The companies say the fusion of cybersecurity technology with interoperability know-how will simplify the EV charging experience for users of ChargeHub’s activation and payment wallet

Kirkland, Que.-based ChargeHub has announced a strategic collaboration and partnership with cybersecurity experts Irdeto out of Amsterdam.

The partnership will integrate Irdeto’s CrossCharge and Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) tools with ChargeHub’s eRoaming interoperability Passport Hub platform. This will create a plug and charge solution for ChargeHub’s Passport Hub users.

A plug and charge system enables an EV user to connect their vehicle to the charging cable. Then verification, activation and payment takes place automatically.

Chargehub is the first company in North America to test a plug and charge solution with Irdeto’s CrossCharge. (CrossCharge is a set of services that creates, distributes, discovers, validates and revokes vehicle identities and charging contracts.)

The companies say their partnership will make compliance with standards that guide how EVs and charging stations communicate, like ISO 15118, easier.

ChargeHub states its plug and charge solution eliminates the need for multiple apps and payment systems. Overall it would make for a more seamless charging experience.

The company’s Passport Hub serves more than 25 charging point operators and industry partners. It provides access to over 75,000 charging ports where activation and payment can occur via a single account.

“For the EV driver, what they’ll do is… they’ll associate their payment method to their vehicle. And when they get to a charging station, the vehicle will communicate to the charging station, there’s going to be messages sent across there to validate things and then charging will start,” says Olivier Proulx, ChargeHub’s chief technology officer, in an interview with Electric Autonomy Canada.

“The idea is the user doesn’t have to take out their phone or an RFID card or even the credit.”

Ideally, payment and charging are set up before the vehicle arrives at the charging station.

A cutting-edge solution

According to ChargeHub, its app has over one million users.

Irdeto’s PKI system (a PKI is an authentication technology for digital identification) is in-house. Irdeto states this will allow the solution to come online faster. So far, its PKI has issued over one billion certificates on approximately 300 million devices. Proulx explains it is the second PKI option in North America aside from Hubject GmbH, the world’s largest eRoaming network, based in Berlin, Germany.

The ChargeHub and Irdeto teams first met at a conference last year. The partnership developed from there.

“We already work with a lot of CPOs [charge point operators], a lot of eMSPs [e-mobility service providers] in North America, and we were looking into a way where we can help them move forward a lot faster on offering or supporting plug and charge,” Proulx says.

Currently there is no timeline for when the solution will become available to the public.

“As electric vehicle adoption continues to rise, the industry seeks enhanced solutions for providing convenient, swift, and equitable access to public EV charging. By leveraging Irdeto’s platform, ChargeHub can better cater to the needs of EV drivers, offering eMSPs unhindered access to one of the largest CPO’s networks,” says Niels Haverkorn, senior vice-president of new markets with Irdeto, in a statement.

Whenever the solution is eventually available, Proulx doesn’t see the technology changing too much in the future.

“I feel like as time goes by, the technology might not change, but its going to get simpler,” he says.

“So the tooling, the kind of open source libraries — all the things that go around making software easier to implement — I think that’s what’s going to really change.”