Emojis of an electric vehicle and charging station on every smartphone and instant messenger: this is what the largest industry organization developing the electromobility market in Poland and the CEE region is after. The 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.
Emojis are used daily by billions of people around the world. Simple pictograms help to quickly convey content or emotions. We like to put them in Messenger or WhatsApp messages, as well as in text messages, emails, and social media posts. Most platforms such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Samsung use emojis. They are divided into various categories of symbols, such as facial expressions, objects, places, animals, vehicles, and activities.
The application procedure to introduce new emojis is quite formalized and requires a graphic design, internet trends 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.
“The new pictograms will enable us to easily emphasize our support for zero-emission technologies in transport. They will also express our social responsibility and concern for the natural environment.” – says Maciej Mazur, Vice President of the European Association for Electromobility (AVERE) and Managing Director at the Polish Alternative Fuels Association (PSPA).
Innovative technologies can help fight climate change, provided that people use them on an appropriate scale. To do so, they need to be popularized and promoted, which is the aim behind our initiative of submitting to UNICODE the emojis of an electric vehicle and charging station.
“If the emojis of an electric car and charging station which the PSPA has put forward make it through the verification process, they will become available to more than 3.5 billion smartphone users and more than 4.5 billion Internet users worldwide.” – says Łukasz Witkowski, Operations Director at the Polish Alternative Fuels Association (PSPA).
Once they have been positively verified, the new emojis can be expected to 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.
