At the leading fair for electromobility e-clearing.net is moving into the market. The international platform enables cross border interoperability. More than 4500 charging points are connected from the beginning.
Pressrelease from www.e-clearing.net
Aachen/ Munich, oct 21st.
The importance of electric vehicles (EVs) will raise, this is undoubted among experts. Even today in some European countries a considerable number of EVs are on the road: In the Netherlands 40.000 pure electric and plug-in electric vehicles have been sold, in Norway 38 000. Last year 5.5 percent of all the newly registered cars in the Netherlands and 6 percent in Norway were powered electrically. That Germany will reach his own political target of one million EVs in 2020 is more than uncertain. As one explanation for the slow diffusion of EVs the public charging infrastructure is more and more mentioned. Too many different operators have built isolated networks which are not interoperable and cannot be used easily and quickly with one single key.
Against that background the German smartlab Innovationsgesellschaft mbH and EVnetNL/ElaadNL from the Netherlands launched a solution. The two partners are among the leading companies in the field of electromobility in their home countries and launch e-clearing.net at the eCarTec: “The target of our platform is to interconnect the market partners in such a way that they can exchange all relevant data for their businesses. For a driver that means that he can use the infrastructure of different operators via roaming, even cross border,” elucidated Hauke Hinrichs, Technical Director of smartlab the concept of the platform. The target is a fully interoperable charging network in Europe.
The functionalities and advantages of e-clearing.net
Arjan Wargers, Manager Development and Innovation at ElaadN/EVnetNLL, emphasizes the bottom-up approach: “The functionalities of the B2B-platform e-clearing.net hit the market requirements and are easy to implement”. The platform exchanges all relevant data for authentication of users. In doing so, all authentication lists can be up and downloaded. Also single authorisation request can be sent directly to the platform.
Furthermore, value added services can be exchanged via e-clearing.net, for example the current status of the charging station. “Right from the start around 4500 charging points are live on the system and are available for other market partners and can be visualized on different apps and webpages. Not only the exact position is shown, but also whether an appropriate charging point is free and available”, underlines Hauke Hinrichs the advantage for the end customer.
Besides the functionalities of e-clearing.net the open interface of the platform is very crucial. The OCHP (Open Clearing House Protocol) is open for everyone and also the usage outside the platform is possible. “This is essential for us as the operator of the platform. There has to more to an open protocol than simply publishing it on the internet. An open protocol has to be free of any property rights and fees. Our aim is the further development in cooperation with all market partners”, said Wargers.
Also the market model behind e-clearing.net is an open model. This means that the partners are not forced to contract instead every participant can choose his partner of choice and then close a bilateral roaming agreement. “We are only providing examples of roaming contracts and ensure with our platform contracts the ‘rules of the game’ by ensuring among other things the quality and the actuality of the relevant data”, underlines Hinrichs. Through the bilateral agreements the market partners can do business without a broker in the middle and thus avoid transaction based fees. The participants are only paying a yearly fee for the e-clearing.net membership and are allowed to do unlimited business by closing as much bilateral contracts as they want.
The business model of e-clearing.net
Smartlab and EVnetNL/ElaadNl are running e-clearing.net not-for-profit. The platform shall be financed by the yearly membership fees which are calculated based on the actual costs. Three categories (small, medium and large) are given and related to the market activity and size of the company. Furthermore, if more and more partners join and thus earnings exceed costs the membership fees will fall. Hinrichs puts it in a nutshell: “The more partners are joining the less lower the fees get”. The platform is open and all companies are welcome to join. In the future the cooperation with other platforms is planned.
The past and the future of e-clearing.net
e-clearing.net was developed in the context of two research projects which were focused on information and communication technologies (ICT) for electromobility. On the German side the national Ministry of Economics and Energy funded that project in the framework of the lighthouse project “econnect Germany”. In the Netherlands the Enterprise Agency (Rijksdienst voor Ondernemend Nederland) supported the project financially. Smartlab and EVnetNL/ELaadNl are looking back on more than two and a half years of joint cooperation and development. The first milestone was in April 2012 the “Treaty of Vaals“ where the first pilot of cross border interoperability between Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands was shown.
In June 2013 the test was extended and the Dutch electromobility provider The New Motion (TNM) and Estonteco from Luxembourg joined the initiative. In May this year the first industry partners E.ON, Vattenfall, T-Systems, Mitsubishi and VERBUND signed a letter of intent to join the platform. In addition, multiple automobile manufacturers are interested and started to implement the protocol already.
www.e-clearing.net