Focus on the customer? Why hydrogen mobility companies should pay more attention to data and interface standards for hydrogen refueling stations
Globally hydrogen mobility is growing. With the increasing number of hydrogen refueling stations and fuel cell electric vehicles on the road, customer experience will become more important in the years ahead.
While innovators and early adopters of a new technology are generally more tolerant of friction, it is likely that the vast majority will only be willing to adopt the technology if they are convinced that hydrogen refueling will be as seamless as they are used to with fossil fuel vehicles.
In order to archive that goal, defining data and interface standards for hydrogen refueling stations will be essential. Therefore, H2.LIVE organized a workshop to discuss the necessary steps with experts from the industry. Four perspectives were highlighted:
- The infrastructure perspective
- The customer perspective
- The technical perspective
- The cross-industry perspective
The infrastructure perspective: Status quo in hydrogen mobility
Basically, the customer journey for refueling hydrogen is quite simple: The driver notices that the tank is empty, drives to the nearest hydrogen refueling station, fills the tank in less than five minutes and leaves the station.
However, what is quite simple in theory is associated with several questions that involve the exchange of data via interfaces. Standardizing them would facilitate the creation of digital offers, that can be used to build new customer relationships and increase customer satisfaction.
Websites like h2.live are offering information about hydrogen refueling stations, but how does the hydrogen refueling station get on the map? Three areas are crucial for data distribution and therefore an improvement of the customer journey:
- Standardized data models and APIs: Information on the availability of the stations is required. In order to provide that information, standardized data models for collection and distribution of hydrogen refueling station information are needed.
- Standards for digital payment: Authorization and payment at hydrogen filling stations play a crucial role for the customer experience. To ensure a customer-friendly payment process, European-wide standards for digital payment at hydrogen refueling stations are needed.
- Customer-centered communication between vehicle and infrastructure: A customer-centered exchange of information between vehicle and infrastructure is required for removing frictions in the customer journey. These would allow to make refueling more convenient for instance by displaying the vehicle’s filling level during refueling or realizing “Plug&Refill” at hydrogen refueling stations.
The customer perspective: Data and interface standards as key elements for a more reliable hydrogen mobility
Switzerland is already leading the way. One of the pioneers on the customer side is the Migros Ostschweiz cooperative. The company purchased its first hydrogen-powered truck in 2020 and shared their experiences and expectations on defining data and interface standards for hydrogen refueling stations from a customer perspective.
Three main challenges have emerged in practice. For enabling hydrogen trucks to replace fossil fuel trucks in the future, they must be:
- Reliable
- Functional
- Affordable
Especially reliability is very crucial and could be improved based on data and interface standards as they would increase the level of information and offer new possibilities for creating digital tools. For instance, real-time data on how much hydrogen is available at a hydrogen refueling station could help to ensure that transports can be carried out as scheduled. Therefore, customers like Migros Ostschweiz need intensified efforts in digitalization in order to increase reliability and support the customer to reach the goal to decarbonize freight transport.
The technical perspective: Requirements for making hydrogen mobility data available to customers
The various components of hydrogen refueling stations create a multitude of data points. Collecting this data and making it available to customers is the starting point for improving the customer experience at hydrogen refueling stations. Maximator Hydrogen GmbH demonstrated how smart data services need to be designed to enable seamless hydrogen mobility. Two central technical requirements for providing smart data services were discussed:
- First, it is required to record the process values of all components of the machine as well as recording and storing events like error and warning messages, user actions or hydrogen deliveries.
- Secondly, cloud-based data services are important for a customer-oriented and automated data provision. These allow the data user to monitor the hydrogen refueling station data in a dashboard or to make use of the data in its own systems via API.
On a technical level these requirements are already fulfilled by providers like Maximator Hydrogen. However, for enabling users to work with the data efficiently, a definition of industry standards for data and interfaces is still a critical factor from a technical perspective.
The cross-industry perspective: Lessons learned from battery electric mobility
In the last decade, battery electric vehicles have seen many challenges in terms of infrastructure, but also a lot of improvements regarding the customer experience at charging points. Therefore, a cross-industry view on current developments in the battery electric vehicle industry not only underlines the importance of defining standards for data and interfaces. It also allows forecasting potentials for improving the customer journey at hydrogen refueling stations.
Based on the position paper of the Nationale Leitstelle Ladeinfrastruktur entitled “The charging experience as a user journey at public charging stations for electric vehicles now and in 2025”, eight topic areas were presented for the development of new digital solutions to simplify the customer journey and improve the user experience.
For instance, an automatization and penalization of the reservation of charging points or an exchange of real-time data between charge point operator, e-mobility service provider and vehicle might have a lot of potential for removing frictions from the customer journey.
As there are many parallels between customer touchpoints at charging points and hydrogen refueling stations, comparing both can generate important learnings for hydrogen mobility.
Conclusion
Overall, the workshop not only illustrated why defining data and interface standards will be essential, but also showed first ideas of relevant use cases, customer expectations, technical specifications, and cross-industry learnings. Above all the results encourage an exchange between relevant stakeholders and raise awareness that the industry needs to work together on a definition of data and interface standards. Only jointly it will be possible to overcome existing hurdles in the customer experience at hydrogen refueling stations by making use of the digitalization as one key element for convincing customers of hydrogen mobility.
