Versinetic cautions UK EV manufacturers to act ahead of 2026 charging standards changes

Versinetic has warned UK EV charger manufacturers and charge point operators to act ahead of significant charging standards changes coming into effect in 2026, with downstream implications for organisations responsible for deploying EV charging infrastructure

Versinetic believes the convergence of new technical protocols and harsher regulations is raising the minimum technical and regulatory baseline for EV chargers sold or deployed in the UK.

Key developments include:

• The adoption of ISO 15118 will introduce certificate-based authentication and secure charger-to-vehicle communications.
• Migration to Open Charge Point Protocol (OCPP) 2.0.1 and 2.1, raising expectations concerning cybersecurity, smart charging, and interoperability with back-office systems.
• Compliance with UK-specific regulations, such as the Public Charge Point Regulations and the Smart Charge Points Regulations, which set mandatory requirements for smart charging, payments, reliability, and data transparency.

These technical and regulatory requirements are tightening procurement and interoperability expectations across charging networks. For manufacturers that fail to address these requirements, products risk stalling at certification, costly redesigns, or exclusion from future network procurement as operators and fleets increasingly demand full compliance with standards.

In response, Versinetic has published “Emerging UK EV Charging Standards: What Manufacturers Need to Know”, an in-depth guide designed to help manufacturers translate evolving standards into design, testing, and certification decisions.

The guide is structured around five practical decision areas to help engineering, product, and technical leadership teams make long-term platform and architecture choices. These areas include:

• Standards alignment
• Compliance and testing
• Hardware and firmware architecture
• Operational readiness
• Future planning

The guide also features an interactive audit and compliance toolkit that enables manufacturers to assess their current readiness against emerging standards and identify where late design decisions could create certification, retrofit, or market-access risk.

Dunstan Power, managing director at Versinetic, said, “UK EV charging standards are increasingly acting as gatekeepers for grid connection, certification, and commercial deployment. What many manufacturers underestimate is when compliance decisions are effectively locked in during the development cycle.

“One of the biggest risks we’re seeing is manufacturers assuming they can retrofit compliance later. In practice, hardware architecture, firmware structure and security choices constrain what can be achieved, and by the time non-compliance becomes visible, the cost and disruption are often far higher than expected.”