A group of forward thinking engineers consisting of blockchain experts lab10 collective, e-mobility pioneers Easelink and the living lab initiative act4.energy, demonstrated the future of hands-free, fully automated, conductive charging earlier this month at Mission Innovation Austria Week 2019.
The event was attended by the Austrian minister of technology and innovation accompanied by experts in the field of smart energy and mobility.
Easelink provides Matrixm, the first fully-automated conductive charging technology, which combined with the use of smart contracts on lab10 collective’s ARTIS blockchain allows the charging of electric cars at just the tap of a button.
Cars with Matrix Charging Systems charge automatically when parked over a Matrix Charging Pad. The main components, Connector and the Pad communicate via a secure wireless connection. After a system check and an authentication process, the vehicle automatically connects to the Matrix Charging Pad. lab10 collective provides a secure payment service and identity verification without further action from the driver (or through a mobile app) through the use of decentralized ID and payments via the blockchain eliminating the need for a payment service providers.
Smart contracts - digital automated agreements that are governed on lab10 collective’s public Ethereum sidechain ARTIS, facilitate the convenient, instant and secure processing of the payment, enabling a peer-to-peer digital Dollar or Euro pegged money transfer without centralised payment service providers. Easelink’s Matrix Charging system ensures that the charging procedure itself is fully automated and can function without any interaction from the driver. A connector integrated into the underbody of the vehicle lowers to a charging pad on the ground, thus establishing a powerful conductive connection. The charging pad is extremely robust, suitable for both indoor and outdoor use and has been specially developed to facilitate the installation of automatic charging infrastructure in parking spaces.
“The combination of Matrix Charging with an automated payment system is an important step in the realization of our vision” said Hermann Stockinger, CEO and founder of Easelink. “We want to enable automatic charging in every parking stop, completely unnoticed by the EV user. This opens up entirely new possibilities in the field of urban e-mobility and smart cities”.
Innovative solutions such as this one will be tried and tested in a living lab in south-east Austria as part of the innovation lab act4.energy, an innovation and technology initiative to accelerate research and development of smart energy solutions that ultimately can be translated into working business models at the lab’s parent company Energie Kompass.
For additional information:
