ChargeX Prescribed Testing Program at CharIN November 2024 Testival Outcomes & Future Recommendations

In November 2024, the ChargeX Consortium developed an optional prescribed testing program for electric vehicle (EV) and electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE) manufacturers that attended the CharIN November Testival as testers.Seeing as this was the second implementation of the ChargeX Consortium's prescribed test program (PTP) at Charging Interface Initiative (CharIN), the foundation of this event was based on the structure of the June 2024 ChargeX PTP with some variation.This program contained 13 test scenarios (TS) to be performed during the final 40-minutes of a 90-minute testing slot with details such as purpose, setup, pass criteria, etc. included within a written test plan document.A $2,000 rebate was offered to those who participated, and a ChargeX moderation force was present to collect EV and EVSE meta data, testing meta data, and testing results.The biggest change to this PTP was an added gamification aspect, with this event being implemented under the alias "The ChargeX Challenge".Compared to June PTP's sequential approach of completing all TSs in the allotted time, this event had points associated with test attempt, EV pass criteria, EVSE pass criteria, and additional stretch goal pass criteria.Based on feedback received from the previous event, multiple tiers of pass criteria were created for each TS, allowing testers to achieve partial points if not all were met.Throughout the test slots that contained prescribed testing, test pairings worked together to achieve as many points as possible with the more advanced charging tests worth more points, therefore incentivizing their attempt.Points in this "competition" worked towards a series of awards made available by the ChargeX team that any opted-in test pairing or individual EV/EVSE could work towards.These awards included highest scoring pairings, individual EV across all test slots, and individual EVSE across all test slots, as well as additional awards for most ambitious, most persevering, stretch goal recognition, ISO 15118-20 recognition, and seamless retry recognition.Overall, the gamified PTP was received extremely positively by those who participated, with many very eager to hear updates on leaderboards and find out who had the highest scores throughout the event.Within this report, the names of testers who claimed awards have been kept anonymous.In terms of participation, there were 10 EVs and 13 EVSE that opted-in to the program with 7 out of 10 of the test slots containing a 40-minute prescribed testing window.Opted-in testers matchmade with opted-out testers were given the option to participate in the prescribed testing program if desired, and two opted-in testers were expected to perform the tests when paired together.The testers participating in this program were limited to EVs and EVSEs capable of either AC or DC charging, with test systems being excluded from this program.In total, 45 unique test pairings worked to attempt 344 TS, with 275 that met some or all pass criteria and 69 attempts that met no pass criteria.Like the June 2024 PTP, it was seen that some TS had much higher attempt rates and/or success rates than others due to the difficulty range in tests.This attempt/success rate was a major increase from June 2024's PTP which yielded 163 TS attempts with 112 of those meeting all defined pass criteria.Time to perform TS was captured for future planning of TS and given testing time.For a high-level summary of testing outcomes, TS 1 and 2 had a very high attempt/success rate for basic plug-first tests using DIN SPEC 70121, J1772 or ISO 15118-2.TS 3 had a much lower attempt/success rate for plug-first using ISO 15118-20 as it is a HLC protocol still in the early implementation stage by testers, however it did yield one successful attempt.TS 5-9 explored fault injections and stop methods, which yielded high attempt/success rates and discovered both expected and unexpected behavior from EV and EVSE systems.TS 11-13 explored Plug&Charge and certificate testing, with TS 11 having the highest attempt-to-success ratio for valid certificates Plug&Charge testing.TS 12 and TS 13 expired certificate Plug&Charge testing