How blockchain technology catalyses faster adoption of electric vehicles

Mohsen Khorasany, PhD

19 hours ago·4 min read

Photo by Jenny Ueberberg on Unsplash

The looming threat of climate change has prompted strong efforts from both the public and private sectors. These efforts are challenging the traditional methods for energy consumption. The automotive industry responded in kind, with major automakers strongly ramping up Electric Vehicle (EV) production. As a result, the hybrid and EVs’ market share have seen sharp increases over the last thirty years. In several countries, governments have introduced legislation to provide tax credits, deductions, and exemptions to both consumers and manufacturers of EVs. The growth of EV adoption is very rapid today. In 2020, EVs represented 4.2% of light vehicle sales, up from 2.5% in 2019. This demonstrates the strength and direction of the automotive market towards electrification. In Norway, the world’s leading EV adopter, three-quarters of all light vehicles sold in 2020 were electric.

Global EV market share

In the same period, 6,900 EVs were sold in Australia, representing 0.78% of all new light vehicle sales, up from 6,718 EVs sold (0.65%) in 2019. The majority of these sales (76%) were Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs), with Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs) representing just under one-quarter of sales. Despite the growth of EV sales, Australia still sits significantly behind the rest of the world when it comes to EV adoption. Australia is well behind the UK (10.7%), China (6.2%) and the United States (2.3%).

Australia EV sales

Importance of dataAs the use of EVs continues to scale, key stakeholders need to transact and engage with increasing quantities of data as part of these transactions. Different stakeholders in the charging session capture different types of data. The captured data includes the amount of electricity charged, duration of charge, location, trouble codes in case of equipment failure, and much more. In order to produce the best insights and accomplish business needs, these players need to be able to access data from each other’s siloes. These stakeholders can certainly capture value from their own data by extracting pertinent insights, but there is much more opportunity left untapped. When taken together, data captured by each stakeholder can provide much more context on a larger scale. Hence, the ability to easily and securely share data is critical for different stakeholders. Transparency of data in an e-mobility ecosystem is also an enabler for a circular economy. Since the data generated by these business cases is both valuable and sensitive as it potentially involves private personal data, a core component of the solution will be utilizing digital identities and data governance that maintains trust, privacy, and security of the data, while still making it useful for analysis and decision making. Blockchain provides data trust, privacy, and security and must be a core component of the solutions in the e-mobility sector.

Blockchain and e-mobilityBlockchain technology offers a variety of benefits for e-mobility, including coordination of EV charging, facilitating energy payments at charging stations, allowing EV drivers to view maps of the charging network that highlight choices based on each user’s preference and real-time pricing data. Smart contracts allow for automatic, secure, peer-to-peer energy payments and enable drivers to pay securely and instantly using a blockchain wallet.

The trust layer provided by blockchain complements the mutual business interests between utilities, charging service providers, property owners and EV drivers and enables these parties to create a shared ledger of data, a single source of truth of paramount information to facilitate interactions, a secure and trusted marketplace. By facilitating a larger and more efficient charging network, blockchain can catalyse faster adoption of EVs.

In a nutshell, the adoption of blockchain, transforms the EV ecosystem in the following ways:

· Automating EV charging and payment process

· Track and trace the source of electricity (renewable or not) for charging EV

· Facilitating EV to grid services so that EVs can feed electricity into the grid and acting as moving peak shaving electricity storage units

· Unlocking opportunities for new business models such as secure P2P rideshare systems.

TYMLEZ platformTYMLEZ offers an innovative Smart Energy Solution based on blockchain technology that facilitates EV charging coordination. TYMLEZ platform provides a secure and trustable environment for different stakeholders to share and verify data. The platform enables customers to select the charging station based on their preference and real-time pricing data. Additionally, network operators would be able to employ the flexibility from EV batteries (through vehicle-to-grid services) for managing the network.