The National Charging Experience Consortium (ChargeX) is a collaboration among DOE national labs, EV charging industry players and consumer advocates. Its mission is to gauge and improve the customer experience with public EV charging infrastructure in the US.

Now the consortium has released a report that recommends 26 common EV charging error codes to enable faster error reporting, diagnostics and resolution.

The new report, Recommendations for Minimum Required Error Codes, aims to reduce confusion among charger manufacturers, vehicle OEMs and charging station operators, who currently use different messages to report similar errors. The common codes should help simplify diagnostics when a charging session fails, streamlining EV charging network operations and improving the charging experience for drivers.

“To make an electrified road trip convenient and reliable, companies in the EV charging ecosystem must be on the same page about how they communicate, especially when issues arise,” said Gabe Klein, Executive Director of the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation, which funds ChargeX.

ChargeX industry participants ABB and EVgo demonstrated some of the error codes during the recent CharIN Testival in Cleveland, Ohio.

“We are proud to work alongside ChargeX to implement root-cause solutions that will lead to an elevated customer experience,” said Ivo Steklac, Chief Technology Officer at EVgo. “Standardized error codes, which apply to both vehicles and chargers, are foundational for understanding customer experience so the full EV ecosystem can march forward together towards solutions.”

“We are excited to begin implementing these codes,” said Cuong Nguyen, Manager of Industry Affairs and Standards at ABB, and co-chair of the working group that led the report. “As a company that helped develop these common error codes, we hope to now demonstrate their value to others in the industry, leading to widespread adoption.”

Source: Idaho National Laboratory