To mark World EV Day, we sat down with Maël Guilbaud, Director of Watt & Well’s Green Technology Business Unit, to discuss the future of high-power EV charging. From megawatt charging and 1,500 V architectures to energy storage, cybersecurity and European sovereignty, he shares his perspective on the key trends and challenges shaping the next generation of electric mobility.
What are the key trends that will shape the electric vehicle market over the next few years?
The EV market is being driven by three major developments that don’t always align.
Technically, we’re moving to 800 V+ CCS for commercial fleets and 1,250 V+ MCS for heavy transport. At the same time, charging sites are moving beyond 1 MW, with more on-site storage, smarter power management and stronger cybersecurity requirements under the CRA. With IEC 63379 published in February 2026, the MCS connector is no longer the main challenge. The focus has now shifted to deployment.
Geopolitically, local compliance, security of supply and sovereignty have superseded low-cost offshore manufacturing though European hardware still has to win on cost per kilowatt, not on origin alone.
Economically, margins depend on cost discipline and on high-value, heavy-duty applications, where adoption still hinges on depot TCO and grid connection queues.
So the requirements are clear: higher voltage, more storage, more software, more compliance. For conversion-system suppliers, the key criteria will be reliability and how the equipment behaves with the grid—not simply its headline power
If you could debunk one common myth about EV charging, what would it be?
That scaling ultra-fast charging (MCS and CCS) requires massive grid overhauls.
The real constraints are local queues and peak-demand tariffs rather than available grid capacity. A multi-megawatt connection can take up to five years in the Netherlands or parts of Germany, and a few months elsewhere in Europe and meanwhile power spikes destroy fleet economics. (V2G works technically, but its business case still depends on national market rules.)
The most effective solutions can be implemented at the charging site itself:
1. Grid-buffered charging: local storage (BESS) trickle-charges at low power, then high-density DC/DC converters deliver 1 MW+ to the vehicle in twenty minutes. It doesn’t remove the grid connection; it lowers the subscribed power you pay for. Strongest on sites with moderate throughput.
2. Dynamic power allocation: modular cabinets shift kilowatts in real time, so the connection is sized for real demand rather than the theoretical peak.
We don’t need to wait five years for the grid. We need denser, smarter conversion hardware, deployed today.
What is the biggest engineering challenge in designing next-generation high-power charging systems?
Running a 1,500 V DC bus. Direct current has no zero crossing, so protection and disconnection become a discipline of their own. Insulation coordination (creepage, partial discharge, long-term ageing) drives the mechanical design as much as the electrical one. And the SiC devices that make the topology viable bring very fast dv/dt, so EMC and common-mode currents must be controlled across a bus that can run tens of meters.
The architecture itself is the simpler part: split the system, so a central AC/DC stage feeds a shared 1,500 V backbone and isolated DC/DC converters handle the output at the plug. That makes storage integration and power routing across a hub far easier and 1,500 V isn’t arbitrary, it matches the MCS connector’s ceiling.
Defining the architecture is only the starting point; delivering a robust product depends on insulation, thermal management and protection design.
How does Watt & Well support the players driving the transition to electric mobility?
With sovereign, ultra-reliable European hardware and direct, local engineering support. Three things:
1. Modular 100 kW conversion: our new PCS (AC/DC) and DCDC (isolated DC/DC), built for 1,500 V DC architectures. Ten units give you a megawatt: you scale a hub in 100 kW steps, and a module failure costs 100 kW instead of taking the charging point offline.
2. CCS & MCS intelligence: we already supply the embedded charge controllers for both, with protocol compliance out of the box. The bar is moving from “does it charge” to “does it charge every time, at the security level the CRA expects”.
3. European sovereignty, precisely: design, engineering and manufacturing in Europe, and European sourcing wherever a supplier exists; for a handful of semiconductors it doesn’t, and we don’t pretend otherwise. What customers value is having an engineer in their time zone who can work through a problem with them when it matters.
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