Guide On How To Charge Your Electric Car With Charging Stations
Electric cars (EVs) and plug-in hybrid vehicles are relatively new on the market and the fact that they use electricity to propel themselves means a new infrastructure has been put into place, one which few are familiar with. This is why we have created this useful guide to explain and clarify the different charging solutions used to charge an electric car.
In this EV charging guide, you’ll learn more about the 3 places where it’s possible to charge, the 3 different levels of charging available in North America, fast charging with superchargers, charging times, and connectors. You’ll also discover an essential tool for public charging, and useful links to answer all of your questions.
Before we get into those concepts, it is good to know the various terms used for charging stations. They usually all refer to the same thing.
- Charging station
- Charging outlet
- Charging plug
- Charging port
- Charger
- EVSE (Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment)
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Electric Car Home Chargers
Charging an electric car or plug-in hybrid is mainly done at home.Home charging accounts actually for 80% of all charging done by EV drivers. This is why it’s important to understand the solutions available, along with the pros of each.
Home Charging Solutions: Level 1 Level 2
There are two types of home charging: level 1 charging and level 2 charging.
- Level 1 charging happens when you charge an electric vehicle (EV) using the charger included with the car. These chargers can be plugged with one end into any standard 120V outlet, with the other end being plugged directly into the car. It can charge 200 kilometers (124 miles) in 20 hours.
- Level 2 chargers are sold separately from the car, although they’re often purchased at the same time. These chargers require a slightly more complicated setup, as they are plugged into a 240V outlet which allows charging 3 to 7 times faster depending on the electric car and the charger. All of these chargers have an SAE J1772 connector and are available for online purchase in Canada and the USA. They usually have to be installed by an electrician. You can learn more about level 2 charging stations in this guide.
For every electric vehicle or plug-in hybrid, the use of a level 2 home charging station is recommended to help you charge faster and enjoy your EV’s full potential. Provincial and municipal incentives are available in some regions to help with purchase and installation costs. You can also check the following websites for more information.
- Quebec incentives for electric car home chargers
- British Columbia incentives for electric car home chargers (the program is temporarily suspended)
- For the United States, we suggest you check your government website.
The pros of home charging
To enjoy all the benefits of charging at home, you need to use a level 2 home charger.
A fully charged battery in a few hours
A level 2 charger allows you to charge your electric car 5 to 7 times faster for a full-electric car or up to 3 times faster for a plug-in hybrid compared to a level 1 charger. This means you’ll be able to maximize the use of your EV and reduce stops to charge at public charging stations.
It takes around four hours to fully charge a 30-kWh battery car (standard battery for an electric car), which allows you to make the most out of driving your EV, especially when you have a limited time to charge.
Start Your Day Fully Charged
Home charging is normally done on evenings and at night. Just connect your charger to your electric car when you come home from work, and you’ll be sure to have a fully charged battery the next morning. Most of the time, an EV’s range is enough for all your daily travel, meaning you won’t have to stop at public chargers for charging. At home, your electric car charges while you eat, play with the kids, watch TV, and sleep!
Save Big on Charging Costs
- In Quebec, it is about 30% less expensive to charge at home than at a public charger and 6 times less expensive to drive 100 km (62 miles) on electricity than on gas.
- In Ontario, it is roughly 65% less expensive to charge at home than at a public charger and 5 times less expensive to drive 100 km (62 miles) on electricity than on gas.
- In British Columbia, it is roughly 30% cheaper to charge at home than at a public charger and 5 times less expensive to drive 100 km (62 miles) on electricity than on gas.
- In the United States, it all depends on the price of electricity and gas. You have to compare the consumption of electricity in kWh/100 miles of the EV multiplied by the cost of the kWh vs. the consumption of gallons/100 miles of the gas car multiplied by the price of a gallon of gas. That way, you will be able to quickly know how much you could save on your travel costs.
