Jan 31, 2022Companies providing electric vehicle (EV) charging stations for use in corporate parking areas or public places have been seeking Near Field Communication (NFC) RFID solutions as part of a trend during the past year or two, in order to enable fast, maintenance-free connectivity that provides related intelligence, such as loyalty programs. ELATEC, a global RFID company, reports that it has seen exponential growth in the demand for EV charging stations with RFID wireless connectivity.
That growth began in 2020, says Michel van der Meijden, ELATEC's sales manager for Germany, Benelux and the United Arab Emirates, and continues to track upward. According to a Research and Markets report, the EV charging station market in Europe is expected to grow by $6.36 billion between 2021 and 2025, including both AC and DC charging stations. Much of this growth, the report indicates, is taking place in Germany, the Netherlands, France and the United Kingdom. Every charging station requires a system for authentication or payment, and there are a variety of technology options available, from magstripes and barcodes to Bluetooth, biometrics and radio frequency identification.
An electric vehicle charging station
Founded in 1988, ELATEC designs and manufactures RFID readers. The company, which has global headquarters near Munich, Germany, offers technologies for user-authentication and access-control applications, such as secure printing and door access. The company's credentialing solutions allow office workers to identify themselves for access to devices, information and spaces.
ELATEC's solutions employ a variety of technologies, including Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). Recently. the technology has gained traction in the EV charging system market. By mid-2020, the demand for ELATEC's units began to build, the company found. "It went from zero to 100 miles per hour," van der Meijden says. "It's been growing—and growing fast."
The company works with original equipment manufacturers and systems integration partners to provide the connectivity, authentication and payment systems that their customers use in EV charging stations. Depending on the needs of a given application, users can mix and match the necessary technologies, including LF and HF RFID, as well as NFC or BLE. Its solutions are in use globally, and its product family includes the TWN4 MultiTech reader module, which can read more than 60 card technologies and is certified for use worldwide. The module thus serves a variety of applications and requirements, according to Wolfgang Kratzenberg, ELATEC's central region sales manager for the United States.
Michel van der Meijden
"Flexibility of our readers is really what gets us into all these different applications," Kratzenberg explains, because many companies already have a "bring your own device" approach. Users can leverage an employee badge featuring LF, HF or NFC connectivity, van der Meijden says, adding, "Or you can bring a smartphone into the application." In some cases, businesses are using numerous technologies in a single solution—which may include magstripes, biometrics or barcode scans—to identify individuals who have charged their vehicles. However, ELATEC notes, RFID provides benefits that those other technologies cannot.
According to the company, RFID has proven to be superior for outdoor EV charger applications due to its performance in harsh environments. At a typical corporate site, each charging station will have a built-in ELATEC reader. Employees could use their NFC-enabled phones or company ID cards to identify themselves, by simply presenting the NFC-based device against the reader terminal. ELATEC's firmware is designed to identify ID numbers and interface with an end user's or solution provider's software to confirm whether each individual is authorized to use the charging station. If an ID is properly authenticated from the secured memory area of the transponder, the charging station will automatically allow charging to proceed.
In a public location, such as a mall parking lot, the same device could be used with an NFC-enabled credit card, or with magstripe or barcode authentication. In such a scenario, users could be identified, accounts could be authenticated and the charging station could then be enabled for use, with the cost of charging automatically deducted from each user's account. Communication between the reader and the credit card must be very secure, the company reports, since the point of sale is at the EV charger, not at the back-office server. ELATEC's reader supports these security requirements.
Wolfgang Kratzenberg
NFC's ubiquity in smartphones is one reason the 13.56 MHz technology is being commonly adopted. One benefit of NFC technology, Kratzenberg says, is that it offers security in the form of ID encryption and a short read range. ELATEC cites numerous benefits to using NFC or other RFID technologies rather than barcodes or other optical-identification technologies. For one thing, while optical devices require ample lighting for visibility and a clear line of sight, RFID technology does not have this limitation. An outdoor environment also poses challenges for optical or magstripe technologies.
Additionally, Kratzenberg says, RFID makes passwords unnecessary. That matters for users, he adds, because inputting passwords can be time-consuming and pose a security risk, since unauthorized individuals can obtain and use them fraudulently. RFID enables other solutions to be built onto the technology, he says, such as loyalty programs that recognize users and provide them with benefits or content related to their use. For instance, an electric vehicle driver could receive a free charging after using a station 10 times. RFID allows such data to be collected and interpreted on a back-end server.
Kratzenberg calls NFC and other RFID technologies "maintenance-free," since a reader is not vulnerable to obstruction from environmental challenges. There are approximately 205,000 EV charging stations throughout Europe, he reports. Although ELATEC declines to specify the number of units it has sold, the company maintains a large presence among existing stations, as well as with those being planned. For instance, in the German city of Berlin, individuals are leveraging their smartphones or RFID transportation cards to access EV charging stations from German electric vehicle charging points manufacturer Compleo. That solution has been in place since 2017.
For most projects, Kratzenberg says, ELATEC's goal is to collaborate with OEMs to develop solutions specific to customers' needs. "We don't just say 'You can find someplace to put that reader'" within their own housing, he states. Instead, the firm works with customers to engineer appropriate products. "We're listening to our customers and they're telling us what they need, which is helping us with our product roadmaps."
