Last Wednesday, April 18, 2018, was the day when the world's first IOTA loading station was launched by the Dutch knowledge and innovation center ElaadNL.
The innovative charger is located in the Netherlands, in the Arnhems Buiten business park, as part of the new ElaadNL test site that offers all types of charging facilities available within the country, including a fast charger, a cargo island, a battery, two chargers flashlights and the IOTA charger.
The test site is publicly available, which means that anyone who has IOTA and drives an electric car can now easily access the newly provided opportunity.
Specifically designed for the Internet of Things (IoT) environment, IOTA Tangle represents an open source protocol that facilitates innovative machine-to-machine interactions, such as secure data transfer and real-time micropayments with no commission.
The charging station works autonomously, without the need for a communication protocol, and does not require a credit card or subscription to carry out transactions. The values of the meter are stored every 15 minutes in Tangle, which guarantees a reliable and irrefutable administration.
In today's rapidly digitizing world, this technology seems to be very promising and useful for further exploration in the field of electric mobility.
As commented by Onoph Caron, general director of ElaadNL, about this recent launch:
"This charger shows the ability to use real machine-to-machine communications and micropayments, with the use of IOTA as a secure layer for these payments and data. ElaadNL investigates all kinds of innovative and intelligent technologies regarding the charging of electric cars. DLT technology could become very widespread in the near future. Now we can explore and investigate their possibilities in our test field in Arnhem. "
Alisa Maas, Head of Mobility of the IOTA Foundation, also expressed her enthusiasm for this innovative achievement:
"IOTA is delighted to see that ElaadNL takes its development from the IOTA smart charging station to the next level. This solution demystifies the potential of IOTA to become the backbone of the Machine Economy. Thanks to the state-of-the-art innovation of ElaadNL, continuous electric mobility is taking a great leap forward and we hope to share this achievement with the rest of our growing ecosystem, at the crossroads of the mobility, energy and smart cities sectors " .
The charger takes advantage of the charging cable and special hardware, which is also used for communication recently developed in e-Mobility ISO 15118, between the car and the charger to configure this connection.
When the car is connected to the charging station, the hardware within the loads establishes a TCP / IP connection, which in turn allows the exchange of relevant data, followed by payments (IOTA) in a Machine-to-Machine mode.
The station has already undergone a test with a Tesla mini model equipped with hardware to support the transaction. If an electric car is not equipped with the necessary hardware and software, the driver has the opportunity to charge it by simply sending IOTA tokens directly to the charger using the normal IOTA wallet.
Initiated by the joint operators of the Dutch electricity network, ElaadNL represents itself as a center of knowledge and innovation that researches and tests the possibilities of charging electric cars in a reliable, affordable and sustainable way.
IOTA is a non-profit foundation based in Germany, which aims to support the development and standardization of new distributed accounting (DLT) technologies, including IOTA Tangle.
