Loren McDonald, CEO Of EVAdoption, On Where Opportunities Lie In The rEVolution

Loren McDonald, CEO of EVAdoption, LLC, gave a talk at RE+ on the opportunities emerging in the EV marketplace, specifically focused on charging. He started by saying that 40% of US households are apartments and condos. In addition, an estimated 10–30% of single-family homes have unparkable garages, as they’ve been turned into man caves, storage, home gyms, hobby rooms, living areas, etc.

Loren believes there are some terms that will become household words and that any EV enthusiast, or capitalistic opportunist, should be familiar with. V2H — vehicle to home — technology will be the first bi-directional tech adopted widely, as it does not require the involvement of the utility and can be used to back up your home during the growing number of power outages, McDonald said. V2G — vehicle to grid — is more complicated, as the grid was not designed for bi-directional power flow, and automakers are concerned about the impact of additional cycles on battery life.

Utilities are known for two answers to innovation, McDonald said: “slow and no.” So, adoption of residential V2G is probably a ways out. Ford’s F-150 Lightning has bidirectional capability already, and more EVs will have it standard over the next few years. Ford’s Charge Station Pro is a special bi-directional charger ($1300) that you have to buy separate from the truck. Then an inverter. Then a transfer switch so it doesn’t go out to the grid from your home — otherwise it could electrocute the utility workers out there working to fix a downed power line. Then Sunrun’s Home Integration system ($4,000), plus an electrician … and the total cost is maybe $8,000–9,000. So, the cost on V2H has to come down a lot, but there’s a lot of opportunity for innovation in this space, McDonald believes. In the meantime, for those who don’t buy the V2H package, the Ford F-150 Lightning’s V2L (vehicle to load) capabilities go a long way for those without power because of a hurricane, snowstorm, wildfires, or something else.

Fleets are another huge opportunity McDonald talked about. He said there are roughly 8.1M fleet vehicles in America. Fleet managers do care about total lifetime cost of ownership (TCO) of their fleet vehicles, so EVs make a lot of sense with their much lower lifetime cost of ownership than gasmobiles. But how they charge up — from semi-permanent battery integrated solutions like FreeWire, to mobility/vans on demand, to permanent setups, to small trailers, to large container/trailer setups such as the Inrush solution from BP Pulse (formerly Amply Power) — there are lots of options for fleet managers that minimize the need for electrical infrastructure upgrades. Another option for fleets is wireless charging, which for certain use cases is ideal — such as transit buses where the buses can “graze charge” at stops throughout the day, and thus reduce the size of needed battery packs and the cost of the vehicles.

McDonald also mentioned that according to a couple of recent studies, roughly 25% of DC fast chargers are not working at any given time. So, there are lots of opportunities in maintenance work.

McDonald’s prediction is that the share of sales of EVs (BEV + PHEV) will go from 5% at the end of 2021 to nearly 50% by 2030. McDonald cited Rudi Dornbusch, a German economist, who said, “Things always take longer to happen than you think they will, and then happen faster than you thought they could.”