The Renault Nissan Alliance, PSA Peugeot Citroën and Mitsubishi Motors have announced that they have decided to develop and promote the technical reference for compliance of public recharge equipment for electric vehicles in Europe, based on the existing conformity brand EV Ready, originally launched by Renault and Schneider Electric.

EV Ready aims at guaranteeing interoperability between the charging infrastructure and electric and rechargeable hybrid vehicles in the market across Europe by means of a uniform scheme which is intended to cover the requirements that have to be considered in addition to the existing standards.

While keeping an eye on further development of IEC61851-1 ed2.1, which is currently in progress, the OEMs will aim to complete the development and the formalisation of the certification requirements. The validation scheme will be detailed in the coming months.

EV Ready, first launched in June 2010, is intended from the beginning to be open to a larger audience and to become a recognised benchmark in the field of charging systems for electric vehicles. The technical coverage of EV Ready goes from the low voltage transformer to the electric vehicle.

At the same time the concept keeps a strong focus on economic performance and aims to maintain openness to innovations and any future developments.

Today over sixty European companies ranging from energy providers, network operators, suppliers and installers of charging stations are already working to develop and adopt EV Ready.

The validation scheme is currently based upon the principle of combined self-declaration of conformity and routine verification of compatibility with vehicles, and to move to a third party verification based on international verification of compliance by accredited laboratory is already considered for near future.