Electric cars are increasingly becoming a more common means of transportation in today’s modern world. Because of that, the demand for both new and used electric cars has grown exponentially. While electric cars will not be replacing gas-powered vehicles in the near future, the ratio of owned electric cars to gas-powered cars within the global car market has only kept rising. According to a report published by the International Energy Agency (IEA), in 2021 alone, sales of electric vehicles nearly doubled to 6.6 million sales in comparison to those carried out during 2020, bringing the number of electronic cars on the road to 16.5 million during that year. More recently, 1.9 million new electric cars were registered during 2023, resulting in a 17.9% increase from 2022 due to the easing of the global semiconductor chip shortage. And with such a significant increase in the global EV market, those figures are only expected to keep rising. According to a report published by Protocol, the ratio of electric cars to gas cars will gradually increase, for which new electric vehicle sales are expected to reach an increase of 20% by 2025, 40% by 2030, and could ultimately account for nearly all new car sales by 2040. Because of such a significant increase in the number of electric vehicles owned worldwide, it’s important for governments, charging point hosts, and even organizations to provide efficient EV charging solutions that allow electric vehicle owners to charge their EVs when necessary. Enter Sparklin, who recently unveiled its revolutionary Spark 1 socket at CES 2024, a smart slow-charging and connected socket that’s designed to support all-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles, not just cars, allowing charging point hosts to equip their shared parking spaces at a lower cost without changing their existing infrastructure.
WHO IS SPARKLIN?
Sparklin is a 3-year old e-mobility company that specializes in developing and manufacturing electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE) with the main goal of meeting the e-mobility industry challenges at a global scale.
Recently introduced to Sparklin’s e-mobility ecosystem, the company’s new Spark 1 smart slow-charging socket is specifically designed to provide a slow charging solution for all types of electric vehicles. Their newly released Spark 1 socket offers a slow charging solution to all charging point hosts who own shared car parks (such as mobility operators, electrical material distributors, and group housing, as well as companies, hotels, camping parks, and Airbnb).
During CES 2024, we had the chance to interview Sparklin’s General Director, Laurent Stephan (who’s also the CEO of 4MOD Technology), who proudly mentioned that: “The scope of the company is to design an EV charging solution that offers charging point hosts a platform which makes it simple to manage the charging points for electric vehicles in general, while also bringing security, because cyber-attacks are a real issue in the IoT side of such solutions.”
Laurent also added that: “Sparklin has been looking to design such platform not only in the software side, but also with a focus on the hardware side for all the physical products (meaning all smart EV charging sockets) that are running on their platform to be as lean as possible in terms of their environmental footprint.
Laurent also noted that “Something that’s also very important for Sparklin is the scalability of their platform to be able to run up to 100,000 electric vehicle charging points, which the company is already prepared for. In addition, Sparklin has also been paying special attention to the sovereignty of their system, something that’s very important to the company, as the servers which are hosting all of this data are localized in the same countries were their platform is being used.”
Laurent finished by saying that: “Sparklin is currently able to deploy their services through their proprietary EV-charging ecosystem in 67 different countries, for all of which they already have servers running”.
For the purpose of allowing charging point hosts to offer EV owners a safe and reliable way to charge their electric vehicles (including both all-electric cars as well as plug-in hybrid vehicles), the company has been designing the Spark 1 socket, which they recently unveiled at CES 2024.
According to Laurent, Sparklin’s newly announced smart slow-charging socket aims to provide a solution that’s quite robust in comparison to the existing EV-charging sockets that are currently available in EV charging locations, which have an issue with their level of non-continuity of service, as they operate at less than 80% of the time, while Sparklin’s Spark 1 socket currently offers charging point hosts a continuity of service of 99.5%, a level of quality of service that’s truly impressive.
WHAT IS THE SPARK 1 SOCKET?
The Spark 1 is a smart slow-charging and connected socket which is specifically designed to provide a slow charging solution for all types of electric vehicles, including not only all-electric cars but also plug-in hybrid vehicles such as E-bicycles and E-scooters, particularly for long-term parking spots.
Sparklin’s Spark 1 smart slow-charging socket boasts 3.7 kWh of slow-charge power output, is designed to work as a single-phase EV-charging socket with a 2P+T plug (Mode 2), for which its electrical connector is equipped with a reinforced housing that ensures a long lifespan, with the option for customers to get it with a IP66 Waterproof cable gland for extra durability.
