Works with control via Bluetooth.
Camera Find Jarle Kvalheim, Tek.no
The charger manufacturer Easee has been banned from selling in Sweden, and while the Stavanger company is fighting to get a thumbs up from the Swedish Safety Agency, there are around 700,000 such chargers on European walls.
Many people wonder what will be the way forward for their charger. Easee now announces that they are working to make local control of the chargers possible.
This frees the chargers from the cloud service and can be controlled directly from the mobile phone. It is important in case both the company and the cloud service behind the charger do not survive the turbulence they are in now.
Additional security via Bluetooth
As a so-called smart charger, one of the properties is that it can be told when it should charge and also controlled by other properties such as power limitations and whether the cable should be locked.
But today this requires a working cloud connection – and this usually has to be operated by a working company at the back end.
Here is what Easee writes about smart charging on the Easee Owners Club Nordics group on Facebook – we highlight the part about Bluetooth:
“We would also like to assure you that regardless of the outcome of this situation, you will always be able to use our chargers. You can continue to use the app with a cloud connection. In addition, our chargers are already set up to charge independently of connecting to the cloud through our offline fall-back mode.
As an added safeguard, we are working on enabling the app to work without cloud connectivity via Bluetooth initially, and other local controls in the near future.»
Uncertain about electricity price management
At the same time, part of the smart charger concept is also connected to things such as accessories for load balancing and the possibility of ongoing control from the power producer based on power prices.
The extent to which this type of function can be maintained if the cloud falls seems uncertain.
At the same time, today part of this functionality is taken over via smart systems that already exist in electric cars.
Much is uncertain
In the end, it is not just the smart function in the chargers that seems uncertain for the future. From the Swedish ESV’s side, Easee has been required to come up with remedial plans for the errors that are perceived as critical.
In this country, Nkom is going to replace a bunch of chargers – something that they have set extra speed on now, but will still work on until the autumn.
Depending on the outcomes here, it is unclear whether or how much already installed chargers will be affected by the process. The fact that the chargers can still be “smart” via Bluetooth and control from the mobile naturally presupposes that the authorities deem it safe to leave the charger itself hanging on the wall.
Layoffs and money
For the time being, Easee has notified that it will seek a temporary injunction against the Swedish refusal to sell. But in the process they have also announced mass redundancies and that they will have to raise up to NOK 1 billion in fresh funds.
In this country, there have been no reactions against Easee, and the authorities have so far said that it is not automatic that the Swedish decision applies in Norway – despite the fact that before the sales suspension they referred to the fact that our two countries relate to the same regulations .
Equally, the incident has led to an abrupt halt to the installation of Easee stations at several installers.
