EV Charging: Current Trends

The electric vehicle industry is on its way to market maturity but there are still twists in the road for stakeholders and customers. From accessibility and standardisation issues to a lack of convenient and secure payment methods at EV charging stations, unresolved issues could still throw a spoke in the wheel of electric vehicles, leaving full adoption out of reach.

Electric vehicles (EVs) are cool. They offer a smooth ride and they’re good for the environment. For many, the attraction of EV ownership is also financial. For example, a 2020 survey by smart charging solutions provider NewMotion, due to be renamed Shell Recharge Solutions, found that 61 percent of EV drivers were motivated to switch to save money. If so, what’s keeping them from widespread adoption?

“The most common issues we see centre around accessibility and availability,” says Sjors Martens, the commercial director of charge-point data provider Eco-Movement. “Charging points that are private or closed are a nuisance! In fact, 36 percent of charge points we receive have either restricted accessibility or are private. Without intervention from a company like ours, they’d be displayed on a map without any warning.”

Charging points that are private or closed are a nuisance!
_{Sjors Martens, Eco-Movement}

As if the automotive industry didn’t have enough problems already with eMobility, such as secure payment methods, concerns about carbon emissions and urban pollution are driving the manufacturers to introduce hybrid and fully electric powertrains. This work is being aided by steadily improving battery and motor technology but is being held back by the ‘chicken and egg’ problem of charging the new vehicles. To ensure that EVs have the same freedom to roam as today’s fossil-fuel cars, a few challenges need to be addressed. Experts agree that charging has to become faster, the world’s network of petrol stations has to be upgraded with electric-charging facilities, and standalone charging stations will be necessary to compensate for the EV’s relatively limited range.

The obvious answer is to align all charging points on data standards, providing EV drivers with a consistent experience no matter where they are. But, as Martens explains, that’s easier said than done: “Charge point operators are often too busy focusing on exponential growth to work on data and standards. Furthermore, the type of charging points, definitions and regulations are vastly different across Europe alone, which makes it difficult to align perspectives.” Local conditions also dictate if private charging points can be installed, for example, having a private parking space at your home is the norm in Belgium but it’s still the exception in next-door Netherlands.

A Winning Team: Dutch ESS provider Alfen teamed up with fuel vendor Shell to deploy a 350kWh battery storage system at a forecourt in Zaltbommel, the Netherlands, offering grid-balancing services. (source ©: Alfen N.V.)

Even so, resistance to EVs seems to defy logic. Even a simple back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that filling your tank with petrol is like connecting your car to a 5MW energy source. By contrast, Tesla announced in March 2019 that its V3 Superchargers will deliver energy at rates of up to 250kW, although it will take a liquid-cooled charging cable to make it possible. EV charging obviously has a way to go before it can catch up with internal combustion engines in terms of convenience and practical reliability. It will take a combination of high voltages, high currents and sophisticated power conversion, filtering and charge management systems to close the gap. This, in turn, will demand the deployment of some pretty sophisticated connectors, cables, relays, conversion electronics and passives to ensure the same kind of fast, safe energy top-up offered by today’s petrol stations.

Charging Network Growth

So how close are we to a nationwide charging network that drivers can rely on when they need it, rather than having to hopscotch between charging stations? Tesla claimed it had more than 12,000 Superchargers in North America, Europe and Asia at the end of 2021. This would cover more than 99 percent of the US population and the company expects to achieve similar distribution in Europe by the end of this year. Tesla also claims that it recently achieved coverage of more than 90 percent of the Chinese population.

Building charging networks looks like it will be big business. A report from Markets and Markets foresees that EV charging stations will grow from $3.22 billion in 2017 to $30.41 billion by 2023, an annual growth rate of 41.8 percent. The report offers a number of justifications for its forecast, including subsidy programmes for purchasing EVs in various countries, and a US government initiative to develop 48 charging networks that will together cover about 25,000 miles (40,000 kilometers) of US highways across 35 states. This initiative led 28 states, utilities, charging firms and electric vehicle companies, including GM, BMW and Nissan, to start working together.

AC or DC?

