Proposal: Electric Vehicle Charging Point

[tomkiss]

Electric / Plug-in vehicle charging points seem to be missing from Schema.org.

Although it could be said https://schema.org/GasStation could be used, it wouldn't be accurate. Some charging points are in or near gas stations, but very few. All of the EV charging points where I live in the UK are standalone, in car parks or beside on-street parking. Their purposes are similar but they are very different. Charging points can also exist privately in homes, company car parks etc.

FYI - More charging points are being installed all over the world right now. There are over 4300 public charging points in UK now. I read that Japan currently has more charging points than gas stations already - and that's likely to be a trend globally due to their nature. So, if GasStation is included then I think Charging Points should be too.

My suggestion would be something to sit alongside Gas Station. Wording is tricky. EV or Electric Vehicle Charging Point is accurate, but not inclusive of all vehicles using the charging points. Hence, my suggestion would be:

Thing > Place > LocalBusiness > AutomotiveBusiness > Plug-in Vehicle Charging Point

Note I've used the word Charging Point not Charge Point, as I think it's less ambiguous.

[NicolaiHelling]

I definately support this proposal!

[felipesanti]

I support this proposal. @RichardWallis this is relevant for Tourism https://www.w3.org/community/tourismdata/ Some tourist destinations are building databases for these charging points.

[github-actions[bot]]

This issue is being tagged as Stale due to inactivity.

[tomkiss]

Renaming this to “proposal” in the hope it can move forward somehow.

[RichardWallis]

See issue #7 for the context of the move from the main Schema.org issue tracker to this repository.

[alexcreutzburg]

I wonder if there is still no schema for ev charging points in 2023?

[tomkiss]

Not so far as I can see.

(It's funny reading back to when I first wrote this and referencing that the UK had 4300 public charging points. Six years later, number is now 37,800 in the UK).

Anyway, I still think this is a necessary suggestion. I suppose the appropriate thing would be to create a draft proposal. I'll see if I can find some time.

[danbri]

We generally look for a commitment from some party with a user-facing application to use (consume not just publish) data using the improved schemas.

In the absence of that, if it is pretty obvious how to do it, especially by referencing existing standards, ... that helps. Otherwise - how would we know if we had done something useful?

On Sat, 4 Feb 2023, 08:35 Tom Kiss, @.***> wrote:

Not so far as I can see.

(It's funny reading back to when I first wrote this and referencing that the UK had 4300 public charging points. Six years later, number is now 37,800 in the UK https://www.zap-map.com/statistics/).

Anyway, I still think this is a necessary suggestion. I suppose the appropriate thing would be to create a draft proposal. I'll see if I can find some time.

— Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/schemaorg/suggestions-questions-brainstorming/issues/238#issuecomment-1416687412, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AABJSGK5VKWXNV6ECNLZ6QTWVYBDHANCNFSM4R577NYA . You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread.Message ID: <schemaorg/suggestions-questions-brainstorming/issues/238/1416687412@ github.com>

[tomkiss]

Thanks @danbri.

Yes, I understand your point.

I can try to find and contact some developers working on active products in this space, and see if any would be interested in supporting the proposal in their products.

Aside from that, is there anything else I can proactively do to meaningfully contribute? (Is a draft spec the norm?).

[alexcreutzburg]

As I have asked for the specification, let me explain what I need it for:

On the one hand: We run the platform charged.travel where we present tourism related locations that provide charging stations, especially hotels. These charging stations are often not public stations which you'll find in all these charging apps. We'd like to be able to crawl e.g. hotel websites and find/parse structured data regarding charging facilities in order to list them on our website.

On the other hand we build hotel websites and work for a lot of hotels in the D/A/CH region where we are in the position to integrate those charging schema data into a lot of websites.

I could also help in specifying the required details.

[ktk]

I understand your concern, @danbri, about needing a commitment from consumers of this data before incorporating a feature for describing electric vehicle charging stations on schema.org. However, I recall a conference with you in London where a Google Maps representative (forgot his name) stated that if information isn't available on the web, it isn't their responsibility to provide it. Given that Google Maps already includes a feature for electric vehicle charging stations, it seems logical to extend this functionality to schema.org, potentially creating a standardized method for sharing this information across the web.

Right now we are a bit in a catch 22.

[mattvb91]

@danbri can you give an outline of how one would start this process with you?

[StillOnMyWay]

A Developer here. I'd like to avoid using the Gas Station schema if necessary. Since searching I've found this online - https://fiware-datamodels.readthedocs.io/en/stable/Transportation/EVChargingStation/doc/spec/index.html.

More of a Database model but makes cross-reference to the Schema.org definition for accepted payment methods. I think I'd start by incorporating this in my application.