Making the electric vehicle dream a reality

In the 2000s, when elec­tric vehi­cles (EVs) first began to be tak­en seri­ous­ly as an alter­na­tive to the inter­nal com­bus­tion engine, range anx­i­ety was rife. Fear of being strand­ed with a flat bat­tery was stop­ping peo­ple from mak­ing the switch. EVs were seen as a nov­el­ty, good for a trip to the shops, but only the fool­hardy would ven­ture out­side city lim­its in one.

Grad­u­al­ly, the tech­nol­o­gy improved and a net­work of charg­ing points began to appear, first at ser­vice sta­tions and more recent­ly on urban street cor­ners. But the UK response remained slow. Now, how­ev­er, the stakes have changed.

Accord­ing to Bloomberg, invest­ment in charg­ing infra­struc­ture in the Unit­ed States and Europe alone will top $60 bil­lion by 2030, before rock­et­ing to $192 bil­lion by 2040. The UK is set to phase out the sale of new petrol and diesel cars and vans by 2030, in a bid to accel­er­ate the tran­si­tion to the EVs.

Along­side this, the gov­ern­ment is invest­ing £1.3 bil­lion in a charg­ing infra­struc­ture that is fit for pur­pose, in a bid to con­vince UK dri­vers that EVs are not just a green option, but a con­ve­nient and cost effec­tive one too.

Private charging infrastructure is miles ahead

One rea­son the roll­out of a pub­lic charg­ing infra­struc­ture has been so slow is that the major­i­ty of charg­ing is done at home, says Alexan­der Lewis-Jones, senior ana­lyst at man­age­ment con­sul­tants Delta-EE.

“So, while pub­lic infra­struc­ture roll­out may appear slug­gish, a pri­vate infra­struc­ture roll­out has been grow­ing rapid­ly across the nation’s dri­ve­ways,” he says. For every pub­lic charge­point a fur­ther five pri­vate ones have been installed, and by 2030 there could be more than three mil­lion res­i­den­tial charge­points, Lewis-Jones pre­dicts.

The pub­lic net­work that does exist in the UK is patchy at best. “A lot of EV oper­a­tors got in ear­ly and set up their own sys­tems,” says Bernard Magee, direc­tor of emo­bil­i­ty infra­struc­ture solu­tions at Siemens. “That’s why we have this patch­work of net­works.

“But while the pri­vate sec­tor kicked things off, there is a lot more gov­ern­ment mon­ey now com­ing in to try and scale. We’re at that inflec­tion point and the gov­ern­ment is help­ing to push things along to the next stage.”

San­jay Neo­gi, UK and Europe head at tech­nol­o­gy con­sul­tants the Enzen Group, says: “For a viable EV charg­ing invest­ment you need a lot of things to fit togeth­er: the right lev­el of cap­i­tal expen­di­ture, favourable reg­u­la­tions and the poten­tial to scale.

“Incen­tives will be key. Indus­tri­al poli­cies on car charg­ing are one option, but we also need to look at sub­si­dis­ing new ener­gy vehi­cles and reward­ing the con­struc­tion of charg­ing piles. Anoth­er promis­ing idea is to estab­lish a joint ven­ture of car man­u­fac­tur­ers, sell­ers and major elec­tric pow­er com­pa­nies to fast-track EV infra­struc­ture.”

How COVID impacted EV plans

Munich-based IONITY is cre­at­ing an exten­sive high-pow­er charg­ing net­work across Europe. Each coun­try has its own issues, explains man­ag­ing direc­tor Dr Michael Hajesch, from reg­u­la­to­ry frame­works, to mar­ket matu­ri­ty and grid capac­i­ty. But gov­ern­ment sup­port is vital. “To have clear vision and tar­gets is def­i­nite­ly some­thing that helps,” he says.

Com­pa­nies such as IONITY can also help gov­ern­ments achieve wider goals. By work­ing with local sup­pli­ers, for exam­ple, they can ensure charg­ing sta­tions use 100 per cent renew­able elec­tric­i­ty, help­ing to decar­bonise trans­port, but also achieve broad­er emis­sions tar­gets, says Hajesch.

Coro­n­avirus is hav­ing an influ­ence, says André ten Bloe­men­dal, vice pres­i­dent for sales in Europe at Cal­i­for­nia-based Charge­Point, anoth­er com­pa­ny con­cen­trat­ing on installing fast EV charg­ers out­side cities. “A lot of gov­ern­ment pro­grammes to sup­port the econ­o­my in the COVID era push for sus­tain­able solu­tions, so grants and fund­ing are avail­able,” he says.

“The EV dream is all about mak­ing elec­tric a supe­ri­or expe­ri­ence to that of the com­bus­tion engine,” says Lewis-Jones and, when it comes to con­ve­nience, inspi­ra­tion should be tak­en from the Nether­lands. Ear­ly Dutch adopters were offered the right to plug, he explains, with charge­points installed close to their home so they could recharge overnight, with­out need­ing a dri­ve­way or garage.

Turning lampposts into charging points

It’s some­thing that’s been tak­en up by West­min­ster City Coun­cil, which has launched Elec­tric Avenue, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Siemens and ubi­tric­i­ty. Twen­ty-four lamp­posts have been turned into EV charg­ing points for local res­i­dents, with a fur­ther two adjoin­ing roads due to be added to the net­work.

Siemens research had shown that while 36 per cent of UK motorists planned to buy a hybrid or EV as their next car, 40 per cent also said a lack of charg­ing points stopped them from doing so soon­er.

“It’s such a no-brain­er,” says Magee at Siemens. “We can con­vert a lamp­post in an hour into an EV charg­ing point. It’s low cost, low dis­rup­tion and you’re help­ing those peo­ple who don’t have access to off-street park­ing. It’s more of this type of think­ing that we need: things you can scale quick­ly.”

With the right to plug comes the right to roam. “All Dutch pub­lic charge­points must be acces­si­ble with any pub­lic charg­ing card, allow­ing for unlim­it­ed roam­ing,” says Delta-EE’s Lewis-Jones. “This sounds sen­si­ble, but is not the stan­dard across many EV mar­kets, espe­cial­ly the UK’s.”

This lack of roam­ing, says ten Bloe­men­dal, is hold­ing the UK back. What is need­ed is an open net­work, where you don’t need to pay a sub­scrip­tion just to access a charg­ing sta­tion, he insists.

Vehi­cle tech­nol­o­gy is chang­ing too, with new mod­els that can charge at very high pow­er lev­els. Chi­nese EV man­u­fac­tur­er NIO, which is sched­uled to launch in Europe in 2021, has devel­oped a 100kWh bat­tery with a range of more than 600km, as well as some less con­ven­tion­al meth­ods of vehi­cle charg­ing. These include swap shops, where dri­vers can exchange their flat bat­ter­ies for a fresh­ly charged one, and a valet ser­vice that sends a van with pow­er banks to charge cars at home.

“We need to con­vince and pro­vide cer­tain­ty to the cus­tomer,” says ION­I­TY’s Hajesch, “so at the end there is no rea­son not to go for an EV as their next choice of vehi­cle.”