These raw numbers appear encouraging for potential EV drivers but mask the fact that there is still a lot of variety in charging methods, the infrastructure available to support them and, therefore, their usability to the average user. One big issue has the potential to reignite the legendary War of the Currents between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse in the late 1880s and early 1890s. Edison’s arc lamp street lighting system ran on low-voltage direct current (DC), while Westinghouse championed the rival alternating current (AC) power distribution network, which ultimately triumphed – but not before the two engineers-turned-entrepreneurs threw mud at each other, with Edison even going so far as to equate Westinghouse and his system with the electric chair.

Common Cause: The evRoaming4EU consortium is a partnership project aimed at ensuring that any EV driver will be able to charge at any charging station in the EU. Its goal is to address and resolve functional, technical, legal, and fiscal obstacles that exist today between different countries within the European Union and create a mature European market for EV charging. infrastructure. (source ©: Netherlands Enterprise Agency)

The real difference between the two charging strategies is where the necessary transformation is done. Electric grids deliver AC which needs to be rectified to the appropriate DC charging voltage with the help of technology built into the car itself. DC charging stations, on the other hand, use larger, more efficient and better-cooled rectification circuitry than would be possible in a vehicle. Many predict that, over time, AC charging stations will do their own rectification but the jury is still out.

In addition to charging power, the decision to use either AC or DC charging also depends on the capital costs of rectification and who will pay: the operators of the DC charging networks or the owners of e-vehicles charged with AC. Some charging standards also allow bi-directional energy flow, so a distributed network of charging vehicles can act as both an energy sink and a source to stabilise the energy grid – which could lead to regulatory support in some regions.

A Growing Market: The EV charger market in Europe alone reached 1.7 million in 2020, says IHS, and further explosive growth is to be expected over the next few years. (source ©: IHS Automotive)

While some automobile vendors like Tesla are trying to control their customer base by installing proprietary chargers and connectors, others like BMW, Mercedes-Benz maker Daimler, Ford and the Volkswagen Group, which includes Audi and Porsche, are all backing a multi-vendor, multi-technology standard known as the Combined Charging System (CCS).

As has been seen multiple times in other technology evolutions, the perceived benefits of lock-in are slowly giving way to standardisation efforts, as EV customers begin to demand ubiquitous charging facilities and weigh their availability more highly in their buying decisions. This is leading to a shake-out in the market for EV charging. Nissan and Mitsubishi have backed CHAdeMO (Charge de Move), which allows bi-directional charging. China, the world’s largest EV market, is establishing GB/T (which means it’s a favored Chinese regulation) as its charging standard.

There is obviously still a lot of room for component manufacturers to innovate. For example, if rectification in the vehicle becomes more efficient, this will have a direct impact on the utility of an e-vehicle by enabling faster charging with AC power. Even the design of the plug will be a critical factor in the speed of charging and all this will help increase the practical range of an electric vehicle (see boxout).Of course, all of these innovations will have to comply with national and international standards, many of which are still being developed and agreed. As EVs move ahead to replace fossil-fuel vehicles, the race for EV market dominance will almost certainly be fast and furious.

Interview: Thomas Wagner

What are the biggest priorities in radically expanding electric-vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure?

We need much higher numbers of charging stations and we need them much faster as electric vehicle sales are gaining speed. So I’m mainly talking about high power charging parks and also AC charging at home and at work.

How close are we to a nation-wide charging network or maybe even to a Europe-wide charging network?

With ISO 15118, we actually have a pretty good world-wide standard, except for China and Japan which choose to go their own way. Most companies are working together because they know that’s where the future of electromobility lies, namely in vehicle to grid and sectoral coupling of energy and mobility.

We need a faster rollout.
_{Thomas Wagner, Of in-tech, a pioneer smart charging com-pany based in Bavaria}

Is the energy sector ready?

I think the energy sector needs to talk more with the mobility sector, and vice versa. We need a faster rollout. It’s important that everyone profits: the manufacturers, the operators, the end users, and, of course, both the charging business and the energy sector.

What role will governments play? After all, many legal standards and regulations aren’t even fully developed yet.

Right, national politics has to support international standards and international business cases because EV will be a truly global market.

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