Smart cards for EV billing. Final report
If electric vehicles are to gain widespread popularity, there will need to be public charging stations for refueling away from home. However, public charging raises some potentially complex issues regarding how individual EV owners will be billed for the electricity they use. It`s easy enough to meter the electricity used at a given battery charger, but the utility bill goes to the EV station merchant rather than the driver who consumed the electricity. So far this has not posed a problem, as many early charging sites have either been providing free electricity or billing only nominal flat fees. As the EV market grows, however, an effective point-of-sale (POS) billing mechanism will need to be established. In 1993, an investigation of POS billing systems for different types of non-home EV charging was conducted. Recently, the Cost Subcommittee of the Infrastructure Working Council`s (IWC) Load Management, Distribution, Power Quality Committee requested that an update be performed on the newest of these POS technologies--smart cards. The same size and shape as regular credit cards, smart cards use a microchip instead of a magnetic stripe to store information. The chip can hold significantly more information than a magnetic stripe, enabling greater security and flexible applications. Since 1993, there have been major advances in smart card technology, and smart card use has grown dramatically in both Europe and Asia. The US has been slower to embrace smart cards due to the entrenched infrastructure of traditional magnetic stripe credit cards. This paper reviews smart card technology and related POS transaction structures, and assesses the technical feasibility and economics of using these versatile cards for EV billing.
- Research Organization:
- Electric Power Research Inst. (EPRI), Palo Alto, CA (United States); Bevilacqua-Knight, Inc., Oakland, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- Electric Power Research Inst., Palo Alto, CA (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 362626
- Report Number(s):
- EPRI-TR-110692; TRN: AHC29926%%281
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: PBD: May 1998
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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