Plug&Charge — the arrangement where you push a connector into a car and walk away, with no app, no RFID card and no screen to tap — has until now been a DC fast-charging feature. Chargecloud and Hubject announced at the icnc26 conference in Berlin that they are bringing it to AC charging points.
What the two companies are doing
Chargecloud, a Cologne-based charge-point management software provider, is integrating Hubject's public key infrastructure into its operating system. Once that is in place, an AC charge point running chargecloud's software can complete the certificate exchange that Plug&Charge depends on, and operators using the platform inherit the capability — in Chief Operating and Revenue Officer Oliver Adrian's words, "without any additional integration effort".
Hubject chief executive Christian Hahn put the rationale plainly: extending Plug&Charge to chargecloud's AC network "brings that seamless experience to where people actually charge most often".
That is the point of the announcement. DC fast chargers are where Plug&Charge has lived, and they are not where most electricity goes into most cars. Workplace car parks, on-street posts, hotel and destination chargers and apartment-block bays are overwhelmingly AC, and they are also the places where ad-hoc authentication is most irritating — the tariff is often the cheapest you will meet, and the payment routine the clumsiest.
Three things have to line up, and Europe has settled the first
Plug&Charge is not a switch an operator flips. All three of these are required:
| Requirement | Detail |
|---|---|
| Charging point | Must be ISO 15118-2 compatible |
| Vehicle | Must be suitably equipped for the certificate exchange |
| Contract | A valid contract certificate from a Plug&Charge-capable mobility provider, provisioned in the car |
The first is increasingly a given in Europe. Under the delegated regulation supplementing AFIR, EN ISO 15118-2:2016 has been required at new publicly accessible charging points since 8 January 2026, with ISO 15118-20:2022 following for new and renovated Mode 3 points — public and private — from 1 January 2027. TeslAnt covered that timetable, and the gap it leaves, in the ISO 15118-20 Amendment 1 analysis.
The second and third rows are where the convenience is actually won or lost, and they sit with the carmaker and the mobility provider rather than with the charge point.
What it means for a Tesla owner in Europe
It is worth separating standardised Plug&Charge from what Tesla owners already experience.
Tesla has had automatic plug-in authentication since 2012, but at Superchargers it is Tesla's own proprietary scheme, keyed to the car and the owner's Tesla account rather than to an ISO 15118 contract certificate issued by a mobility provider. The two produce the same effect — plug in, walk away — and only the standardised one travels to third-party hardware.
So the practical question for a Tesla owner at a third-party AC post is whether the car holds a contract certificate, not whether the post supports the standard. Tesla does not document ISO 15118 contract-certificate support for third-party networks, so ask your mobility provider whether it can issue a certificate your car will accept before assuming the feature follows you off the Supercharger network.
Bottom line
The infrastructure side of Plug&Charge is being filled in, and AC was the obvious hole: the segment carrying most charging sessions had the least seamless authentication. AFIR is pushing the charge points onto the standard on a fixed timetable. The vehicle and the contract are the parts still worth checking before you count on it.