Electric Car Public Charging Stations
Public charging allows EV drivers to charge their electric cars on the road when they need to travel longer distances than allowed by their EV’s autonomy. These public chargers are often located near restaurants, shopping centers, parking spots, and such public spaces.
To locate them easily, we suggest you use ChargeHub’s charging stations map that is available on iOS, Android, and web browsers. The map lets you easily find every public charger in North America. You can also see most chargers’ status in real time, make itineraries, and more. We’ll be using our map in this guide to explain how the public charging works.
There are three main things to know about public charging: the 3 different levels of charging, the difference between connectors and the charging networks.
Charging Station Connectors
Charging Station Networks
Four ‘Musts’ for EV Charging Payment Solutions
Thanks to a tremendous push from the federal government to fund and build up the EV infrastructure, incentives are plentiful for business owners to make sure EV owners can charge their vehicles whenever the need arises. In turn, payment solutions for EV charging stations must keep pace and accommodate unattended and, eventually, embedded payment options.
EV Charging Payment Methods Must Be Omnichannel
Because most EV charging stations are unattended, payment options should facilitate self-service with little to no friction. An omnichannel payment experience should include:
- CRM and ERP integrations
- Card-present swiped, dipped, or tapped transactions
- Mobile app transactions
- eWallet transactions
- QR code technology
For example, an ideal solution would be to enable a customer to open an EV charging mobile app that is preloaded with their credit card information, allowing them to pay for the charge at the station control panel using a bar code or QR code. Easy peasy, right?
Essentially, make sure your EV charging payment solution is easier and faster to use than the unattended payment solution to pay for gas.
EV Charging Payment Solutions Must Be Adaptable
In the not-so-distant future, we will see payment technology evolve such that embedded payments are the norm and not the exception. What might that look like for the EV charging industry? The EV becomes the wallet.
Expect to see payment embedded in both traditional cars and EV, where the payment credentials are preloaded into the vehicle’s technology. In this scenario, EV charging payment solutions will need to allow payment authorization through an embedded QR or bar code that is scanned by the charging station and prompts the driver to tap “pay” inside the car.
But that’s just one possibility. Businesses must be thinking about how to adapt to payment technologies that haven’t even been imagined yet.
EV Charging Payment Solutions Must Be Safe and Secure
Regardless of how easy an EV charging station is to use, if customers are concerned that their payment information or personal credentials will be compromised, they won’t use it. This is where tokenization comes in.
What Is Tokenization?
Using a token that acts like a poker chip, tokenization replaces sensitive data stored elsewhere and uses it to retrieve that data when it arrives at its destination. Because the token itself is meaningless, there’s no risk of it being compromised. In other words, there’s no data to steal.
Tokenization works by substituting the primary account number (PAN) on a customer’s credit card with a token. The PAN isn’t transmitted, making the transaction more secure and reducing the risk that any data breach would result in fraudulent activity. Tokens can be used for more than just credit card data. They’re useful to represent any type of sensitive data.
EV Charging Payment Solutions Must Support Device Flexibility
Choosing a payment device is important for EV charging stations, especially when considering location:
- Is the station in an arid or humid climate?
- Is the temperature fairly consistent, or does it fluctuate?
- Will it be exposed to heat, wind, precipitation, or other elements?
All these questions need to be answered while still considering price point.
Many payment processors and gateways offer a limited selection of devices to choose from. Or, their support may not be reliable, which presents a real problem in an unattended payment environment. The last thing EV charging companies want is to find out from a customer that the payment device isn’t working.
EV charging companies should consider all elements – including “the elements” – to ensure a seamless experience for customers.
However, these aren’t the only factors. EV charging companies must still strategize how to manage settlements. The unique nature of EV charging station locations makes them an excellent candidate for dynamic funding.
Dynamic Funding and EV Charging Payment Solutions
Plenty of private EV companies will own, operate, and manage their EV charging stations, collecting 100% of the revenue. That process is fairly straightforward:
- The customer who visits the EV charging station uses their credit card, EV charging app, or some other payment method to start the EV charger.
