Getty Images
Skepticism about electric vehicles is more about infrastructure than EVs themselves. After all, EVs are more efficient, quieter, more sophisticated, and typically much faster than otherwise identical fossil fuel-powered vehicles. But charging issues aren’t dismissed by EV proponents as a simple inconvenience.
It’s true that most EV owners charge their EVs overnight at home, but as they become more prevalent, people who don’t have garages or carports to charge them are buying EVs, making them more popular and reliable. Increased importance of public chargers. More public chargers will be needed, according to a report by S&P Global Mobility.
As regular readers will no doubt notice, there is a lot of investment in charging infrastructure. In March 2021, US President Joe Biden set a goal of adding 500,000 new his EV charging stations by 2030. In 2022, President Biden followed up with his $5 billion plan to build at least four of his DC fast chargers along the interstate highway network. He charges every 50 miles.
No money is spent on a charging network owned and operated by the federal government. Instead, it is paid to the state to be spent by the state’s transportation department. An additional $2.5 billion will be made available through voluntary grants to build charging infrastructure in rural and underserved areas.
In December 2022, California announced a 29-year commitment to double the number of publicly available chargers from 80,000 to 170,000, with a goal of 250,000 public chargers by 2025. announced that it will spend billions of dollars
The automotive industry has not completely ignored the issue either. In addition to Tesla’s Supercharger network and his Electrify America (backed by the Volkswagen Group), Volvo plans to install fast chargers between Seattle and Denver. General Motors is moving forward with plans to add 5,250 of his fast chargers nationwide by 2025 (plus an additional 40,000 Level 2 (240 V) AC chargers). And last week Mercedes-Benz revealed that by 2027 he will have installed more than 2,500 fast chargers across the country.
According to S&P Global Mobility, these chargers include 126,500 Level 2 chargers, 20,431 Level 3 DC fast chargers, and an additional 16,822 Tesla Superchargers, in addition to those currently in operation. will be Previous assessments have found the US on track to meet her 2030 charging target, but the S&P is less optimistic.
S&P Global Mobility analyst Ian McIlravey said:
Over 2 million chargers
This is due to strong consumer interest in EVs. New EV registrations are over 5% for most of 2022, and more new models are expected to debut in the coming months. According to S&P, EV market share is “likely to reach 40% by 2030,” which he said means more than 28 million EVs on U.S. roads by then. I mean (Other estimates are less optimistic, but he still predicts more than 26 million EVs on U.S. roads by 2030.)
And by 2030, we’ll need 2.13 million Level 2 chargers and 172,000 Level 3 fast chargers, plus all kinds of home charging, S&P projects.
This issue could become apparent well before 2030. S&P estimates that the U.S. EV fleet could be close to 8 million by 2025, requiring at least 700,000 Level 2 charges and 70,000 Level 3 chargers.
This report identifies three technologies that may ameliorate some of this problem. Wireless charging is one of them because it removes one pain point from the charging process. Battery replacement is another option, albeit one that requires some standardization among automakers and a subscription model for packs. Home DC charging comes third. These operate at lower kW levels than public fast chargers, but are still 5-10 times faster than AC charging. Unfortunately, the cost of such a wallbox is currently prohibitive for most people as it appears to cost 10 to 20 times more than an AC home charger.
Graham Evans, Research and Analysis Director at S&P Global Mobility, said: “We need to surprise and delight car owners unfamiliar with electrification, so the process should be seamless, perhaps even more convenient than the petrol experience, with minimal compromise to the car ownership experience. The development of battery technology and how quickly EVs can receive power is critical to improvements here, as is how quickly and adequately the infrastructure can deliver power.”
Of course, it’s not enough to just put a charger in place and hope for the best. Uptime at the charger and site level needs to improve well beyond its current poor state if companies want EVs to truly go mainstream.
