An eMobility Service Provider (EMSP) provides EV charging services to EV drivers. The EMSP typically manages the relationship with its customers, the EV drivers, by providing an EV charging app and web portal, handling payments and invoicing, and providing customer service when needed. As opposed to Charge Point Operators (CPO) and EV Service Providers (EVSP), an EMSP neither owns nor operates a charger network, so it needs to partner with CPOs and/or EVSPs to provide its drivers with access to their chargers via eRoaming. The EMSP uses an EV Charging Management platform to handle different facets of its business including managing drivers (subscribers), managing plans and ratings, processing payments and invoicing, reporting and analytics and more.
What do eMobility Service Providers care about?
As a business, an EMSP wants to monetize on EV charging, and it does that through three primary channels:
1. Increasing the number of subscribers registered to its service
The more drivers subscribed to an EMSP’s service, the more money it is likely to make. To attract drivers, the EMSP needs to meet consumer demand for EV charging infrastructure and cater to many different charging behaviors. That means supporting a wide variety of pricing plans and tariffs that consider things like static and dynamic energy tariffs based on time of day, charging duration, location, and more. The EMSP should also support different business models, including pre-paid, immediate payment, and post-paid, as well as group plans based on the driver or charging station. To foster brand loyalty and driver satisfaction, the EMSP needs to provide its subscribers with a great EV charging app and web portal that will make it easy for a driver to find an available charger, navigate there, charge up, and make payment. Excellent customer service, available to drivers directly from within the app, will also increase driver satisfaction and promote successful charging sessions to foster and maintain brand loyalty.
2. Forming roaming agreements
Scaling up the number of available chargers multiplies the effect of increasing the EMSP’s subscriber base. To scale up, the EMSP needs to form roaming agreements to connect to a charger network using one of the industry’s standard roaming protocols. Using peer-to-peer roaming, the EMSP connects directly to the network operator’s chargers using the Open Charge Point Interface (OCPI) protocol. There are also similar protocols enabling the EMSP to connect to roaming hubs such as Hubject, Gireve, and e-clearing.net that quickly open up a large network of chargers to EMSP’s subscribers.
3. Business partnerships
An EMSP can increase its subscriber base by partnering with fleets, automotive OEMs and dealerships, power utilities and other industry players in the EV charging ecosystem and white label the EV charging service to the partner brand. With flexibility in the EV charging management platform, the EMSP can support EV fleets with sponsorship plans that enable fleet EV drivers to charge up whenever they need to and have the company billed for the charging sessions. Similarly, the EMSP can help automotive OEMs promote EV sales by enabling them to offer free charging for any period of time. The billing system of the platform diverts charges for EV charging back to the OEM during that promotional period.
How can EMSPs optimize their business?
A key factor to optimizing their business is flexibility, such as the ability to create innovative subscription packages that can appeal to a wide variety of drivers, the ability to offer drivers as large a charger network as possible to give them convenient charging locations wherever they go, the ability to form different business partnerships both for eRoaming and to provide a white labelled service.
Driver analytics and real-time dashboards can also optimize and EMSP’s business by delivering insights about drivers, vehicles, energy consumption, and charging patterns. With insights into transactions and charging sessions, EMSPs can fine-tune their offers to support driver behaviors. Data retrieved through the EV charging app can be instrumental in understanding the customer journey of an EV driver looking for the nearest available charger and can help the EMSP optimize their services.
Working with multiple business partners can present challenges such as validating payment requests from different CPO roaming partners or requesting payment from business partners such as fleets or OEMS. Having the necessary tools to generate reports segmented by business partner can streamline back-office operations to ensure robust and error-free monthly settlement.