- The gateway authorizes the payment but doesn’t close/capture the transaction.
- Once charging is complete, the EV charger communicates to the gateway the final cost.
- The gateway updates the payment and closes/captures the transaction.
We also touched on the fact that EV charging stations can be located in virtually any place where a driver can park, setting up the possibility of third-party arrangements. In fact, we’re seeing a huge demand for third-party partner relationships with niche locations, such as wineries.
In these cases, a winery may contract with an EV charging company to allow the charging station on their site in exchange for a revenue share. Using traditional settlement processing, the EV charging company would collect revenue and then transfer the winery’s share at some interval using EFT or even physical checks. Not only is this process time-consuming, but it’s also resource-intensive.
However, using dynamic funding, the EV charging company facilitates revenue-sharing almost instantaneously. Let’s see how this looks in practice.
How Dynamic Funding Works
An EV charging company installs two or three chargers in the parking lot of a winery. From a customer’s point of view, the payment experience follows the same process outlined above. But the funding process is different.
Instead of collecting 100% of the revenue and eventually transferring the winery’s share at another interval, the daily settlement can be split to send each party’s share directly to their accounts.
Superior experience: The winery, or any other third-party business, realizes revenue right away, which creates more brand affinity for the EV charging company and the potential for a longer-term relationship with that business.
Resource optimization: Payments partners that can facilitate dynamic funding do so through a funding API, which eliminates the need for much human intervention and conserves human resources.
Additional revenue: By automating the funding process specific to each third-party relationship, EV charging companies can enter into multiple third-party revenue sharing relationships with considerable ease.
How Payroc Makes EV Charging Payments Seamless
At Payroc, we’re poised to process the range of payment options available today, as well as pave the way for future payment technology.
We offer payment devices in all shapes and sizes with a full range of tolerances for temperature and environmental concerns. And our white glove service for all devices ensures there’s little to no downtime for payment processing.
Our dynamic funding solution is one of the most advanced, thanks to our new API suite, which makes integration easy.
With Payroc, EV charging payments is simple and seamless.
Contact us today to find out how we can help implement an EV charging payment solution for your company.
Pricing and Plans for EV Charging
Idle Fee: Once charging stops, you pay
Frequently asked questions about payment and membership
Depending on your location, you pay to charge either by the kWh or by the minute. In per-minute locations, the maximum amount of power your vehicle can accept (which your vehicle communicates to the charger at the beginning of your charging session) determines your power level and price.
When you plug in to charge, your vehicle tells the charger the maximum power it can accept. Based on that communication, your vehicle will be assigned to the corresponding power level offered by the charger. Your charging speed may fluctuate due to factors like weather, age of your battery, and how full your battery is (your state of charge). The per-minute price stays the same for the entire session, regardless of how the charging speed may vary.
Where feasible, Electrify America has transitioned to kWh-based pricing. In these locations, you pay for the energy your vehicle receives, regardless of temperature, your battery’s capacity, the time it takes for your vehicle to charge, or other variable factors.
First, sign up for Electrify America’s Pass or Pass membership in the mobile app. Then, follow the prompts to add your credit card to your account and select an amount to automatically pre-load to your Electrify America wallet balance. The first wallet auto-fill occurs the first time you charge your vehicle at an Electrify America charging station after signing up. Every time your balance falls to or below the minimum wallet threshold of 5, the wallet will be loaded again with the amount you selected. The cost for charging, idling, and any applicable taxes will be deducted from your wallet balance at the end of your charging session. If you’re a Pass member, your monthly subscription fee will be charged to your credit or debit card when you sign up, and deducted from your wallet balance monthly thereafter.
To change membership plans, visit “Plan details” in the Electrify America app. Please note that a change from Pass to Pass, will not be reflected until the next billing cycle. Because of this, your Electrify America Pass plan will remain active until the end of the current billing cycle.
