An EV Charging 101

The book

In 1900, nearly 40% of cars in New York City were electric. Cheap Texas crude, the electric starter motor and Henry Ford’s assembly line sent the electric car into a century-long hibernation. Now it’s back, and this time it has brought an entire ecosystem with it.

This book is about that ecosystem: the software, the protocols, the business models, the actors, and the technology that connects a driver plugging in a cable to electrons flowing from the grid. Not the vehicles, and not the electrical installation. Everything in between.

Who it’s for

Anyone joining a Charge Point Operator, an eMSP, a charge station management system vendor, or an energy company moving into EV charging. And the curious: anyone in energy, transport, telecoms or technology who wants to know why everyone is suddenly talking about OCPP, ISO 15118 and vehicle-to-grid.

Three parts

1. The EV landscape. History, market, key players, and who pays whom.
2. Charging operations. Charging fundamentals, the IoT layer, the protocol zoo (OCPP, OCPI, ISO 15118), the CSMS, billing and troubleshooting. The core of the book, and the material hardest to find anywhere else.
3. The new frontier. Smart charging, vehicle-to-grid, Plug & Charge, cybersecurity, regulation and roaming.

A bicycle for the mind

It grew out of a training course, and was written in the margins of a full-time job and being a dad. AI helped re-order the course into book form, fact-check across a wide technical surface and tighten the prose. The knowledge is mine. Without the bicycle, the book would never have been written.

Read an extract: The grid was never designed for this.