There’s nothing to stop you from buying electric vehicles in the future. SAP E-Mobility, SAP’s new cloud-based solution helps improve problems such as finding a charging station. We tell you about it in the ZTalent SAP Hub blog.
Electric vehicles (EVs) are becoming increasingly popular. New EV registrations worldwide increased by 168% during the first half of 2021 compared to 2020. In total, 2.65 million EVs were purchased and have hit the streets. According to EV Volume analysts, EVs tend to reach 6.4 million units by the end of 2021.
Charging stations are often a challenge for faster EV growth, with public stations totaling 28,000 in the U.S. and 20,000 in Europe. This is reason enough to use the standardized, cloud-based SAP E-Mobility solution, scheduled for availability on September 24, 2021, to address not only public, but also non-public and semi-public charging points.
What is SAP E-Mobility?
As a first step, SAP is targeting company vehicle fleets with charging points at the headquarters or branch office, as well as at the driver’s home. Since the number of public charging stations is increasing more slowly than their demand, it’s especially relevant to increase the utilization of semi-public charging points and to make the best possible use of them. It is also a relief for employees to charge company vehicles at their private charging station at home. Complex billing processes, which can be easily and neatly covered by SAP E-Mobility, play a decisive role in all scenarios.
However, the solution offers much more. It’s the basis for controlling and managing all business processes related to the charging point. Complex processes that were previously prevalent along the value chain – from delivery point operators to companies and electric vehicle owners – are considerably simplified.
Increased flexibility for fleet managers with SAP E-Mobility
Fleet managers also benefit. For example, the solution provides the necessary charging data – charge total, location, date, duration, vehicle – to the connected accounting and finance software to perform cost center assignments or to initiate the corresponding reimbursement of the vehicle owner’s private electricity costs. This happens in an automated way through standard financial processes, such as travel expense reports.
For the facility manager, SAP E-Mobility means more than just simplified invoicing. Via a control panel, the status of all charging stations can be viewed at any time, and defective stations can be repaired quickly. This means that facility managers always have an up-to-date overview of the available charging columns, which is also the case for the charging column operators and thus enables comprehensive user and location management.
The results are faster workflows and higher availability of charging points, which contributes to an improved user experience as well as a positive total cost of ownership (TCO), which helps to increase the acceptance of electric cars.
In addition, the solution simplifies the deployment of new charging infrastructure and is hardware-independent. Operators can easily integrate new charging stations into the network, as well as monitor and bill them via standard communication protocols. SAP uses the Open Charge Point Protocol 1.6 standard for this purpose. For charging point operators and companies, the new solution thus offers maximum flexibility with very little effort.
A comprehensive ecosystem enables a complete solution
In order to offer companies a complete solution consisting of hardware, software, services and support, SAP relies on a network of certified e-mobility partners. SAP E-Mobility is an important part of this, as it offers all stakeholders – charging station operators as well as companies and drivers – significantly simpler processes than those currently offered by the market. Thanks to these solutions, not only is the necessary infrastructure expanded more quickly and flexibly, but companies also receive standardized e-mobility processes that help them achieve their CO2 targets.
At the same time, promote the wider use of electric vehicles. One example: partners such as energy service providers implement application scenarios such as “charging from self-generated photovoltaic electricity” or “vehicle-to-grid” and thus support sustainable energy production while using the vehicle as a storage location.
