Chargers are pretty tricky things aren’t they? You have one charger for one thing, another one for another, and pretty soon you are going to be overwhelmed by chargers. It’s bad enough when you are inside of the house, but what happens when you are talking about cars that need charging? Would you need a dedicated charging station for a Mazda, and the owner of a Chrysler would need to go somewhere else? It isn’t practical is it?
Thankfully however, seven of the major automobile manufacturers have agreed to adopt a universal charging station. This snippet of information came from a recent press release by Ford. In it they said they, along with Audi, BWM, Daimler Chrysler, GM, Porsche and Volkswagen would all adopt a single charging system for the electric vehicles that they release in North America. This will be a single port charging system which can be used in the home, or even at the side of the highway.
In addition to this, they also announced that they would be supporting the HomePlug Green PHY. This technology would allow you to plug your vehicle into the smart grid where it would have a number of checks carried out. This includes diagnostic system checks, incredibly useful right?
The solution for charging that is going to be released will be backwards compatible with the current industry standards. At the moment however, Japanese and Korean manufacturers haven’t signed the agreement, this isn’t going to benefit anybody. If electric cars are going to work, then ideally we will want one unified charging system, and thankfully it seems to be heading that way already. Its just up to companies such as Nissan, Toyota, Honda and others to get their skates on!
