The Role of AI in Electric Vehicle Charging
30:04 Share

From privacy concerns to limitless potential, AI is rapidly impacting our evolving society. In this new season of the Brave Technologist podcast, we're demystifying artificial intelligence, challenging the status quo, and empowering everyday people to embrace the digital revolution. I'm your host, Luke Malks, VP of Business Operations at Brave Software, makers of the privacy-respecting Brave browser and search engine, now powering AI with the Brave Search API. ♪

You're listening to a new episode of The Brave Technologist, and this one features Diego Pareschi, the Global Product Line Manager for EV Fast Chargers at ABB eMobility. With a background in automation and control engineering, what we might now call industrial AI, Diego has spent the last 15 years designing cutting-edge products for the energy and eMobility sector.

He's passionate about accelerating EV adoption through innovative, user-centered charging solutions powered by data and AI insights. One of his most standout creations, the Terra 360, was named one of Time Magazine's Best Automotive Technologies of 2022.

In this episode, we discuss the current state of EV charging technology, the challenges impacting adoption and user experience, and what's being solved right now. His work on developing Formula E race chargers used by all teams in the series, along with a vision for new frictionless EV charging experiences. And now for this week's episode of The Brave Technologist. Diego, welcome to The Brave Technologist. How are you doing today?

Thanks for having me. I'm doing really good. Looking forward to this one. We haven't had anybody on from the EV space aside from some autonomous driving and things like that. So I'm really excited to have you on today. You spent the past 15 years kind of building high tech energy products. What keeps you passionate about EV charging innovation today?

Well, I'm personally very, very passionate about EV charging because it's not just about moving electrons. It's a complete shift in the world and in the way that energy is being consumed. So EV charging as a whole sits on the intersection between climate impact, digitalization, and new user behaviors.

Over the past few years, I've seen EV charging evolving from a niche where the first drivers that were driving a Nissan Leaf were struggling to charge it to something that is very, very critical for nation-wide because it is as critical as the power grid or other very important services.

The main difference is that there is so much to optimize compared to other utilities. So user experience, energy efficiency, software, there is so much to do. And a little fun fact about myself, it's the very first time I designed something that actually people understand what it is.

Everyone drives a car or knows about cars. So it's really good to break the ice. I bet it is. I bet it is. And it's also one of those things that is on everybody's mind too, because I remember it seems like this development and the adoption. I'm in the Bay Area and

It's almost like every other car you see now is a Tesla or another EV. And I remember initially when they started to roll out out here, there were all these like concerns around like anxiety over losing a charge or I would travel a lot. And people in Chicago were like in the colder weather, it's a little bit different than warmer weather because you get these Uber drivers that are all in their Teslas or whatever. But it has been really interesting experience.

I feel like you've seen a lot more of the infrastructure rollout and more and more people charging stations popping up and things like that. What is the immediate problem that you're trying to address right now with the technology?

Well, the key problem that I'm seeing everywhere around the world is that EV charging is not easy yet. It's not frictionless yet. So there is still a lot to do to make it accessible, seamless and intelligent.

You can see this friction in multiple ways, starting from location. It might be challenging to find where a charger is. Then reliability. Will the charger work? Compatibility. Will it work with my car? Then waiting times. How long do I need to charge? Will I have to wait? And then last but not least, payment. How can I pay? Is it something that I can do with a subscription? Is it something I can do with an app or...

or just a credit card. There are a lot of things to improve and these can benefit everyone from the everyday drivers that used to drive or they need to drive around the cities, especially the new ones, the newcomers. Because the early adopters, they are challenged. They like to be challenged with new technologies. But people that are less tech savvy, for them, it's a big deal.

But not only consumers, also fleet operators, bus, trucks, for them uptime and planning is the key. So they cannot rely just on the public charging network. They need their own and they have different metrics.

And overall, the cities themselves and grid operators, because especially you were mentioning the Bay Area, but other countries like Japan, where there are natural disasters, EVs can be fundamental because they can provide grid stability. They can be that battery that keeps the grid running when there is something unplanned. Yeah, there is really a lot to do.

