An expert panel discusses the charging infrastructure innovations required to support the growing popularity of EVs
With car makers and government on a mission to bring low-carbon motoring to the masses, the number of electric vehicles on the roads is set to increase rapidly. But is current charging infrastructure fit for purpose? And how will this infrastructure evolve to meet future demand? The Engineer sought the opinions of some of the leading experts in this rapidly growing area of the automotive sector.
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Meet the experts
- Professor Richard McMahon – WMG, University of Warwick
- Matteo de Renzi CEO, BP Chargemaster
- Colin Heron – Managing Director, Zero Carbon Futures
- Dr. Doron Myersdorf – CEO, StoreDot
Is lack of charging infrastructure hampering the uptake of electric vehicles?
CH: There are no studies that correlate the simple number of charge posts with EV registrations. The early adopters are mainly people who live in urban centres and have off street parking. The lack of plentiful affordable EVs is what is hampering the take up of EV. The principle reason for lack of vehicles is a shortage of batteries. Europe has hardly increased installed capacity over the last 6 years and is only now installing large capacity cell manufacturing plants.
MdR: The reality is that there is plenty of capacity in the existing public charging infrastructure in the UK, and there is more being built virtually every day. One thing we need to do better is increase the visibility of the charging infrastructure that is already installed and will be installed in the future. A key benefit of our ultra-fast chargers on BP forecourts is that they will be seen by drivers of other vehicles while refuelling, which will give them greater confidence that the infrastructure is there and it’s in convenient, familiar places.
DM: Based on current levels of EV ownership, the existing charging infrastructure is sufficient. However, with EV ownership predicted to increase drastically within the next few years, it is imperative that adequate infrastructure is put in place to meet accelerating demand.
Where is the greatest need for charging infrastructure?
RM: All sorts of forms of charging will be needed to reflect the diverse modes of driving. Home and work charging is great for those who have a home parking place. For those who don’t, the charging hub is one model; supermarkets, shopping centres and the like are also in the game.
MdR: Ultimately, we will need the right type of charging infrastructure in the right places. It won’t be appropriate, necessary or possible to lay down 150kW chargers absolutely everywhere, but it’s also important that we offer these higher speeds and don’t assume that everyone will be happy or able to charge at slower speeds.
DM: Having multiple charging options (unlike today when filling a gas tank at a garage is the only way) is key for allowing drivers the flexibility they need. Outside of cities, where driving is characterized by long distances, drivers will have to rely on a combination of home charging and public infrastructure. In this scenario, having access to ultra-fast charging facilities is imperative.
What needs to happen to drive greater levels of installation?
DM: As technological developments such as ultra-fast charging continue to overcome barriers to EV adoption, so governments around the world will have to ensure policy making facilitates rapid deployment of the supporting infrastructure. Meanwhile, simplifying regulations and installation licensing processes reduces overall costs and removes uncertainty for developers and business owners. Charging stations, especially those offering high power, require high capital investment. Therefore, the main goal must be to ensure that private investors in infrastructure projects will maintain a high level of return on their investments.
RM: The current players in charging infrastructure have invested a lot of money into the fledgling networks, but the networks are mostly (so far) unprofitable. It’s risky because it’s hard to predict peoples’ charging behaviour patterns on 1 per cent of early adopters. Sure charging will be needed, but where and at what charging rate remain unknown to a certain degree. It’s probably a cart and horse problem – the limited amount of electric vehicles means it’s harder for systems to make money, therefore limiting investment in the area at this stage.
CH: The UK has no overall installation plan, and services such as ZAP MAP only find out what has been installed when it is switched on. We have a true post code lottery. There is no model available which calculates how many chargers by type are required per number of registrations (year and cumulative), as the variables are currently too complicated. The current network, with the exception of isolated pieces of equipment, is a financial liability due to the low utilisation. The more chargers that go in the financial viability drops even more, which manifests itself in lack of maintenance and frustration of the current users. The core problem is the uncontrolled installation of charge points where land becomes available and where there is an acceptable connection cost or grant funding.