First, access your digital membership pass in your mobile wallet. Then tap your phone against the contactless reader on the charger. NFC may need to be enabled in your phone’s settings.
If your payment method is declined during a charging session, please update your payment method on your account to allow Electrify America to auto-fill your wallet so that vehicle charging can continue. If the payment method is not updated, charging will stop when your wallet balance reaches.
In the app, go to “Plan details” and follow the prompts to upgrade to Pass or to change plan types. Please note that a request to change from Pass to Pass membership will go into effect on the first day of the next billing cycle, which coincides with the monthly anniversary of your sign-up date.
Cancel your membership anytime in the app by navigating to your profile and selecting “Delete Account.”
Pricing on a per-minute basis means pricing based on how long the charger was delivering energy to the EV. Pricing on a per-kWh basis means pricing based on how much energy the charger delivered to the EV. We believe pricing on a per-kWh basis offers a fair and consistent charging experience to EV drivers. We are working with regulators to follow the various processes that are required for us to provide EV charging on a per-kWh basis. This is an ongoing process and we look forward to further developments that may allow us to provide EV charging on a per-kWh basis throughout the rest of the states.
Our pricing varies state by state. The Electrify America website shows each state’s based on the charger location, and you can check out any of our stations in the Electrify America app to see pricing as well! To view pricing in the app, select the station from the map and scroll to the bottom of the page to view pricing for all chargers.
Electrify America is excited to introduce pricing for EV charging on a per-kilowatt-hour basis in many states throughout the US. This means drivers will now pay for how much energy is delivered from the charger to their EV instead of how long the charger delivered energy to their EV during their charging session. Where we do provide EV charging on a per-minute basis, we have simplified our pricing. High-power chargers will have only two power levels instead of three. The power level of your session is determined by the rate of charge your EV communicates to the charger. The price you will pay per-minute is displayed on the charger after the session begins. Consider enrolling in our Pass plan, which saves you up to 25% on charging!
.40/min after a 10-minute grace period. Pricing for DC fast charging is determined by charger location, your plan, and, for per-minute locations, the maximum power level your vehicle can accept. Pricing may be subject to tax, if applicable for the location of a particular charger. Level 2 charging is also available. In per-minute locations, Level 2 charging costs.03/min. In per-kWh locations, you pay the same per-kWh rate for Level 2 charging as for DC fast charging at that station location. Pricing is subject to change. Please refer to the charger screen for the most up-to-date pricing and power levels available for your session.
Ongoing market adaptation for EV payments
Recognising the current inefficiencies, operators are now implementing payment solutions based on tried-and-tested methods. As of 2019, new Allego charging stations in the UK will be equipped with Near Field Communication (NFC) payment technology; enabling users to initiate a charging session and pay for it by tapping their contactless card, digital wallet, or Smart wearable device.
Indeed, we implemented a similar ad-hoc payment solution in Germany for Autobahn Tank Rast, whereby a CCV terminal was integrated with their charging points. These terminals accept contactless cards, and we’re exploring further innovation for the near future.
Contactless technology has been widely adopted across the retail market over the past decade, proving very successful. The solution is familiar to customers, and it checks the boxes in terms of convenience. However, there is arguably more to charging a car than to buying a cup of coffee.
Therefore, we can look at implementing payment methods which suit the needs of EV users specifically. Below, we propose four feasible payment solutions.
App-based front-end solution
Mobile applications are certainly the go-to technology for providing a familiar and user-friendly interface, as well as offering a powerful platform for additional features. The flexibility and security aspects of mobile applications provide the perfect foundation for recurring payments.
From the user’s perspective, the setup is simple:
- Download mobile application
- Register an account
- Provide payment details
- Plug-in and charge
By completing these steps, users will be able to access any EV charging station owned by the operator. To start a charging session, drivers would scan a QR code, identify themselves using RFID or NFC, or even use the geolocation service of the phone. Using an application-based interface can enable seamless and secure payments, allowing customers to drive in, charge their vehicle and drive away.