Yeah, no, it sounds like a lot of first order and second order issues to kind of work through. How universal, just kind of building off one of the things you mentioned there, like how universal are these charging stations at this point? Is there like a standards body that's kind of addressing these things? And is it pretty interchangeable from one brand to another at this point? Or are they still working through that? There are multiple standardization bodies and there has been a lot of work to

to make sure that all the manufacturers of vehicles, both cars, motorbike, heavy vehicles, they adopt the same plugs, very similar to what was done with USB moving towards USB-C,

And until a couple of years ago, the world was basically aligning towards regional standards. So Europe with the CCS2, North America with the CCS1, China with the GBT, and Japan with the Shademo.

Of course, things not always go according to plan. And Tesla has introduced their own standard that they were using on their vehicle. And that standard called North American Charging Standard, NACS.

has disrupted this process in a good way because it's a very good type of plug. But this means that Europe and the rest of the world is already a little bit more ahead in having standard type of plugs. And this means also you can drive your car from one region to another easily and find a charger. North America is in the process of

adoption of two standards that ultimately will lead to the NSCIS being the only plug that you will find. But it will take a few years. Interesting. I had no idea around some of these complexities there too. You've applied AI in machine learning to EV charging systems. Can you walk us through kind of a real world example where AI has improved the charging experience for the owner of the car?

Yeah, absolutely. So in my career, I've been following several projects where AI has been used to understand patterns. That's also my background in data analytics and machine learning.

And this has a natural application in industrial assets, but also for EV charging, you have an industrial asset like an electrical device and a consumer or a human user. So that takes the problem to another level. One very interesting project that I've been leading in the past few years has been a cooperation with several universities.

to design a system to automatically understand the behavior of users

based also on the location. So the user behavior means understanding how long the user charges, how much energy does it take, its vehicle takes, the type of vehicle, the type of plug, if there is a mistake, what type of mistake. Maybe it's taking too much time to find the credit card and the payment fails. And create an anonymized profile of that. That's very important.

The other side is location. So where is this charging happening? Is it close to a movie theater? Is it close to a gas station, a restaurant, a supermarket? This kind of analysis can be done manually when you have few assets. But when you get into the thousands, millions potentially in the future,

then it becomes more complicated. So we did this exercise where we have clustering techniques. It was possible to create these profiles and associate them to the point of interest. So looking at the map and put in different weights. And in this way, we know very well that there is a different behavior of a user that goes to a restaurant rather than a user that goes to a restaurant that is close to a movie theater.

or close to a gas station, because those are macro behaviors that otherwise you would never understand. And this was super useful to also understand how we can adapt a certain hardware product, both with the configuration, but also with the actual hardware design, so it fits better those type of use cases.

It's interesting, too, because I just hearing you kind of run through that there's all these like environmental factors, location factors, but also the other thing my mind keeps going to is that you're coming into a space where there's, I think, roughly like 100 years of established behaviors around.

When I am low on gas, I go to a station and put this liquid in my car and as fast as it can pour in is as fast as I'm off. But with charging, it seems fundamentally different, right? Where you've got to wait for the thing to charge. Like, are you setting kind of benchmarks on that expected?

behavior or like how much of what you do involves like trying to unwind some of those behaviors or match what people are used to? Is that even a part of the equation at this point? Or are you guys just trying to kind of figure out the most efficient way to do the charging at the station?

It's a very good question, Luke. So the original assumption a few years ago was let's replace gas pumps with EV chargers. And what we realized, and also charge point operators, CPOs realized at high cost, is that it doesn't work exactly the same. Because in most use cases, if you're lucky to have a garage with a charger wall box at home,

you can start every day your drive with a battery full. So you don't necessarily need to go to a charging station to refill the battery.

And then the locations where the charges are installed, you know, the need might be different from the traditional one. So investments that have been done installing charges at traditional gas stations were not very successful. It's happening now, for instance, in Scandinavia, where gas stations are being decommissioned and turned into charging stations.

