication and connection establishment between EVs and chargers, without any manual interaction, Irdeto CrossCharge is tailored to meet the diverse needs of the EV charging industry by delivering cryptographic keys and certificates that ensure secure and streamlined EV charging.
