A reliable network should not prove an insurmountable roadblock
A NEW phrase, range anxiety the fear that an electric vehicle (EV) will run
out of power before it reaches a charging-point entered the Oxford English
Dictionary in 2013. At the time a Nissan LEAF, the world s best-selling EV,
could travel only 120km between charges. A car with a full tank of fuel will
travel 650-800km between refills. A motorist relying on batteries has to find a
public charger, a rare sight in 2013, or plug in at home to cover the same
distance. Range anxiety has not gone away as EVs have advanced. But the problem
now feels much more soluble.
Many governments are pushing hard to replace the internal combustion engine
(ICE) with cleaner EVs this summer both Britain and France said that by 2040
new cars completely reliant on petrol or diesel will be illegal. By 2050, half
the cars on the road globally, a billion in total, will be battery-powered,
reckons Morgan Stanley, a bank. Falling battery costs mean that the total cost
of EV ownership will soon hit parity with ICE models.
Surveys show, however, that car buyers worries about charging where you can do
it, and how long it will take remain a big impediment to going electric (after
high prices). Unless buyers can be reassured about the availability and speed
of charging, the EV revolution may progress at the pace of a milk float, not a
Tesla in fast-accelerating ludicrous mode.
Better EV batteries with greater capacity are helping. A range of 190km or more
is now the norm. Nissan s latest LEAF, unveiled on September 6th, will travel
nearly 400km between charges. Tesla s Model S, a luxury EV launched in 2012,
has a range of 500km, as does its new Model 3, a cheaper car for the mass
market.
As ownership of EVs spreads, another reassuring fact is becoming clear: the
amount of daily driving that people actually do, combined with an ability to
charge at home, mean public charging facilities are rarely needed. Four out of
five Europeans drive less than 100km a day. The average daily distance a car
covers in Britain, for example, is less than 40km. Americans cover around 70km
a day.
So far, most EVs have been bought by better-off motorists, who usually have
off-street parking with a socket to plug into. Over 90% of charging is
currently done at home, carmakers say. Charging times at home are hardly a
difficulty a standard residential electricity supply and a 3.5KW charger will
fill a battery in a smaller car in about eight hours, as its owner sleeps. A
special 7KW home charger can recharge a Tesla s larger batteries in eight
hours. A car with a smaller battery takes just four.
Yet mass adoption of EVs will mean appealing to the millions of households
without garages. Nor can people on long road trips rely on better batteries
alone. So far the rate of increase in the number of public charging-points in
rich countries has just about kept pace with the growth of EVs, says Sean O
Flynn of Alix Partners, a consulting firm. In America the number of
charging-stations grew by more than a quarter, to almost 16,000, in 2016 (see
chart). But in most places the system needs to expand to provide enough
chargers of the right capacities in the right locations.
Carmakers, governments and commercial charging firms are all investing.
Carmakers can differentiate their vehicles by providing souped-up charging.
Tesla plans to expand its global network of 145KW supercharger stations, to
10,000. These public facilities can replenish the firm s larger batteries to
80% charged in 40 minutes (for technical reasons, fast chargers cannot top up
batteries completely). Several other carmakers are also rolling out their own
fast-charging networks, which need expensive kit but bring charging speeds down
to the time it takes to use a conventional fuel pump. Nissan now has a global
network of 4,000 fast chargers. Last year Daimler, BMW, Volkswagen and Ford
also said they would together install a total of 400 public charging-points in
Europe delivering 350KW, which will charge a small car to three-quarters full
in four minutes and a big vehicle in 12 minutes.
City and national governments are working on slower roadside charging for
drivers who cannot plug in at home. Officials in London recently announced
plans for 1,500 new charging-points by 2020. Local authorities there are
experimenting with providing low-cost kerbside charging by enabling
streetlights to double up as charging-points. France, Germany, the Netherlands
and Norway are among the countries that have launched initiatives to improve
access to public charging. (The EU is also mulling regulations that will
require all new dwellings to have access to an EV charging-point.) China s
government, which is set on remaining the largest market for electric cars, has
far bigger plans. This year alone it is installing 800,000 public
charging-points, including 100,000 semipublic ones at workplaces and for taxis
and commercial vehicles.
Companies that do nothing but provide charging services have their own plans to
invest large sums as more EVs hit the road. Pat Romano of Chargepoint, based in
California, which runs more charging stations worldwide than any other firm,
sees workplace charging as another way of filling the charging gap. He notes
that for a few thousand dollars spent on the equipment, plus a cost for
electricity that is about the same as the price of a cup of coffee a day,
employers can offer workers free charging in the office car park. Commercial
firms such as Chargepoint may well come to dominate charging away from the
home, if only because they are more focused on it than either carmakers or
governments.
Better business models and technology should further increase the availability
of charging. Chargie, an app that allows owners of home chargers to rent them
to the public much like an Airbnb flat, launched recently in Britain. Wireless
inductive charging from road to car is already technically feasible, if
expensive; that would make sense at taxi ranks when vehicles sit idle, for
example. Qualcomm, a chipmaker, has demonstrated technology for recharging a
moving vehicle off any road surface, although this way of providing limitless
range is still some way off.
So there seems little likelihood that a dearth of infrastructure will hold back
the spread of EVs. Some pundits imagine car parks of the future bristling with
charging-points as plugging in becomes normal and filling with liquid fuel is
regarded as an aberration. Range anxiety may then be remembered only by ageing
motorists, along with other quaint old phrases such as fill it up and check
the oil .