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Electric Vehicle Tagging

Rapid, broad-scale adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) is important for many reasons. However, fundamental challenges may delay or even prevent this critical paradigm-shift in personal transportation. These challenges include business and technical issues such as:

Capital required for critical-mass deployment of “smart” charging infrastructure
“Range anxiety” that inadequate charging infrastructure causes for consumers
Mechanism for cross-utility billing and reconciliation as EVs “roam” between service territories
Ability to determine which phase, lateral, and feeder is supplying each EV
Necessary ability to collect road taxes in a manner that does not negatively impact drivers
Cost effective means to address these collective issues

Most existing EV charging architectures rely on “smart” recharging infrastructure. This involves the placement of an electricity “vending machine” in each EV parking space.

Power Tagging Solution

The Power Tagging solution is a portable billing identifier much like the Subscriber Identity Modules (SIM) card in a cellular phone. The Vehicle Intelligence Module™ (VIM™) can communicate anywhere the car plugs into a charging socket.

Broad Benefits

Deploying VIM technology puts the intelligence of a portable billing identifier into the vehicle making it available to the grid for use. This new approach provides benefits across the board for all parts of the EV adoption ecosystem. Utilities, municipalities, vehicle manufacturers and others can all benefit from the simplicity driven system that VIM™ technology provides.

Successful Model

Following the highly successful and flexible system used in mobile communications devices — the SIM card which enables all mobile phones the ability to be used ubiquitously. EVs can share the same benefits. For adoption to accelerate, EVs need to plug into any normal vehicle electric outlet (Level 1 or Level 2) with instrumentation deployed upstream and the utility to deliver on-demand charging. In a few seconds, the user and vehicle are authorized, and a charging session is established.

Secure and Personal

A secured authentication process takes place, involving the vehicles VIM identifier and the VIM number. Each charging session is controlled based on parameters in an online user profile which is maintained by the user’s home utility, and can be accessed or modified by the vehicle owner.

Two Party Transaction

To achieve consumer adoption, a two party transaction must be enabled. Consumers need to be able to decide the way they are billed along with detailing their personal acceptable pricing method; for buying or selling in a V2G model.

Real Time, No Hassles

All of the charging session communication between the utility and the EV is performed in real-time, directly over the existing electric grid. The VIM architecture provides all parties to the transaction a hassle free charge method, allowing EVs to roam as simply as a mobile phone.