What is the current state of the art?
DM Interest in EVs for heavy-duty applications and demand for ultra-fast charging are just two of the factors driving rapid development of charging technology. Ultra-fast charging requires high power stations, with the result that we already have 350 kW stations in various stages of implementation. At the same time, new standards are now being developed for even higher-power chargers – so expect to see mega-chargers capable of charging at one megawatt (MW) or more in the not too distant future. Adopting a more strategic approach, infrastructure companies will need to find a way to analyse large amounts of usage data in order to pinpoint and optimise ideal locations for charging stations, and to help standardise their technical specifications. In addition, operators will need to implement ‘smart grid’ algorithms and intelligent metering systems to balance peak usage and optimize the overall cost of ownership of the entire infrastructure.
CH: Charging technology is sophisticated in terms of the power electronics to talk to a car and deliver power. However, they are also quite dumb as it is the car that determines how the battery is charged. It is the battery chemistry and battery design that determine how long it takes to charge.
What technologies do you see coming further down the line that will make it quicker and easier to charge EV batteries?
MdR: We would like to see more OEMs bringing vehicles to market that are capable of genuine ultra-fast charging – not just peaking at 100kW or even 150kW for a minute or two. In terms of inductive charging, we have trialled this before and even retrofitted it to previous company vehicles, but we are not seeing a huge amount of appetite for it from the OEMs.
CH: Inductive charging as you drive (dynamic) will, I believe, never happen due to the cost involved in basically digging up our main roads and installing equipment, as well as installing a power supply. Static induction charging on peoples’ drives is a possibility. Outside on the street is expensive and requires dedicated charging bays.
With regard to battery technology, the current lithium ion format will get better by about 30 per cent but there will be no step change for 6 to 8 years. The current Holy Grail is solid state, which is not productionised or costed.
DM: Innovative battery technology, in addition to battery cost reduction, will play a crucial role in making EV charging both quicker and easier. With range anxiety a major inhibitor to EV adoption, the ability to charge a battery quickly whilst on the move is a critical factor to overcoming this challenge.
RM: I don’t see a disruptive battery technology in the near future. If it existed, it would probably be obvious by now. However, batteries will get better but how that is cashed in is moot – smaller or cheaper packs hence cars, or longer range or ability to take higher charge or longer life?
Static wireless charging has some attractive use advantages – no cable to handle, no getting out in the rain, personal security issues and accessibility for the disabled are all valid considerations. The initial steps are being taken to demonstration, but the OEMs are still on the sidelines.
Disappointed that the question on why don’t the manufacturers get together and standardise batteries such that they are replaceable at a “filling station”.
This is a fascinating example of ‘stakeholder capture ‘ of public policy. As with HS2, the advantages of the nostrum accrue to the stakeholders rather than the public, and yet the whole thing is predicated on state funding.
EVs will do nothing for road congestion, which is our No.1 problem. EVs also have issues of weight, cost, recharge time, battery life, safety, and end-of-life disposal, and the real biggie, which is where the energy comes from to power them.
But we must not forget the massive loss of government income from EVs, which MUST be raised elewhere in order for our society to continue functioning: If you strip out duty and VAT from the fuel cost of a modern 60mpg car, the cost of the energy is around the same for an IC as it is for an EV.
In sum, EVs using grid power represent a more expensive and less efficient mousetrap. AKA a greenie fad and a scam on the public purse. In a nutshell, the EV paradigm as currently concieved is bordering on the dishonest.
However there is a complete and profitable solution to all of the drawbacks of the EV, including the problem of loss of duty income. However, it requires a Design Engineering mindset to ‘get’, rather than narrow specialist and academic-engineering thought processes that are locked into the ‘private vehicle/public road’ paradigm.
Sadly, it may have to wait until Cummings gets his UK-ARPA up and running.
