Who's who

A handful of roles show up in every conversation about charging. Learn these and most of the sector makes sense.

The hardware

• Charging station. The physical unit installed at a site. A station contains one or more EVSEs.
• EVSE (Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment). A single charging point within a station, the part that delivers one charge at a time.
• Connector. The socket or tethered cable on an EVSE (Type 2, CCS, CHAdeMO, and so on). An EVSE can expose more than one connector, though usually only one charges at once.

This hardware hierarchy, station to EVSE to connector, is exactly how the protocols model it, so it is worth holding on to. One warning: "charge point" is used loosely across the industry, sometimes for the whole station and sometimes for a single EVSE, so read it in context.

The businesses

• CPO, Charge Point Operator. Owns or operates the charging stations and keeps them running. To do that a CPO uses a CPMS (Charge Point Management System, which OCPP 2.0.1 calls the CSMS): the software that talks to every station, tracks status, manages tariffs and maintenance, and records sessions. The CPMS is usually provided by a platform, with the CPO as its customer. This is one of the things Road provides.
• eMSP, eMobility Service Provider (sometimes just MSP). Faces the driver. Issues charge cards or virtual tokens, provides the app and account, sets the driver's price, and bills them. An eMSP owns customers, not charging stations.
• Driver. The person charging a vehicle, holding a card or app from an eMSP.

A single company is often both a CPO and an eMSP, but the roles stay distinct because roaming depends on telling them apart.

Roaming and hubs

No operator has charging stations everywhere, and no provider's card works everywhere by default. Roaming closes that gap: a CPO agrees to let another eMSP's drivers charge, and to be paid for it. Done one-to-one this is a mesh of point-to-point integrations. A roaming hub (for example Gireve or Hubject, or Road's own Roaming Hub) sits in the middle so each party integrates with the hub once and reaches everyone connected to it.

Where a platform like Road sits

A platform such as Road provides the software for all three: the CPMS a CPO needs to run stations, the tools an eMSP needs to issue cards and bill drivers, and a roaming hub that connects CPOs and eMSPs and extends coverage. It also offers roaming as a service, so a smaller operator can reach a large network without building its own agreements. The result is interoperability: integrate once, reach every connected network.