The pilot was developed and demonstrated in MOBI’s DRIVES Program, which combines the efforts of several inactive MOBI Working Groups. DRIVES Program contributors include AAIS, Accenture, Anritsu, ASJade Tech, Arxum, Aucnet, AWS, Blockedge, BMW, Cara7, CarIQ, CEVT, DENSO, Ford, GM, Henshin Group, Hitachi, Honda, IoTeX, ITI, ITOCHU, Kaula Lab, Mazda, Nissan, NuCypher, ParkMyFleet, peaq, Orico, R3, Reply, State Farm, Stellantis, Toyota Industries Corporation, Traent, USAA, and Vitesco.

With electric vehicle (EV) sales skyrocketing in recent years, many EV owners are seeking integrated, user-friendly ways to manage and maintain their vehicles and interact with EV charging infrastructure while preserving data privacy for both vehicle and infrastructure owners. Today, integrated EV infrastructure solutions are generally unable to scale due to data siloing and the rising cost of trust. Solving this problem requires (1) a standardized framework for verifying claims & identities, and (2) a shared network and trust anchor for cross-industry coordination and data sharing.

To this end, MOBI and its members developed a pilot to demonstrate the potential use of MOBI’s Web3 infrastructure — Citopia and the Integrated Trust Network (ITN) — in facilitating the creation of globally scalable, privacy-preserving solutions related to EV charging, reservation, and payments, in addition to EV battery data tracking. The pilot leveraged Citopia Self-Sovereign Digital Twins™ (SSDTs™) and World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Verifiable Credentials (VCs) to simulate interactions between EV drivers, charging stations, and related service providers. The user journey involved EV drivers using Citopia to (1) search for charging stations along their route, make reservations, track charging progress, and pay; and (2) access their EV battery’s State of Health (SOH) and State of Charge (SOC) information. Please note that dummy SOC and SOH data was employed for the purposes of this pilot. In a real world implementation, this data would be provided by the battery and/or vehicle manufacturer.

The pilot demonstrated the capacity for seamless booking, management, and payment for EV charging as well as user tracking of battery SOH and SOC via MOBI Trusted Trip VCs on Citopia, with trusted identity and assurance services provided by the ITN. The pilot successfully illustrated the respective capabilities of MOBI Trusted Trip VCs to verify the beginning and ending of charging trips and other VCs to enable agreements between users and service providers pertaining to booking, payment, etc.

All transactions executed via Citopia go through the SSDTs™ of ecosystem stakeholders by issuing VCs with embedded Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) for future verification. The EV Charging, Reservation, and Payment pilot showed that these transactions can be executed while preserving data privacy, such that EV owners maintain control over their Personally Identifiable Information (PII), trip, and battery data, and service providers maintain control over their business data. All personal and competitive information is stored locally in the SSDT™ and remains under the owner’s control, inaccessible to Citopia and other third parties.

Though the trip planning segment in this demo only focuses on searching for in-route charging points, Citopia permits service providers to integrate countless applications using open APIs, including applications for Road Usage Charging, EV Credits/Rewards, and Usage-Based Insurance. The Citopia marketplace is designed to enable direct connections between providers and users during trip planning, reservations, and payment, eliminating the need for costly one-off integrations through centralized platforms.