The Global goal of reducing energy dependency and CO2 emission continues to drive the significant investment into Electric Vehicles (EVs) and the related charging infrastructure within China, the USA and Western Europe are covered in SBD's latest report. Enabling EV connectivity is widely viewed as a key step in improving the user experience and optimising the electricity grids. These connectivity services can broadly be categorised into three groups:

• Vehicle-to-Consumer (V2C) - V2C services allow consumers to remotely control and monitor vehicle functions such as charging or pre-conditioning via Apps or Internet browsers.
• Vehicle-to-Charging Point (V2CP) - V2CP services allow EVs and EV owner to communicate with charging points in order to search, monitor, control or pay for their charging.
• Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) - V2G services allow utilities to remotely and dynamically control the charging profile of individual EVs in order to optimise their networks.

Growth of the connected EV eco-system

Although V2C services are already widely available in many regions, developing more advanced V2CP and V2G services is proving to be much harder then many anticipated, for three main reasons:

• Fragmented charging infrastructure - Although the deployment of charging infrastructure is accelerating, for the most part there is little commonality between different charging infrastructure providers.
• Delay in standardisation - While the USA is in the advanced stages of developing standards for connectivity, the Europeans and Chinese are taking longer due to a mixture of commercial and political barriers.
• Unclear value chain - The role of utility companies, vehicle manufacturers and 3rd party charging infrastructure providers is still being defined, and it is often unclear which of these should take the lead in deploying connected EV services.

The speed of the progress made in defining standards and clarifying the value chain will be critical in determining how convenient first and second generation EVs are to drive. This report provides a clear explanation of the type of connectivity required in each of China, the USA and Western Europe. The connected services offered by leading vehicle manufacturers like Ford, Nissan and OnStar are analysed. The report also reveals the initiatives of charging station operators like Better Place, Coulomb Technologies and RWE. To buy this report contact Alessio at ABallatore@sbd.co.uk.