Industry jargon

CAN bus

CAN bus is a serial communications network that lets electronic control units exchange short, prioritised messages without a central host computer. It is widely used inside vehicles and embedded equipment because it is designed for reliable real-time control. In EV charging hardware, CAN can connect controller boards to power modules, meters, displays or other local devices. It is an internal or site-level interface rather than a replacement for OCPP, which normally connects a charging station to a management system. CAN now exists in several forms. Classic CAN supports data fields up to 8 bytes, while CAN FD and CAN XL increase payload size and data rate.