MOBI Group incorporates Blockchain into vehicle charding system

The Mobility Open Blockchain Initiative (MOBI)'s member-led Electric Vehicle Grid Integration (EVGI) Working Group created and launched the automotive industry's first global standard incorporating blockchain technology into a decentralized vehicle charging system. The EVGI Working Group released its first technical design specification, which covers the system designs and data schemas required for three core use case areas: Vehicle to Grid Integration (V2G), Tokenized Carbon Credits (TCC), and Peer to Peer (P2P) applications. While MOBI's EVGI Standard does not prescribe any particular application or underlying distributed ledger technology (DLT), it ensures that pertinent data attributes and functionalities of each use case are available for organizations to utilize in creating their own applications.

"Implementing the EVGI Standard will provide a variety of benefits for players on all sides of the electric vehicle and charging ecosystem," said Tram Vo, MOBI's COO and Founder. "Electric vehicles, chargers, and electricity producers can have a secure identity, communicate with a standard messaging format, and automatically record transactions such as charging, generation, and exchange on a distributed ledger."

Created by a group of global automotive leaders, startups, and large technology companies, the EVGI Standard is a foundational step toward solving some of the most pressing climate and mobility challenges. MOBI's EVGI Working Group is chaired by Honda and General Motors (GM), with support from Accenture, CPChain, IBM, the IOTA Foundation, Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E), Politecnico di Torino, and R3.

"Today's energy markets are undergoing a massive transition from centralized power generation in big power plants, towards more distributed and volatile power generation. Decentralization and the concept of direct P2P interaction is set to become a key factor in leveraging this new market and building meaningful tools for energy-conscious end customers. The goal is to enable scalable, user-centric energy communities. The EVGI Standard represents one of the first essential building blocks for founding such an ecosystem," said Christian Köbel, Senior Project Engineer at Honda R&D Europe.

MOBI's EVGI Standard enables a set of core network data services that will provide significant value to EV owners, charging infrastructure and grid operators by enabling secure, decentralized communication and immutable recordkeeping between data generating peers. This supports data transparency, trust, coordination, and automation among mobility service providers, consumers, utilities, and government stakeholders.

"Bringing together organizations from all sectors of the mobility industry to align on what the future of electric vehicles and their interaction with the grid looks like is no small feat. The work done by MOBI and the EVGI working group is a promising step, laying a strong foundation for the intersecting industries to align around and build on to accelerate the future of sustainable mobility and energy," said Mathew Yarger, Head of Mobility and Automotive at the IOTA Foundation.

In addition to the working group, formal verification experts thoroughly reviewed the EVGI Standard, assuring developers that their implementations adhere to the best practices in cyber security. MOBI hopes that applications enabled by this Standard will ultimately help lower carbon emissions, improve road safety, reduce traffic congestion, and support a host of other socially and environmentally beneficial outcomes.