All the heavy lifting will be done in the back-end by using tokenisation.
Tokenisation is the process of securely encrypting payment details in return for a token, which can be used by the merchant to authorise payments.
In addition, harnessing the power of a Smart device offers a huge range of features such as:
- Using geolocation on a device which automatically starts a session based on location
- Better security through tokenisation
- Calculating and displaying estimates for charging sessions
- Tracking the charging and spending over tim
- Monitoring location availability and pricing levels
Mobile website front-end solution
For ad-hoc payments, using a website to provide the user interface would work just as well. The process would usually involve a one-time eCommerce payment, although recurring customers could also benefit.
Customers would need to start a session by accessing a website; by either scanning a QR code, entering a limited-access Wi-Fi network, or manually navigating to the operator’s webpage URL. Once accessed, the customer would provide their payment details or complete an eCommerce transaction (via iDEAL or similar) and start the charging session.
Users can also register an account with the operator, and can save the payment details or other key information. As with the application, websites are powerful and can deliver added-value features.
The connected car
Looking at the recent advancements in IoT technologies, we can easily imagine a Smart car equipped with features that removes our current reliance on external devices such as mobile phones or physical bank cards. The car becomes the identifier and the trigger for payments to be made. This is already happening, and is likely to become the norm.
Even with non-Smart cars, we can implement something more rudimental such as identifying a vehicle by its number plate and tracking the amount charged against this identifier. However, that would not really capitalise on the vast possibilities offered by more advanced technology.
Solutions such as these become feasible via a connected car:
- Linking the car to an account which is set up for recurring payments
- The car becomes a Smart device, able to pay without the need for a smartphone or card
- The car can be connected to an operator network where all its activity is tracked and payments are completed in the background
- Theoretically, tokenised payments through a connected car can provide seamless experience; automatic payment for tolls, payment for drive-thru refreshment, and more. This would rely on open networks.
Visionary ideas about payments in EV
So far, the payment methods we have discussed have made the assumption that charging stations are going to be the standard charging system for the future. What if they’re not?
There is plenty of talk about renewables, including solar-powered charging that provides free sustainable power for EVs. However, the implementation with current solar technology is insufficient from multiple points of view: capacity, size, weight, cost, aerodynamics, and also… weather.
Another option is to invest in roads with built-in charging systems. Sweden has already made a first step in implementing this technique on sections of a road outside Stockholm, which has an embedded rail with a movable arm that attaches itself to the bottom of the vehicle to provide charge. Needless to say, mainstream adoption of this technology would require a great deal of investment, optimisation, and a set of standards to apply across manufacturers and geographies.
Wireless charging is also of huge interest. As mentioned in a previous CCV article, wireless could actually be a game-changer in the drive for better EV charging infrastructure:
“Magnetic coils could be installed under roads by government authorities or private firms, or inserted under parking spaces by off-street parking brands. All of a sudden, private homeowners may be paying contractors to install a wireless charging point under their driveway. Watch this space, because wireless is gaining traction.”
Who would own this infrastructure? Would this be provided for free, or would it be included within a regular car tax? These questions don’t need to be answered immediately, but we must leave no stone unturned before we plan the certain future of EV charging payments.
Summary
Considering that this industry requires large amounts of capital investment, EV charging is unlikely to stay free. Payments will stimulate the industry’s development. Their effective implementation, no matter which charging method becomes the standard, will need to deliver on the EV owner’s needs.
The aforementioned solutions help set the tone for the future, but we’re just getting started. CCV will take an active role in market innovation, pushing new and exciting ways to facilitate payments. Demand will be focused on convenience and consistency in the e-mobility world, and it’s our job to make payments happen seamlessly and effortlessly for all involved.
Read the original article on CCV’s website.