here’s an ongoing joke among electric car owners that every new electric car should come with a free wallet.
Why? To store the array of cards, tags and access keys that electric car drivers inevitably collect to gain access to an increasingly complicated public charging network.
Earlier this week, we highlighted our concerns that confusion over public charging networks is hurting electric car adoption, but now it’s time to examine if electric car charging networks could be simplified by the concept of roaming.
What is roaming?
If you regularly travel, you’ll be familiar with the concept of cellphone roaming. Made possible thanks to agreements between rival cellphone companies, roaming allows you to make and receive calls on your cellphone, even if you’re in a different state or country.
In the same way, electric car charging network roaming would require an agreement between the many charging station networks to allow members of rival networks to use charging networks customers are not members of when required.