So using the facilities that are existing, but fundamentally there is new science that came up in the last few years to identify the location and that's all data driven. So where are the main traffic routes, where people want to stop?

because you need to consider that it takes 7 to 10 minutes to refill a car traditionally with gas, while for EV charging the technology is improving a lot and getting close to that, but most vehicles charge in 30-40 minutes you can get the battery quite full. So you want to be in a location where you want to spend 30-40 minutes.

And ideally, that is a location where you can do something else, like a supermarket or a restaurant or a fast food. So there is a rise of brand new locations. And I'm seeing a lot of work in layering all these data sets that are evolving over time to figure out where is the best location. And machine learning and AI has a huge role in this.

Yeah, it's really interesting because as you talk about this, I feel like just from where I'm at in my part of the world, I'm kind of seeing a lot of this experimentation playing out because you're starting to see kind of EV charging at office garage, parking garages or movie theaters or parks or different areas where we didn't see it a year or two ago. So it is really interesting hearing you say that.

explain that because yeah these are kind of areas where people go and they'll they'll spend an hour or more parked and you can actually charge and it seems like we're seeing kind of a mix of different incentives there too around like whether it's like locations of the parking spots that have these things where it's super convenient you know or something like that that kind of gets get people front center engaging with this stuff so that that's super interesting

How kind of do you ensure that the charging solutions are basically inclusive for a wide range of drivers, including those who may be less tech savvy? That's very, very interesting because

This is a complex technology to look at. It's something brand new. So simplicity is the real innovation. Make the process very simple. It's a real differentiator. So as I mentioned earlier about the plugs,

But there has been this drive towards standard plugs in different regions. And that makes things a little bit simpler because you don't need to think too much about is the blue connector or is the black one. That is likely going, at least in the next few years. But then there are other aspects. One that is super important is how inclusive are the chargers for people with disabilities?

There are standards like ADA in North America that is extremely strict. However, we had to do some work with the governmental agencies to adjust the standard because certain requirements were a little bit too tight for the reality of this new technology.

but there has been a lot of openness in that. And this makes sure that also people that have more challenges moving around, they can access those stations easily. Then there are a lot of other aspects that have been taken into consideration, especially in the design of these stations. The user experience is key.

One major aspect are lights. You might see screens, information that might be a little bit confusing for a new user, but everyone knows that if you see a green light, that means available. If you see a red one, it means something is not right. Playing with those elements and making them guiding the user helped us to develop very good product over time.

In the long run, this will become less and less of a problem because new development actually already there. There are new technologies like plug and charge that is a technical solution that allows to have a secure authentication just plugging your vehicle with the charger. And everything is being managed from the vehicle to the charger to the back end to have this secure authentication and payment.

So at a certain point in the future, there will be need for no screen, no interface. You just have a plug, you plug in, and you're good to go. Is that kind of the frictionless scenario that you would imagine? It's almost like you just drive up, plug in, swipe your thing or whatever, and kind of done? Yeah, even payment will, in the future, it's still...

Not a problem in certain realities, but it's not universally so easy. So that is going to be in the future, I would say five to seven years, a moment where you will see that things that are complicated, like am I authorized to use this charger? Can I pay? Will just become as simple as using an app. So you log in once and

And then you're good to go. And all your credential, everything is securely communicated and used by the system without you worrying about that. You just need to think where do you need to go. And charging is just something that you plug in and you're good to go.

Yeah, super interesting because you've got like all of these different emerging technologies kind of working together. You know, you've got like more payment innovations that are happening really quickly right now. And a lot of the different pieces of tech kind of all iterating quickly together into a better experience. It's really cool, man. Like,

You oversaw kind of the development of ABB's Formula E race charger used by all the teams in the series. First off, can you go into a little bit of that and what was unique about it? And did you get any insights from the racing world that influenced your approach with mainstream or everyday charging use cases? That was a really fun project. So a little bit of background, ABB is a major corporation that is active since 2008.

very long time, I think in some countries more than 120 years.

in electrification and automation. So when Formula E became a thing, we have professional drivers driving these electric vehicles that are very, very similar. Now they're getting almost indistinguishable from Formula One vehicles from the outside, but fully electric. There was a decision to invest in that. So ABB became the title sponsor of that racing.