Designed as part of Sparklin’s e-mobility platform, one Spark 1 socket equals to one parking space, and allows charging point hosts to equip their shared parking spaces at a lower cost without requiring them to change their existing infrastructure.
The Spark 1 socket can be installed on indoor or outdoor walls without infrastructure modification, and can also be installed on a post, allowing two sockets to be installed on the same structure. It allows electric vehicle owners to charge their EV at home, at work, or even other shared parking spaces.
The Spark 1 is also connected with Sparklin’s ecosystem via 4G, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi.
All Spark 1 sockets are controlled through Sparklin’s dedicated mobile App, called the Sparklin App (for users), and also through the Sparklin Manager Desktop application (for charging point hosts providing the use of these EV-charging sockets to electric vehicle owners).
Sparklin’s e-mobility platform offers two communication modes: the Sparklin Protocol (Sparklin’s proprietary communication protocol technology) and the universal OCPP 1.6 protocol, which is open to all e-mobility operators.
Via the Sparklin App, users can easily start a charging session for their electric vehicle. Once a Spark owner adds you to his community, your billing data will be securely uploaded after each use, thanks to our Sparklin Protocol.
Then there’s also the Sparklin Manager Desktop application, which is specifically designed to help charging point hosts more easily manage the EV-charging sockets they’re providing for their customers / employees.
The Sparklin Manager features an online dashboard through which a host can remotely control multiple sockets, set up schedules, manage the access, and get tracking and history of the ongoing month charging sessions, all thanks to Sparklin’s secure data storage.
On top of providing its Spark 1 EV charging socket and the supervision of the capabilities offered by it, the company also provides system control and the insurance of security during its use. For the latter, Sparklin monitors the security of its e-mobility platform 24/7, and the company does that on a worldwide basis.
WHAT ARE SPARKLIN’S FUTURE PLANS FOR ITS SPARK 1 SOCKET?
At the present, Sparklin’s system is already deployed in France (whose government envisions 700,000 public charging points by 2030). While the company is currently ready to enter the European market, Sparklin anticipates expanding into the U.S. market later in 2024, with the necessary technical adjustments to accommodate North American electric power.
The company’s main goal in Europe is to offer its services to electricity providers as a B2B (business-to-business) sales model.
Sparklin’s service consists of a monthly fee for each EV-charging socket, costing 5€ per month per device, plus the hardware installation cost (meaning Spark 1 sockets) in case customers don’t have their own hardware to set up on Sparklin’s e-mobility platform).
On top of the company’s current expansion plans to other European countries and also to the US market, Sparklin’s General Director, Laurent Stephan also mentioned that the company is also working on a service that’s particularly dedicated to the massification (i.e. the increased amount of owners) of electric vehicles, for which that service is focused mainly on the management of the distribution of electricity for electrical grids and also the service quality offered by local electrical grids. The reason behind this is because when society reaches a point that most (or even all) people own an electric car, any local electrical grid would undoubtedly collapse.
With Sparklin’s new solution, which is managed at a Cloud-side, the company has been working on a “software-based switch” which would allow electrical grid operators to spread and more easily manage the electrical demand at specific times by enabling them to provide the right services and specific amounts of electricity to their clients for their usage, including homeowners and businesses alike.
It’s also worth noting that for this new service, Sparklin is also developing their own AI which will be able to automatically detect the amount of electric vehicles trying to use their EV charging service. This AI will essentially allow Sparklin’s system to automatically monitor and balance the amount of electric vehicles that are charging their battery at any given moment, ultimately ensuring that not all EV owners charge their electric cars at the same time as a way to prevent the electricity service offered by a local electrical grid from collapsing and temporarily shutting down.
Moreover, Sparklin’s AI will also be able to learn about the charging habits of different electric car owners. This will allow the system itself to better manage the charging times and also to more easily accommodate the required amount of electricity provided within any electrical grid that’s required for each user to charge their electric vehicles.
In short, Sparklin wants to offer electrical grid operators a service that allows them to balance the energy load that’s being conveyed by them at any point in time to electric car owners.
For more information regarding Sparklin’s e-mobility ecosystem and its newly released Spark 1 smart slow-charging socket, head over to Sparklin’s official website.
