Two of the biggest electric car charging networks are collaborating to make it easy for people to charge their cars without having to join more than one network.
Right now, Chargepoint has 11000 charging station and ECOtality (Nasdaq: ECTY) has 4000. Since you have to be a member of a network to charge your car at their station, drivers have to join both networks to take advantage of all 15,000 stations (about 90% of all US public charging stations).
Their new venture Collaboratev, LLC, which comes online later this year, solves this problem by putting both networks on a common softward platform. They hope other networks will join to give EV drivers access to any charging station across the country.
The Collaboratev platform allows the two networks to share information, helping drivers to locate, use and pay for charging across both networks.
"The creation of a vendor agnostic payment processing and authentication system for EV charging would alleviate consumer concern of being tied to one charging network and would therefore make electric vehicles more attractive to mainstream vehicle buyers," says John Gartner of Pike Research.
"Interoperability for EV drivers is another milestone in the widespread adoption of electric vehicles," says Pat Romano, CEO of ChargePoint. "Collaboratev will give EV drivers access to all stations, locations, availability and mapping features in the public domain."
"This is a clear sign of market maturation by establishing a seamless process for EV drivers to charge across networks," says Ravi Brar, ECOtality CEO. "We are fostering an open ecosystem and invite others to join us in making it easy for EV drivers nationwide to get the charge they need whenever and wherever they are."
Here’s the website:
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Nothing in their statements said it is an open source thing. The phrase “open ecosystem” does not mean “open source”.