“E55C is one of the pioneers of charging infrastructure in France. We provide charging stations for companies, but we also have our own network. Our businessmodel is to select places we think are profitable, such as near a big supermarket, and then make a proposal to the local government. We take care of the infrastructure, any EMP can then exploit the charging station. We also jump in if a network does not function properly and make sure it gets better. In this model reliabilty and stability of the charging station are very important. And there’s really no protocol that can guarantee this as well as OCPI.”
Previously I worked for Plugsurfing. There I’ve worked with many different protocols, but none is as reliable as OCPI. Also important to us is that OCPI is open and independent. With other, non-open protocols, we ran into technical problems that could not easily be solved with the middleman.
E55C was involved in OCPI early on, because we believed this protocol would be futureproof. And it turned out to be so. I work on the business side and am involved in the negotations with EMP’s. Previously it was sometimes a fight which protocol would be used. Then it helps that OCPI is a neutral protocol. That easens the negotiations. Nowadays I notice that almost every party works with OCPI, it’s not a fight anymore.
Sometimes EMP’s find OCPI hard to interpet, because there are some choices to be made on the access-side. It takes some time getting used to. I gladly help them along, because from my personal perspective: OCPI seems the way to go. There’s no serious alternative. E55C continues to grow. We work troughout Europe; any big European city can be our next location. Reliabilty remains our guiding principle. And OCPI contributes towards this.”
Quentin Ducreux Lerebours, COO at E55C
