Importance of Open Charge Point Protocol for the Electric Vehicle Industry

Electric vehicles (EV) are becoming the new standard for mobility all over the world. This development is only possible with a good coverage of charging stations.

The challenges for the EV market is not only the charging infrastructure, but also the openness of communication protocols to ensure the possibility of switching from charging network without necessarily replacing all the charging stations, including their interoperability for electric grid services.

Open Charge Point Protocol (OCPP) addresses this challenge by being the industry-supported de facto standard for communication between EV charging station and electric grid stakeholders. OCPP is an open standard with no cost or licensing barriers for adoption.

When we look more closely at some of the past failures of the EV industry, the reason tends to be the inability of the charging stations to respond to the changes and needs of the industry at that particular time due to specific lock-in effects they face by virtue of proprietary protocol.