Blockchain Based Autonomous Selection of Electric Vehicle Charging Station

This paper introduces a concept of autonomous blockchain based negotiation to select the most convenient electric vehicle charging station. The enabling blockchain technologies are well known fundament of cryptocurrencies, but offer many other possible applications areas, such as automated trusted machine-to-machine transactions, including auctions, bidding and payments. Compared to traditional centralized approaches, such a solution does not require any central entities and can be fully automated, including the payment for the energy. Based on e.g. the planned route, car battery status, real-time traffic information and drivers' preferences, a car could request charging bids from various charging stations along the route, by executing blockchain based smart contracts related to these charging stations. It would then select the most appropriate one based on offered prices, but other input parameters could be also taken into account, e.g. waiting times, estimated charging duration and alike. The smart contract execution could be extended to reservation and payment, too. In the paper we briefly present blockchain technologies, with the focus on Ethereum, and explain the role of smart contracts. We outline the architecture of a simple system for autonomous selection for electric vehicle charging station and provide a UML model to depict the activities of the actors involved in these operations and to clarify the role and the requirements of various blockchain related entities. The aim of our research paper is to outline a possible use-case for a blockchain prototype implementation. The implementation, which is not presented here, will serve for investigation of practical aspects of smart node development and operation, like transaction performance measurements, practical system requirement evaluations and comparison of reliability of various Ethereum clients. By our research we hope to support the investigation of novel applications and blending Internet of things with blockchain technologies, and in particular for elaboration of possible new use cases in the domain of electrical energy and mobility.