Ah, to be a fly on the wall when Ford, GM, Audi, BMW, Daimler, Porsche and Volkswagen decided to have a sit-down – maybe somewhere off the radar, like the Olive Garden? – to discuss electric vehicles in the United States and Europe. Would they agree on things? Would the conversation veer off into discussing technologies coming in future vehicles? Would Porsche order the Never Ending Pasta Bowl?

No one is revealing any of those details, but we know what did successfully come out of the powwow was an agreement to support an international standardized approach to charging EVs. In short, EVs from those seven automakers can share fast charging stations.

This commonality will reduce build complexity for manufacturers as well as accelerate the installation of common systems. But the best part is, it’ll make owning an EV even easier.

The automakers will use HomePlug Green Phy as the communication protocol, and without getting too technical here, we’ll simply say that the success of Level 1 and Level 2 (220v charging in the U.S.) was used as the poster child for how standardization will increase adoption of EVs.

Without standardization, EV owners had no idea whether the charge port they had pulled up to was compatible with their vehicle.