The ChargeX consortium has identified a new mechanism to automatically restart EV charging sessions that fail to initiate.
Researchers participating in the ChargeX Consortium from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Idaho National Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory, along with industry contributors, have identified the “seamless retry” mechanism to alleviate a common EV driver frustration with public charging. Unplugging and replugging the charging connector can quickly fix the problem, but puts the burden on the user to manually restart the charging session.
Seamless retry makes the restart of DC fast chargers invisible by automatically resetting the vehicle and EV charging infrastructure and initiating a new charge.
The ChargeX researchers also considered deterrents to seamless retry as part of their findings. During a charging session, the user may become frustrated at the additional time required to start charging due to seamless retry. To address this potential downside, the consortium recommends that the EV industry consider integrating additional system information provided to the user during the seamless retry process, such as status updates, recommendations based on type of charging failure, and number of attempts made.
“Seamless retry directly impacts how the driver interacts with their vehicle and EV charging infrastructure,” said Kristi Moriarty, a Senior Transportation Researcher at NREL and a ChargeX Consortium lead. “By resolving a variety of session failure types automatically, we have unlocked a significantly scalable way of improving users’ future charging experiences.”
ChargeX has previously recommended common EV charging error codes to enable faster error reporting, diagnostics and resolution.