It was a real milestone, not only for Marco but for Pionix and of course the EVerest project. From October 24th to November 8th, the OCA participants have voted for a new OCA Board member. And yes: PIONIX got the most votes and will serve a 2 year term as a member of the board.

But let’s start with the Open Charge Alliance (OCA), who they are and their objectives. OCA is a global consortium of public and private electric vehicle infrastructure leaders. They join forces to define and to promote open standards through the adoption of the Open Charge Point Protocol (OCPP) and the Open Smart Charging Protocol (OSCP). OCPP protocol takes care of the communication between EV, charging station and central management station.

In other words, it allows charging stations and management systems to communicate with each other. As the OCPP protocol is non-proprietary and universal, it ensures interoperability between charging stations and management systems from different vendors.

The OCPP protocol is of course an important part of the EVerest project, a free, open source, fully featured charging station software stack [Learn more about EVerest here]. This is one of the (good) reasons why Pionix and the OCA fit together very well. So time to get to know the other ones!

Lets collaborate and pool resources

The current State of EV charging can be described briefly and scarcely: it works, but we can improve the quality. There are several factors behind this situation. But let’s sum them up briefly as well. Individual solutions for EV charging might work on a smaller scale, but looking at the big picture, a complex patchwork of different software solutions hinders interoperability and usability.

The question is: How can we change this for the better? Another short answer: Let’s offer all players in the EV charging universe the option to use and benefit from a uniform software basis as a shared and common code basis ensures interoperability.

Let's get back to the subject of standards, but without going into too much detail.

The global landscape of EV charging related standards is incredibly complicated. It almost seems that the number of new, updated, reworked standards gets bigger from month to month. But there’s more. Current and common standards must be constantly supported.

How should companies be able to implement and to handle thousands of pages of rapidly changing standards on their own? No one can and should do it alone.

Lets collaborate, pool resources instead of every company in the industry reinventing the wheel over and over again!

Collaboration is what open source is all about

And collaboration is what open source is all about. When we talk about open source, there are quite a few values directly connected to it: open exchange, collaborative participation, rapid prototyping, transparency, meritocracy, and community-oriented development.

To live these values together with all members of the Open Charge Alliance, this is what we want to contribute. This is why we think PIONIX can best represent the open source community in the OCA board.

There is one more thing we want to contribute. Working on standards to agree on valid ones is essential for interoperability which in turn is the prerequisite for a frictionless charging experience. But to boost the development of the EV charging industry and to have a decisive impact on the global spread of e-mobility we need to move fast.

And this is also a strength of open source. Rapid development, trying out new ideas and iterating on them together with the community are integral parts of open source. We’re looking forward to bringing this spirit into the collaboration. We will all benefit from this. We are sure of that.