Over the next 15 years continuing growth of urbanisation & sprawl will increase the demand for individual mobility & the increase of traffic density will produce many adverse impacts that have direct effects on the quality of life for people living in cities. To lead Europe into a sustainable & competitive future, novel innovations are essential to increase transport efficiency. Vehicle electrification & autonomous driving are two promising new technologies that have disruptive potential for individual mobility whilst giving support “Towards an energy-efficient, decarbonised transport sector”. Sales of Electric Vehicles (EV) tend to be met with high resistance primarily due to range anxiety (max. 100-400 km), variable power costs & long refuelling times (5-8 hours to charge) thus slowing down leadership in electro-mobility. Though these arguments may be valid now, future batteries and charging stations (CS) will reduce these disadvantages. The EV market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 29% & 20 million EVs are going to be on the road by 2022. In 2010, public charging points for EVs were few. Today, there are 112,500 public or semi-public charging points in Europe and is expected to surge at CAGR of 29.8% and reach €10.8Bn global market by 2022.As EV’s become more autonomous there will be greater importance on automated charging. With Matrix Charging® we will have the potential to revolutionize automated EV charging by being the world’s first fully automated conductive charging technology that has no moving parts outside the vehicle. The key innovation is delivering the solution with 99% transmission efficiency, at 30% lower cost than nearest competitor and a 6-fold higher performance with 9% additional efficiency, as we validated with BMW. With a phase 2 cost of €2.9M in early Q2 2018 Matrix Charging® forecasts a €24M gross profit in Yr5 (€44M gross profit Yr1 to Yr5 inclusive period), with a return on investment (ROI) is a very attractive 920% (9.2).

Electrical vehicles (EVs) tend to be met with high resistance from car users, mainly due to range anxiety, variable power costs and long refuelling times. Though these arguments may seem valid at this moment, future batteries and charging stations may actually reduce these disadvantages. Nevertheless, some gaps and barriers of the current charging systems have not been solved finally yet, including the availability and inter-operability of the charging infrastructure, charging rates and efficiency, autonomous charging, safety and handling comfort. easE-Link is our revolutionary matrix charging system, addresses all of the aforementioned issues using a matrix-shaped ground pad and a vertical power connector that attached to any surface of the ground pad on the parking floor, allowing for the highest parking alignment tolerance and reducing the complexity of a three-dimensional mechanical moving system. All ground pads in a parking infrastructure can be interconnected, allowing easy connection to the electrical grid. As such, our concept brings advantages regarding integration into vehicle and the wide scale deployment within parking infrastructure (both retrofits and new integrations).

Easelink designs, develops and markets a revolutionary automated charging solution integrating electric vehicles (EVs) into a smart energy system: Matrix Charging (MC). We are the first true interface technology that connects all relevant players along the automotive and energy value chain (OEMs, Tier1s, infrastructure suppliers + providers, EV drivers). Easelink was founded in 2016, with its headquarters in Graz, Austria and additional offices in Munich, Germany and China, thereby being located in two European automotive hotspots (Tier 1s in Graz, OEMs in Munich) and the largest EV market. We have been fast-growing from the get-go and boast a current headcount of 38 people. Our revenue model is based on licensing our technology with additional direct sales generated by own efforts. Our mission is to set the global standard for automated charging. We want to be the go-to provider for a frequent and broadly rolledout automated charging solution for EVs and thereby solve the last hindrances that currently hold back e-mobility. Our vision is a world where EVs are automatically connected to the grid everywhere and at any time. A car charging at the next public pad while grocery shopping. A car being connected in the office garage during a long workday, making use of renewable energy produced. We envision a world, where EVs are integrated into the grid and energy is used when needed, as needed. Cars become driving energy storages, feeding back into the grid at high demand times. Matrix Charging is a combination of the MC connector (MCC) installed under vehicles and the MC pad (MCP) placed on roads or portable (plug&play): The Matrix Charging System comprising a vehicle unit (MCC) and an infrastructure unit (MCP). Each MCC is compatible with each MCP, supporting charging wherever, whenever and creating a network effect.

The AHEAD (AI-informed Holistic Electric Vehicles Integration Approaches for Distribution Grids) project will create a simulation environment capable of predicting the most convenient location to place the electric vehicle (EV) charging stations and optimise both the usage of the power grid resources, and the charging stations located in urban and rural areas. This simulation environment will exploit the unique features of currently available AI models and include two layers: the spatial mapping one (placing the chargers where the people need them to be), and the power grid one (placing the chargers where the grid can support them). Innovative smart charging algorithms will be designed and tested in the model, to minimise the impact of EV charging pools on the network, and ensure the consumers have economic benefits. Moreover, these smart charging algorithms will be tested in three demonstration sites, dedicated to assessing the technical and economic feasibility of smart charging light and heavy-duty EVs, and boats. To this end, AHEAD gathered relevant partners from all the EV value-chain: technology providers who want to test their equipment in the real world, grid operators, who want to optimise the usage of the grid resources and mitigate the EV charging impact, and research institutions, who aim at advancing the knowledge on the topic and producing value for society. Particular attention is going to be placed on the user experience and cybersecurity part of the demonstrators, with specific partners who focus their efforts on understanding how to minimize the impact of smart charging on the user experience and on creating a model to represent cyber-attacks on the chargers to suggest efficient defensive mechanisms for system protection.