Today's theme - EV charging

Its more important, and more complex, than you might think

This is a transition theme we have written about a few times (including here), partly because its really important as we look to electrify transport, and partly because its quite poorly understood (in parts).

What is “today’s theme” - its where we look at a theme we have written about in detail before and highlight some recent news, and what it means. Most of the links in this blog are to articles we have written on this topic before. And to be clear, we are not trying to sell you anything, we don’t promote investment funds and we don’t work for industry groups. We just happen to think that if you are better informed, you stand a good chance of being able to make a real difference. If we think an aspect of sustainability is not currently financeable - we will tell you.

Back to EV charging

The easy question is why is Electric Vehicle (EV) charging important. Transport contributes c. 24% of CO2 emissions from energy (or roughly 20% of all emmisions) - so its a big deal (figures from the fine folk at Our World in Data). Around 3/4 of this comes from road transport (74.5%), of which the biggest by far is passenger transport. But freight (trucks or HGV’s depending on where you come from) is disproportionately important (ie small number of trucks produce a lot of emissions per truck. Then comes aviation and shipping.

But, sorting out transport is not just about CO2 emissions, its also about air pollution. The impact on people who live near to major roads is probably a lot bigger than you might expect.

So why EV charging ?

Ok - so now we have set out why decarbonizing transport is important for society - why EV charging. There is a lot of attention, especially in the press and online, given to the automotive side what are called OEM’s or Original Equipment Manufacturers). This covers the new car makers such as Tesla, all the way through to the historic giants such as GM and VW.

But, the simple reality is, if people cannot charge their cars, trucks, buses and vans, they will not buy an EV. Yes, there are a lot of other factors - range and price get talked about a lot. But charging is the ultimate deal breaker - no charging and your car is just a lump of metal. Now for the early adaptors (we use the innovation S curve a lot - early adopters are the people who buy a product, often before it really makes sense to do so). this is not that important. But for everyone else it is. And everyone else really needs there new car to be an EV by around 2025 if current expectations are to be met.

So what don’t people understand about EV charging?

One aspect is where and when people will charge - most of us think its going to be at night, when the car is parked on our drive …. this is probably only partly true. And then there is a whole lot of BS talked about how the electricity grid will not cope (a rant I will leave for another day).

The other big issue is fast charging, especially fast charging in “charging stations” along our main roads - a modern version of the service/petrol station. This feels intuitively important, and politicians love it, but its not such as big deal as you might think, at least not for a few years.

And then you have the big one - trucks, especially the larger ones, and buses. I have lost count of the number of times that I have read articles that say you cannot electrify trucks. Yes, there are challenges, but not as many as you think. Why - because a lot more trucks and vans either return to a depot at night, or stand for a while while they are loaded and unloaded. And most research I have read suggests that the majority of freight and bus charging will take place in depots.

So, bottom line is yes, EV charging is important is we are to electrify our transport fleet. But the devil, as always, is in the detail. Don’t think that EV’s will be like the cars, trucks, vans and buses we have now. To make the obvious comparison, early cars were used in a very different way from horses.

To misquote Henry Ford “if you asked people back then what they wanted, they would have said faster horses”.

In much the same way that Apple has been successful by anticipating consumer needs rather than making what we already have a bit better, this is how we need to think about EV’s and EV charging. The future world of transport is going to look different.

Ok - that is all for this theme of the day, I will be posting some comments on recent relevant news stories in NOTES and on LinkedIn, so look out for them. And its a theme we will be coming back to on a regular basis in future blogs, which you will be able to read here.