This post was originally published by PIONIX, and is cross-posted with permission
With 2025 in full swing, let’s take this as an opportunity to look back on the successes of LF Energy EVerest project over the past year – and to take a look at what’s to come …
2024: A year of growth
If we look back to the beginning of 2024, the way the EVerest community collaborated and shared ideas was quite different to how we’re doing it today. The primary communication platform was the mailing list, which could not be used for structuring messages in a valuable way. There was one weekly online meeting that covered all kinds of topics about standards, tooling, and GitHub processing. Up to 50 people attended those calls and it was clear that this will not scale anymore.
What did the community need?
A more structured collaboration
Over the past year, we established multiple EVerest (sub-)working groups and a special interest group (SIG) focused on EV charging beyond EVerest within LF Energy. This allows us to focus our collaborative efforts on dedicated areas of EVerest development. The initial working groups (WG) were:
- General WG for topics that do not fit in the other groups
- Car Communication WG
- Cloud Communication WG
- CI/CD & Testing WG
- Framework & Tools WG
… where the latter two have merged into a new “Framework | Infrastructure | Tools” working group.
In addition to the initial groups, two more working groups were formed: Grid Integration & Energy Management and the MCS (Megawatt Charging System) working group.
Communication between working group meetings has largely shifted to Zulip (see https://lfenergy.zulipchat.com), though the mailing list is still active. By mirroring our working groups as channels in Zulip, we achieved a well-organized communication structure.
Let’s take a look at a few figures that underline this positive development.
Since setting up Zulip in early 2024, the number of members has grown to over 300. Each month, an average of more than 500 messages have been exchanged by the community members.
All these structural improvements have nearly doubled the number of EVerest contributors, resulting in a 33% increase in commits and pull requests on GitHub.
Another significant organizational advancement was the introduction of the Vulnerability Management Team (VMT). This addition marks a substantial improvement in our security processes. If there are any security-related issues within the EVerest project, the VMT is equipped to coordinate all necessary actions. As of today, there have only been two minor security reports.
EVerest on the global stage
In terms of visibility at events, EVerest was present all over the world. PIONIX took EVerest to CES in Las Vegas in January, JOET (US Joint Office of Energy and Transportation) had it on screen in Washington D.C. at the TRB annual meeting (the biggest transportation conference in the US), chargebyte and PIONIX promoted EVerest at the E-World in Essen, Germany, chargebyte tested EVerest in Arnhem, Netherlands, PIONIX presented EVerest virtually at the Everything Open in Australia, and EVerest was also in South Korea at CharIN Asia and the EVS 37.
Of course, testing is an important part of the EVerest project, so different teams participated at several testivals, e.g. in Poland, France, and the US.
In April, JOET hosted a PKI virtual workshop to showcase testing based on ISO 15118-2 and OCPP 2.0.1 with EVerest-generated certificates.
A true highlight was the OCPP Plugfest at the PIONIX office together with the “Open Source in Emobility” conference (check out the recordings here).
It is not without pride that we can say that this list reflects the growing impact and significance of the EVerest project on a global scale.
Development milestones
EVerest achieved several significant development milestones in 2024:
- Rust Integration: Advanced by Qwello.
- Error Handling: A new concept was implemented.
- ISO 15118 Implementation: Substantial progress on ISO 15118-20 and -2.
- Performance Improvements: Enhancements to EVerest’s core framework.
- OCPP 2.0.1: Completed field-relevant implementations, including Plug&Charge and Smart Charging and the first vendors took EVerest-based products through OCA certification.
- OCPP 2.1: Initiated development efforts.
- EV Simulator Module: Established to aid testing and development.
- ZVT-Based Payment Terminals: Added support for enhanced payment solutions.
- 1-Phase/3-Phase Switching: Enabled greater flexibility in charging setups.
- Hardware Drivers: Introduced new drivers like the PHYTEC phyVERSO BSP driver.
Security was also enhanced with the addition of OpenSSL support for ISO 15118 implementation.
In 2024, EVerest established a reliable release cycle with stable releases every three months.
All these advancements enabled impressive demos and successful testing, for example an end-to-end test done by JOET at the US CharIN Testival that allowed communicating from a CSMS via OCPP 2.0.1 to an EVerest instance and via ISO 15118-2 to an EV simulator.
The list could go on and on. There were many other events and occasions where EVerest was presented.
Looking ahead to 2025
The EVerest community recently conducted a roadmap session to define priorities and allocate resources for 2025. The roadmap highlights a continued focus on ISO 15118-20 implementation and the ongoing development of OCPP 2.1.
Thanks to funding from the German federal government, EVerest will also integrate EEBus functionality based on the EEBus-GO open-source project, with an emphasis on bidirectional charging.
Medium-term goals include integrating GB/T, OpenADR 3.0, and additional driver modules where already community donors signed up for. Additional topics that will accompany our efforts from now on will include MCS-related development, Matter integration, and the continued implementation of ISO 15118 and OCPP 2.1 use cases.
In a nutshell: there is still a lot to do in 2025!
See the whole feature list of EVerest and the roadmap here. The first EVerest TSC meeting in 2025 provided a detailed look at the roadmap. Here you can have a look:
Join the EVerest community
Open source thrives on community involvement! If you’re interested in contributing to EVerest or have ideas for new features, connect with the core team by joining a working group or reaching out on Zulip.
Let’s celebrate the achievements of 2024 and work together to make 2025 another successful year for EVerest! Join us in our community channels.
You can find an “EVerest compass” for getting an overview of all the channels here.
