Electric Vehicle Fast-Charging Software: Architectural Considerations Towards Trustworthiness

The industry of electric vehicle charging stations is rapidly evolving. As more people purchase electric vehicles, the need for an efficient and reliable charging service value chain becomes paramount. In this paper we perform a literature review and topic modeling in the field to identify the most relevant topics and challenges therein as well as any standard or reference software architectures proposed to date. Subsequently, by means of ethnomethodological research and interview study with industry practitioners from an emerging Charging Point Operator (CPO) we identify major practical architectural concerns. We conclude that typical -Ops issues related to monitoring and autonomous runtime management of fast-charging software architectures are not addressed in the literature so far, and yet are the most critical for practitioners; this inspired a revised augment of state-of-the-art reference architecture frameworks—offered as the first key original contribution of this paper—for practitioners and researchers to use in the future. Finally, evaluating such framework with practitioners’ insights, we elaborated a second key contribution of this work, namely, six architectural considerations to be taken into account towards trustworthy electric vehicle fast-charging software architectures of the future.