At the end of 2023, nearly 4.7 million electric vehicles (EVs) had been sold cumulatively in the United States, and demand continues to rise. As public charging stations are built to keep pace with that demand, industry players, including automakers, charging providers, and regulators must ensure the charging experience is reliable and efficient enough for everyone to confidently ride or drive electric. In line with this goal, the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation (Joint Office) is partnering with Linux Foundation (LF) Energy to build open-source software tools to support communications between EV charging infrastructure and other systems.

Current implementation of EV charging communications protocols is not consistent across the EV charging industry. LF Energy’s EVerest project will develop and maintain a group of independent open-source tools to facilitate communications across charging stations, vehicles, generation resources, batteries, adjacent chargers, power grids, backend payment systems, user interfaces, and mobile devices. This software stack will reduce instances of incompatibility resulting from proprietary systems, ultimately making charging more reliable for EV drivers.

"The Joint Office is paving the way for innovation by partnering with an open-source foundation to address the needs of industry and consumers with technical tools that support reliable, safe and interoperable EV charging," said Sarah Hipel, Standards and Reliability Program Manager at the Joint Office. "With a foundation for meeting minimum standards, companies can move more quickly to build real world solutions that advance toward the goal of clean transportation for all."

The Joint Office will dedicate resources to improving EVerest including coordination, community engagement, and software code. In addition, Dr. K. Shankari, principal software architect for the standards and reliability program at the Joint Office, has been appointed to the EVerest Technical Steering Committee. With this collaborative development model, EVerest will speed up the adoption of EVs and decarbonization of transportation in the United States by accelerating charger development and deployment, increase customizability, and ensure high levels of security for the nation’s growing network.