Our New Report: The State of Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure, And The Landscape Looking Forward
Editor’s note: We have just published our first report solely focused on electric vehicle charging. It’s a deep dive into residential EV charging stations, public EV charging stations, multi-family building and commercial EV charging stations, EV service equipment innovations, EV charging business models, and electric vehicle adoption trends. Below is the report introduction.
You can read a 21-page preview of the report, purchase the whole report for $500, or patiently read CleanTechnica to obtain all of the insights we have to share from the work. Enjoy!
Plug-in vehicle charging is a critical link in the journey towards electrified personal transportation. Every new plug-in vehicle sold requires a means of charging the vehicle. The majority of this infrastructure is installed at the residence, and while the underlying electrical infrastructure is largely in place, the hardware required to actually plug cars into that infrastructure to charge — electric vehicle service equipment (EVSE)* — simply does not exist in many places today.
This report looks at the current state of the plug-in vehicle charging landscape within the context of the broader transition from internal combustion vehicles to plug-in vehicles. EVSE deployments and sales largely track with the sales of plug-in vehicles, so we will briefly touch on the broader transition to plug-in battery electric vehicles and how the transition is progressing around the world to set the stage for the EVSE discussion.
The report looks at the disruptive innovation taking place in the EVSE space and discusses the promise to not only improve EVSE consumer options but also have a profound impact on the electric grid of the future.
The report then breaks out the current and future projected states of residential plug-in vehicle charging and the transformational potential of workplace charging as a demand response tool for utilities. It then discusses the challenges and solutions of installing EVSEs in multi-family housing complexes. The report closes with a look at dominant regions around the world that have paved the way forward with high adoption rates of plug-in vehicles and what lessons can be learned from these frontrunners in the journey.
Methodology & Disclaimers
As with any aggregate report, this one includes a number of limitations. This report is based on the information currently available about existing electric vehicle service equipment (EVSE) product offerings and the corresponding information available about the EVs that can utilize them.
Data for this report was sourced directly from EVSE manufacturers, plug-in vehicle charging network operators, peer-to-peer plug-in vehicle EVSE sharing networks, and surveys of readers of CleanTechnica.com, EVObsession.com, and Gas2.org.
For the survey portion of the report, that means that the results suffer from self-selection bias and any respondent biases present. For example, readers are already highly informed and enthusiastic about the technologies and trends being discussed. Many of the results would have been quite different if the surveys were completed by a broad, representative sample of citizens of the world who would have much less knowledge about the topics of the survey.
It is our belief that sampling thought leaders, early adopters, and technology enthusiasts in the world of clean technology serves as a gauge to determine how the early market is functioning and how it will transition into the early majority as plug-in vehicles, electric vehicle service equipment, utilities, and related clean technologies scale up on the road to mass adoption. This niche survey focus was intentional, as we were eager to understand what learnings and opportunities have surfaced from regions, companies, and individuals that have taken an early lead. We believe this insight could help those that follow to more successfully integrate these technologies without having to learn the same lessons.
The questions to and discussions with participating companies were crafted to eke out unique insights into plug-in vehicle charging that are not already publicly available.
Want to read more? Get the full report or view the 21-page report preview.
*Thanks to report sponsors and partners Important Media, EVBox, EV Obsession, Tesla Shuttle, and The Beam.
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