10 Electric Vehicle Terms Everyone Should Know
The world is changing and nearing are the end of days for combustion engines. Car manufacturers are shifting focus to electric vehicles, aiming to someday soon get rid of combustion engines altogether. Some brands, like Volvo, claim they will have a fully electric lineup of cars by the year 2020.
As a business owner, electric cars offer a whole new business opportunity… but many of you may have already started looking for more information only to notice that trying to decipher the industry jargon drains your mental battery.
As we, Ensto, are a veteran in the field of electric vehicle (EV) charging, we can respect the fact that the industry itself is still relatively new. This means you’re not alone in trying to grasp the acronyms and terminology involved.
This blog post aims to help tackle the most common terms that may pop up on your journey down the EV highway.
EV? You can say that again!
We’re here to tell you that you don’t need a PhD to drive a PHEV, as long as you’ve got your EVSE! Jokes aside, Handling an electric vehicle and the infrastructure to go with it is easier than you may imagine…
Now that you know that you don’t have to run on a drained battery, we can help you to be a native electric vehicle speaker in no time… And, let us tell you, nothing impresses those environmentally aware customers more who are looking to park and charge their Priuses.
Here we go, let’s start with the most common acronyms in the industry:
EV – Electric Vehicle
BEV – 100% Battery-powered Electric Vehicle. Pretty self-explanatory, once you know the meaning of those three magic letters.
HYBRID – A car that integrates a small battery and an electric motor to enhance the efficiency of the engine. The battery’s charge is maintained by the ICE (internal Combustion Engine) engine—it cannot be charged by plugging into an electrical supply. Hybrids can offer greater fuel economy than a traditional ICE but can only travel very short distances on electric power only.
PHEV – Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle. You may have heard about hybrid vehicles. Same deal here, with PHEVs having capabilities to plug into an external power source for charging the car battery.
EREV – Extended Range Electric Vehicle. Although the electric motor of a PHEV always drives the wheels of those vehicles, EREVs feature an auxiliary power unit, usually an internal combustion engine, that acts as a generator to recharge the battery when it runs out.
WAIT, there´s more…!
EVSE – Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment. A safety protocol that enables two-way communication between the charging station and the electric vehicle. Basically, it controls the safe current flow between the charger and your EV. Simples.
FAST CHARGE – Charging at a higher current than a domestic supply (about range of 7-22kW as opposed to 3kW). This will fully charge an average electric car in three to four hours.
RANGE – The distance you can travel on pure electric power before the battery requires a recharge.
CHARGING POINT – A location where electric vehicles can be plugged in and get charged. These can be at home, at work, or in publicly accessible locations.
SOC – State of Charge. Refers to a display which shows you the remaining battery level in percentages.
The language of easy and effortless EV charging
On the surface, navigating electric vehicle (EV) jargon can seem as daunting as first getting behind the wheel of a car, but the experience of EV charging itself should be as simple as one, two, three. This is what you, as a confident business manager, will be able to show in your new electric vehicle driving customers.
If you ever feel stuck in a rut, worry not, because our focus at Ensto has been to create products and services that are both intelligent and easy to use.
We supply out-of-the-box hardware, software and service solutions to all kinds of organizations to make EV charging a truly smart business. And now that you know the language, let’s talk!
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