One of the things that was decided was to provide the charging technology because you have electric cars and you make charges. So, of course, it makes sense. That was a big challenge because automotive, especially racing automotive, it's a completely different beast from traditional car manufacturing.

So, those guys are hitting the road for months, going from one country to the other. Everything has to be transported in an efficient way. Formula E was a little bit more challenging because it cannot be just air freight from one place to the other. They had to find more environmentally friendly ways, but we had to design something that is not just designed to be installed on the ground and just stay there for years, but every week put

put on a pallet and drive or go together with the vehicles and all the equipment to another continent. We designed something very robust, but at the same time, the product that was designed for the first season, it's not the same that is now being used. So we have a team that travels together with the chargers and supports the different vehicle teams.

And another one that is in our R&D office that is analyzing all the logs and seeing how the system can be improved. So how we can make it more robust so that it's ready to charge when it's needed. How to make sure that we modify some element inside by looking at how it was behaving during the race. Because every team relies on that. And if the charger does not work, you cannot charge the car before the race or during the race.

That has been super useful because then we took a lot of these insights and we put them into the regular products that are being installed worldwide.

Yeah, I mean, it sounds like a lot of like a forcing function, right? To get because, you know, even if you have to kind of distribute nationwide, like charging stations, things like that, there is a lot of like transportation involved in a lot of efficiencies, you have to consider that a team would have to consider to I would imagine doing the racing. It's just an interesting thing to you're putting the pedal to the metal with the racing, right?

You've got this whole other dynamic with the EV piece of that. It's a really cool thing to hear you talk about. What's the conversation we aren't having enough of from your point of view? What would you like to hear us talking about more in this kind of race to innovate? I hear a lot of conversations that are very siloed. So EVs or EVs.

or EV charging or software. The reality is that charging an EV is part of an ecosystem. So you have the vehicles themselves,

Energy, because let's remember you need to feed those chargers with some power that has to come from somewhere and hopefully it's not generated with coal, it's generated in a clean way. User behaviors, because the traditional behaviors are changing. You have a full tank every morning if you have a charger in your garage. It's different from, oh, I need to go to the gas station before going to the office.

And then even city design. I'm very passionate about city design because this element really falls into that. You...

want to have people stopping in certain locations because they need to spend a little bit more time, which means that those locations, it has to be somewhere where you want to stay. So green and it's, you know, the difference with a traditional gas station that is typically an environment that most of the time you don't want to spend too much time is also because it's

potentially dangerous. You know, they're very safe. Gas stations are very safe, but it's still an area, an ATEX area, so there are gases that could combust. So it's not as pleasant as some greenery that you can have next to a charging station, because at the end, the risk that you have, it's the same as being next to a light bulb.

So that has a completely different impact. These kinds of conversations are happening in certain countries. I'm seeing, for instance, that in the Netherlands, that is a country that is really ahead when it comes to rethinking the way of living to provide a better life. There are operators that are designing their charging station to be a beautiful location where you really want to be.

But on the other hand, there are other types of conversations that are about, can we feed these new EV charges? Our grid is not powerful enough. They already reached saturation. These are the kinds of conversations that I really would like to see in more parts of the world. Not just

Where is my charger? I would imagine there's quite a bit of work that has to go into like working with like local governments, the cities and things like that. How has that process been? Yeah, this is actually a good point because I noticed in the last two or three years, there has been this big race to buy chargers, EV chargers to put on the street. But then this has hit a stonewall.

Because you cannot just go and install, you need to have approvals. You need to have the grid connection. You need to have the power in the grid in that location. And all of these things have actually slowed down the rollout process in multiple regions. I can speak about Europe as North America, that are the two main runners at the moment, aside from China, of course.

I see that the only realities that actually are not facing this are big companies that typically have locations, for instance, large supermarket chains, because they have huge parking lots. So those ones are the ones that are currently facing less challenges and their rollout is going to be, it is and it's going to be huge.

