Software and IoT Accelerating Global EV Market Success —
Electric Vehicles (EVs) are the way forward with clean mobility. World over there has been several interventions in policy, infrastructure, and technology to boost the adoption of EVs. To make a real impact Governments and Businesses need to look at this market with a systems approach of bringing several industries to interwork. EVs need an automobile, power grid, telecom, and digital industries to work together to create seamless user experiences leading to faster adoption. Leveraging IoT devices, software engineering, cloud computing, and data analytics are the key ingredients in this strategy.
Automobiles are at the heart of the Electrification of Mobility and new electric vehicles will have fewer mechanical components compared to existing fossil-fueled vehicles. EV by design is a connected vehicle and software plays a key role in creating product differentiation. The heart of any EV is the battery and its battery management system. EV performance and longevity are determined to a great extent by Battery health hence optimizing the charge cycles of cells is key to realizing the ROI on EVs. Battery optimization requires the real-time collection of data across various vehicle subsystems under various road and usage conditions to be analyzed and continual modification of control parameters to deliver the best performance. This is accomplished through advanced telematics coupled with data analytics systems running both at the edge and in the cloud.
The next-generation vehicles will bring in the element of Autonomous driving and ADAS systems which are powered by IoT sensing, deep intelligence, and software systems. Using the connected car interfaces, Automobile makers will include advanced dashboards and intelligent systems to improve safety and enhance seamless connectivity. The digital twin of the vehicle allows the OEMs to optimize the vehicle performance and driving behavior models of the drivers offer unlimited possibilities of creating economic value.
EVs are fueled by electricity and EV Chargers play the role of fuel stations. By design, EV Chargers and battery swap systems are controlled centrally by cloud-based software systems. The systems manage authentication, authorization, and delivery of energy to the EVs, akin to the computer networks and telecom networks. As the Chargers increase in the market, the dynamic load balancing of the grid is a challenge that will be solved using the data intelligence and interfaces to the smart grid. There are new business models created using renewable energy integration and that brings several possibilities like Distributed battery swap, charging Solar hub for EV Chargers, and energy blockchain for Renewable integration.
Electric Vehicle experience is not complete without the digital interfaces, mainly access through mobile phones and rich intelligence through the vehicle data collected over time. Seamless authentication using existing digital identities and seamless payment interfaces make adoption of EVs faster. The EV Fleets, early adopters of EV across logistics and passenger mobility, use fleet management systems to manage their assets. Route planning and optimization using the rich data sets and algorithms are key to the success of these fleets. The fleet and charger data points are a future differentiator to monetize by blending multiple data sources.
Internet connectivity and Telematics play a key role in the connected EV Ecosystem. All the components are connected; battery, vehicle, charger, and smart grid. They are connected using various protocols and not all interfaces are standardized. The availability and quality of data connectivity is a key factor for success. Once the market grows, there is a strong need for newer IoT network slices on the 5G networks. This use case also requires advanced edge computing to enable faster response times.
IoT, software, and data play an extremely key role in EV market success. India is an established software power across various industry verticals. EV Market will be an excellent opportunity for Indian Startups and IT Industry to contribute and create world-class products and solutions which are made in India for Global markets. Contributing to Standardization and also creating new standards, like with battery swap systems and chargers for 2/3 wheelers will give Indian players an opportunity to be market leaders. Technology adoption is at the same stage the world over and this should be seen as an opportunity for home-grown companies to innovate and be a part of the Global EV Success story. We look forward to several global technology product companies from India in the next decade.
About the Co-authors
- Ravikiran Annaswamy — Ravikiran is a serial entrepreneur and co-founder of Numocity Technologies. He has over 25 years of rich experience in getting new ideas to market, and achieving scale in the IoT and Telecom domain with Siemens and Nokia. He is also a board member at IEEE promoting standardization of technology in 5G and Electric vehicles.
2. Siddharth Sreenivasan—Siddharth is a co-founder of Numocity Technologies. He has broad experience in the mobile telecommunication and e-commerce domain. He has essayed various roles including product engineering, sales, and product management in large corporations and startups.
