Further to the DIRECTIVE 2014/94 / EU OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL of 22 October 2014 on the deployment of an infrastructure for alternative fuels, and its translation into French texts, three possibilities for payment of the charging service must be possible:

1. Payment under a contract held by the user with the charging spot operator of the charging spot that he wants to use,
2. Payment under a contract held by the user with another operator, as an e-mobility service provider,
3. Direct payment to the charging spot operator for a user not willing to subscribe any contract.

Considering local authorities being investor and owner of charging infrastructure, generally sub-contracting its operation, a difficulty has been raised for cases 2 and especially case 3, with respect to general rules enacted by Ministry of Finance concerning the management of the revenues from public services.

The Ministry has adapted its rules to solve this difficulty. In a partnership with AVERE France association, AFIREV has worked out a template of mandate for management of revenues from EV charging services by a subcontractor of a local authority.

Through such a mandate, the local authority can open access to her subcontracted charging infrastructure to users paying in any of the three cases listed above.

The contract identification media currently used in most cases by e-mobility service providers is the “Myfare” type RFID card. It includes an identifier engraved by the manufacturer of the card which can be read by any RFID reader compatible with « Myfare ».

The e-mobility service provider records in his customer management system the correspondence between this identifier and the data on the customer to which he has given the card.

The charging spot operator who reads the identifier carried by the badge via the reader on the charging station must then get the correspondence between this identifier and the e-mobility service provider who issued it, to settle the conditions of charging service roaming.

This solution has several disadvantages in terms of openness to the multiplicity of operators and security of transactions, that will increase with the number and diversity of contracts and operators.

Moreover, other solutions for contract identification will emerge, based on other NFC devices, especially those for public transport (and other public services), applications on smartphone (with NFC or not) or other forms of communication between the user, or his vehicle, and the charging station.

A study has led to an initial analysis of commonly implemented RFID badges and the limitations of public transport badges, which are often desired by communities: read the article (in French).

Another growing solution is the use of a smartphone application from the EMSP to authenticate the client and authorize him to recharge through the CPO. A report on the conditions for its development has been drafted.

However, the future lies in “plug and charge”, which will facilitate and secure the use of charging points: by plugging in the cable between the vehicle and the charging point, the user’s contract identifier will be automatically communicated by the EV. This is one of the services permitted by ISO 15118 standard, the deployment of which is the subject of a project launched in 2020.

EV charging service roaming must have no geographical boundary and therefore be deployed in France in a manner compatible with other countries.

Therefore, AFIREV maintain international relations in order to contribute to the elaboration of international standards in relation to charging service roaming, and to ensure that the solutions adopted in France are compatible with them.

The bodies of interest from this point of view are:

• Standardisation bodies ISO and IEC, with special concern for ISO-15118 standard, under development, which defines the modalities of communication between an EV and a charging spot.

• The European association “eMI3”, which established standards enabling the deployment of roaming, pending their transformation into future standards by the specialised bodies. This association, resulting from the founding European project “Green-e-Motion”, has made it possible to define the foundations of the organisation of roaming charging. It is in the process of being dissolved.

• Working group « STF-SGEMS » settled by EC – DG MOVE in 2015 to draw up additional recommendations for the implementation of DIRECTIVE 2014/94 / EU OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL on the deployment of an infrastructure for alternative fuels infrastructure. This working group deals specifically with the development of e-mobility services and is expected to issue its recommendations by the end of 2016. This group continued its work in 2022 to prepare the new European “AFIR” directive.
• Entities in other countries that assign identifiers to operators under the same conditions as AFIREV in France. A European programme, the PSA-IDACS, ending in 2022, has launched the generalisation of these entities for all European countries. See the identifiers in other countries at the bottom of this page.

Read more about: ISO 15118 standard

Roaming agreements must be concluded between each CPO and each EMSP, to set out the applicable conditions (nature and quality of services, tariffs and payment terms, responsibilities, etc.). To facilitate the rapid conclusion of these agreements, a common framework with standard clauses has been drawn up, in which the operators will only have to set their specific clauses. Such contract models are implemented by the roaming platforms GIREVE and HUBJECT.

Many CPO have issued a roaming offer in which a tariff for EMSP appears. There is a great diversity of structures adopted (hourly rates, variable rates according to day and night, power delivered, with or without a ceiling condition, etc.) which is a source of complexity for operators and confusion for customers. An AFIREV working group has therefore drawn up a recommendation (download in french here). We urge all public and private charging operators to follow these recommendations.

In addition, the implementation of a tariff parameter based on the number of kWh delivered (the “billing per kWh”) requires measures that are not limited to the sole implementation of “MID meters”. The AFIREV has drawn up a note of recommendations on this subject, which can be read here.

With the development of roaming charging made possible by the deployment of appropriate solutions, and considering the growing number of electric vehicles and their users, service quality defects will become less and less acceptable. The promise made to its customer by a mobility operator to access recharging points of different operators must not be met with malfunctions: non-recognition of the card swiped at the recharging station, differences in treatment according to recharging operators, excessively long delays, poorly executed recharges, uncertain prices, etc.

This requires a new stage in the construction of electric mobility: the establishment of homogeneous quality levels shared by the various actors implied in publicly accessible charging service, the adaptation of the operators’ organisation and systems to converge towards compliance with these levels, and publication of the operators commitments on this matter.

The operators concerned are: Charging stations owners and CPO, EMSP and intermediation platforms for roaming.

Charters defining these quality levels are proposed for signature by the operators concerned. See the dedicated page.

At the same time, a quality observatory was set up by combining a measurement of quality perceived by users with an annual opinion survey, and a measurement of the technical quality of services with the collection of service operating data from operators. Based on the results, AFIREV works regularly to develop solutions to the anomalies observed, leading to the updating of charters and/or the issuing of specific recommendations.

See the results of the observatory here.

A professional marketing services to consumers must have a consumer mediation system, in accordance with Directive 2013/11/EC, which was adapted to French law by the Order of 23/8/2015 on the out-of-court settlement of consumer disputes (see Title V of the French Consumer Code). The search for a solution common to all operators for electric mobility services led AFIREV, jointly with FNCCR organization for local communities, to establish an agreement with the “Centre de la Médiation de la Consommation des Conciliateurs de Justice” (the CM2C). This agreement was formally validated by the Mediation Control Commission on 18/7/2018.

Operators who are members of AFIREV can register on the CM2C website by following the procedure described in the corresponding article (reserved for identified members).

The question was raised as to how VAT is managed for roaming charging transactions: the charging operator invoices the mobility operator for the transaction and the mobility operator includes this transaction in its invoice to its vehicle user customer. This question arises for transactions in France and for cross-border transactions, where the customer of the EMSP in France recharges his vehicle at a CPO in another country and vice versa.

This issue has been investigated by the French taxation authority DGFIP, which has ruled for recharging in France, the consequences of which are summarised in the diagram below:

When the CPO and the EMSP are not in the same country, the conditions are not established. The European Commission (DG TAXUD) has been seized of the subject. A European working group has been set up to follow the discussions. Conclusions are not expected before 2023.

The evolution of services provided and the feedback from users, processed peculiarly within the framework of the quality approach, lead to enriching the data on the recharging infrastructure and adapting the communication protocols (the most widelynused being OCPP between charging station and CPO supervisor, and OCPI between CPO and EMSP supervisors, directly or via a roaming platform).

AFIREV is therefore led to propose adaptations to the organisations managing these protocols, as well as to ETALAB which manages the data models https://transport.data.gouv.fr
The last proposal is to be read here.

Reducing the number of private cars in dense areas is a political objective that has led to the development of “MaaS” (Mobility as a Service) platforms in the various areas concerned. Starting from the existing management of access to public transport, publishing static and dynamic data concerning them and providing simplified ticketing solutions (transport pass), they tend to extend their scope to all services offering solutions for travel in the territory, particularly self-service vehicles of various types. AFIREV is engaged in a cooperation with GART organization (“Groupement des Autorités Responsables des Transports”) to define the connection standards of the digital ecosystem of electric vehicle recharging accessible to the public, and to extend the range of services offered in recharging itinerancy, e.g. reservation in advance of a recharging point adapted to the needs of the driver. Read more here.

A particular case in this area is the development of short-term EV rental, for which an action guide for their access to publicly accessible recharging infrastructure has been developed with MOBILIANS organisation.