Everywhere else, actually the market had some hiccups because a lot of demand suddenly has caused warehouses to be full because the charges simply could not be installed fast enough. Wow, wow. This is something that now it's normalizing again, but it has been an interesting dynamic because in the U.S., there has been a lot of attention on federal funding being invested for the infrastructure.

But at the same time, this has been slowed down then by this practicality. There were not enough transformers to feed those charges. You see people talk about this, where it's like a lot of these charging stations could be like renewable source, where there's like solar or some other forms. How is that process going? It seems like something you hear politicians and people talk about, but like, how's the development space going? Like, is somebody working in the technology? Are you seeing innovation happening there? Or is it something where it's still kind of early? Yeah.

This is something that really varies region by region. If a country is really ahead with renewables, I'm thinking to countries like Portugal, but also Scandinavia. And renewable, many things can be also hydropower. In that case, we already see instances where 100% of the power that is being injected into the car battery is renewable or is clean. The mix...

There are other countries where this is a bit more challenging, but there is overall a focus to get towards that. There is a layer in between. So manufacturers of chargers are then working together with the operators of the charging stations. And it's the duty of the operators of the charging station to buy the right mix of energy.

So for them, there are some that I have in mind. For them, it's a selling point. Claiming that they have 100% renewable energy in their charges, this is very important because if you invest, typically you spend more money than you would to buy an electric car. You do it...

most of the time because you want to help the environment. Of course, you don't want to have a coal power plant fueling your car. Right, right, right.

Right, right. No, it's interesting. I mean, there's like a lot of dynamics involved. It also seems to if you can get renewable, like in the case of solar or something where you could even get a cost advantage, a revenue generating kind of advantage over time, too, if you're not having to source power from another place you're paying a cost for, you know, or you have to absorb the cost for and bringing it in. It's just really interesting. Like there's a lot of pieces at play with this. Yet we're seeing it, you know, get broader and broader adoption. To kind of close it out a little bit, are there any bold,

prediction you have for the future of EV and tech that you're willing to bet on today, if you could pick one? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, today, EV charging still has friction and it's perceived as a product that has some challenges. But in 10 years, EV

I see EV charging not as a product anymore, but as an ambient service, something that is just part of cities. So you would not have to look for a charger, but you would charge without really thinking. When you park,

whatever it is at work, at home, there will be available solutions, just a plug that you plug in or some other system potentially will plug in. Autonomous vehicles, there are developments to make them, charging by themselves, or even wireless paths that have some challenges, but the technology is getting pretty mature.

And then the other aspect is that AI, other than just being now a buzzword that everyone is thinking about, actually has this very big impact in improving the usage of the charger. So the grid can funnel the energy to your vehicle or your vehicle can funnel the energy to the grid wherever it's needed.

And that can only happen if you have a brain that is automatically assigning these power flows without impacting your experience as a user. You don't want to have a discharged car in the morning when you need to bring your kids to school. So the matter is not about where you charge or when to charge. The car just will be charged. And in that way, you will just forget as we are now forgetting about connecting to the Wi-Fi. It's just one click.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So many similarities with different parts of life that just coming together. It's really cool. Diego, if people want to follow your work or what you post online, where can people find out more about you or follow you on social or contact you elsewhere? They can reach me out on my LinkedIn page, but I also have a website with my portfolio and the things that I'm really proud of. That is diegopareschi.com.

In case you want to have a chat, you know, just you can just reach me out there. Fantastic. Fantastic. Diego, this has been fascinating conversation. I really applaud you for the work you're doing. I'm excited to kind of see one of those things you can see in real life when you're outside your house and love to have you back to check in on how things are going down the road. Thank you for having me. Yeah. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for listening to the Brave Technologist podcast. To never miss an episode, make sure you hit follow in your podcast app.

If you haven't already made the switch to the Brave browser, you can download it for free today at brave.com and start using Brave Search, which enables you to search the web privately. Brave also shields you from the ads, trackers, and other creepy stuff following you across the web. ♪