In September 2020, Eric Plaquet took over as President of GIREVE, the European roaming platform at the heart of e-mobility (Read Press Release). GIREVE handles operations between e-Mobility Service Providers and Charge Point Operators to help EV drivers charge seamlessly and locate nearby charging stations quickly. Eric Plaquet has an international profile with multiple experiences related to EV and autonomous vehicles for multinational companies as well as SME.
The Avere-France met him to learn more about his mission as President and about GIREVE’s upcoming projects.
You are replacing Bruno Lebrun who has been at the head of GIREVE since its creation in 2013. What are your ambitions as President ?
Under Bruno Lebrun’s presidency over the last 6 years, GIREVE has evolved to become the first European interoperability platform, enabling hundreds of thousands of GIREVE’s eMSP partners’ subscribers to charge on the 100,000 charging points of GIREVE’ CPO partners in 25 countries.
I am here to support GIREVE in entering a new phase of growth, both in terms of service offer and geographical development.
The company’s management remain the same: our team members, no matter their roles, have already proved their skills and their long-term engagement in the platform’s development.
Next developments of our company will be enriched by the arrival of new talent, always relying on our initial team. We have built strong relationships with our partners and we aim to reinforce those relationships to make GIREVE the most natural solution of all operators for interoperability in Europe.
What are GIREVE’s upcoming projects, especially regarding its European expansion? What will be your main priority?
Over the last year, the number of charging points open to roaming by our CPO partners has doubled. Now we have a very strong coverage in France, in Benelux and in Ireland and we are growing fast in border countries, especially in Central and Eastern Europe. We also notice a strategy shift of operators based in countries that have been reluctant to open to roaming until now, as for instance in Northern countries and in the UK.
Many e-Mobility operators have also chosen our platform over the last year. We are very proud to work with the big names of car industry, energy and transport but also with SME that launched their successful activities with us at their very beginning.
Beyond coverage, what is at stake for us is to support the massive growth of charging point usage on hundreds of different networks, keeping it seamless for the end customer, and helping operators improve their quality of service. This year, we have already launched several services to facilitate operators’ daily activities and we get positive feedback.
Although we are B2B-focused only, our activities have impact on EV drivers’ charging experiences. We are thus accelerating the development of services for eMSP to help them make a station’s applicable tariff easier to understand and deliver better information on charging station availability status to their subscribers.
Along those services, we are also planning to achieve several major technical projects in the coming months, related to smart charging, V2G, 15118, new dynamic tariff systems, and making payment of roaming services easier for operators.
GIREVE has been a member of the Avere-France since 2014. How was the collaboration and how do you see it evolve?
We have been working closely with the Avere-France and its members since the creation of our company. We have implemented the barometer of charging infrastructures to promote e-mobility and improve understanding of the French market, and we display a map of charging points on the website je-roule-en-electrique.fr.
We also work with Avere-France and ECO CO2, as well as operators benefitting from premium in the Advenir program. We support their charging infrastructure implementation, and we help follow-up charging sessions on those infrastructures.
Our position on the market goes with a strong relationship with the Avere-France and the whole ecosystem it stands for. Sharing stakes and goals of all actors in the market is important to us. We already take part in working groups and we wish to support the Avere’s activities.
We also joined similar institutions to replicate success of our collaboration with Avere-France, and we are now members of the AEDIVE in Spain, EVA in Scotland, AVER in Romania, PSPA in Poland, BEM and BDEW in Germany. Every each of these partnerships is very specific and we plan to develop them by sharing our expertise on the market.
