Elon Asks, Poland Delivers — EV Emojis For The World

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Reporting from the frontlines of the EV revolution in Poland, I’m back with some good news after a long absence here. Yes, I felt a little upset about the Tesla Berlin thing. It hurt, Elon, especially when there was so much potential next door. But we Poles are not grudge-bearers (unless it’s about soccer), so be assured you still have many friends here. As a token of this friendship, we thought we would make one of your wishes come true. I guess not only yours, but you have mentioned it at least once or twice.

Perhaps most of us in the cleantech bubble have experienced that frustration when we wanted to use an emoji of an EV and couldn’t find one. (Very important stuff.) I checked on my iPhone, checked on my kids’ phones, checked Facebook and even Twitter, Elon’s homeland. None available. In this EV misery, though, there is somebody who has come to rescue us. That somebody is the Polish Alternative Fuels Association (PSPA).

The plan is simple – an emoji of an electric vehicle and an emoji of a charging station on every smartphone and instant messenger. Ambitious? Yes. Please note, then, that PSPA is not just an association – it is the largest industry organization developing the e-mobility market in Poland and the CEE region, and its Managing Director, Maciej Mazur, is also Vice President of AVERE (the European Association for Electromobility). This is official now — PSPA has submitted proposals of new pictograms to the Unicode Consortium, which is an organization responsible for standardizing signage. The new emojis aim to promote global zero-emission mobility through 3.5 billion smartphones and a larger number of internet users worldwide.

CleanTechnica readers are the first to learn about it. We hope Elon is in attendance today, since he could bring a nice boost to the effort. The info will only go live today, Thursday, March 26.

For those of you who don’t know, the application procedure to introduce new emojis is quite formalized and requires a graphic design, internet trend analysis, and justification. An application has to be submitted to the Unicode Consortium, which is an organization that brings the most popular global instant messaging and IT companies together and develops a common coding system for characters. At the same time, the Unicode Consortium is the main body to deal with signage standardization internationally. Both Maciej and his team, including Łukasz Witkowski, Operations Director, are very hopeful about the project and have put in hours on hours of work to make it happen. Unicode has already acknowledged receipt of the proposal with this warm message:

“Thank you for your proposal. This is to let you know that it has been received and will be reviewed by the emoji subcommittee.”

If all goes well, and how could it not, the new emojis would become available along with the introduction of UNICODE 14.0. So, the ideograms denoting an electric vehicle and charging station are likely to be part of the Unicode repository and become available to users in the second half of 2021. Hold your breath, EV enthusiasts. We are about to make a breakthrough in how EVs are perceived globally! You simply don’t exist until you become an emoji.

And, by the way, dear Elon, if things go awry in Berlin, there is a great place nearby to land with your Gigafactory. If, on the other hand, you succeed in Berlin, please be advised that we Poles will man this place with great enthusiasm. We are not grudge-bearers.

You can read more here.