We need Government legislation to introduce competition at Motorway Service Stations, at the monent Ecotricity has an exclusive agreement forcing other suppliers to install at sites near to motorway junctions but with inadequate toilets or catering. Consequently Ecotricity has not expanded their network sufficiently or carried out much needed maintenance on their chargers that only really work on AC rapid and Chademo whereas the newer CCS standard does not work with a lot of CCS cars. This is what is holding back EV adoption for long distance travel with lots of EV owners only using there EV’s within the range of their home chargers and keeping their 2nd car (dirty diesel) for long distances. Once you have an EV you change from having range anxiety to charger anxiety, will it work, will it be available, will I find it easily?
The lack of easy ways to pay via contactless is also holding back adoption although this is now being addressed slowly. Although having to carry 5 different RFID cards plus another 5 apps on your mobile phone to actually pay for charging is a joke! This is why TESLA is 7 years ahead of the competition with their Supercharger stations that automatically detect the car and charge the bill payer seamlessly when the car is connected to the charger. Tesla chargers have a high 125kWh charge rates and their cars can also accept these high charge rates unlike most of the competion.
Still despite this I love driving my Renault Zoe and have done 20,000 miles in first year of ownership. Public charging is an adventure where you never know what surprises you may run into, much more fun than fossil fuel cars 🙂
An interesting interview which helps re-frame the public perception of the issues of EV adoption which I find are generally quite wide of the mark. Working in the automotive industry, I talk to fairly bright people daily who have a misguided view of the challenges of adoption. I believe this is in part due to the amount of disinformation around but also a resistance to change and fear for ones own career.
I’m constantly told EVs will never take off due to various issue with charging or power generation but it’s clear this change is coming . Issues with distribution and generation have been greatly exaggerated and are almost always based on every single car owner switching to electric overnight and charging at the same time.
If you consider the rapid expansion of offshore wind generation, that we are below peak national peak energy demand, that many forms of energy storage are matured tech (such as pumped hydro), that most people will not need to recharge an EV every let alone attempt to at the same time and that wide-scale adoption is a change that will occur over 10-20 years, power generation and distribution are solvable problems.
Somewhat missing some of the points and elephany in the room issues! The main reason for lack of take up after initial cost, and that of potential battery replacement, is that of viable charging infrastructure. All the comments really relate to ease and sufficiency within an urban or peri urban contest. Away from here chargers need to be installed wherever there is a rural filling station and these must have capacity to facilitate very rapid charging of three or four at a time. Even within a less than rural area it is a major issue. I could not not use an EV for a simple round trip to Glasgow of approx 200miles, especially in winter, without access to an accessible functional and viable charger adjacent to where I could be visiting. The key problem is the time it takes to charge, compared with 5 minutes or so for an IC car, minibus or small truck, the best part of an hour or more is needed. Coping with detours for bridge closures or closed motorways because of snow and ice generates yet more potential problems. Solve the recharging condundrum and take up will increase and significantly. EVs have to be seen as viable practical alternatives to IC, until then no hope of meeting any of the political wishful thinking deadlines! Another part of the problem is that we have nowhere near the additional 500TWH of generation capacity currently filled by using petrol and diesel. The practicality of getting several MWH worth of energy into larger vehicles has not not been addressed or even remotely considered. As far as manufacturers are concerned since it is their private investment they will not ramp up production until there is a forseeable market, and without the charging infrastructure it will not happen. The public need to have visibility of these issues and be assured that they are being actively addressed before they will be happy to put their investment into a new vehicles. Why are people going to buy an EV if they can’t in practice use it for anything more than niche short distance commuting? Instead of pontificating and posturing we need proper practical engineering solutions. We all recognise the need to move away from IC, and the mechanical simplicity of EV in comparison is a good enough justification on its own but until they can be used practically they are non-starters. What happens in a field or remote rural area when a battery goes flat, who is going to run several miles of high capacity cabling, what size of IC run generator will be needed for several hours? What happens when hundreds of cars and lorries get trapped on motorways in bad weather, accident or breakdown and all need recharging, at once? Instead of wasting money on HS2 as a political vanity project to serve the needs of London, that money would be much better spent on addressing the national charging infrastructure now, not in 20 or 30 years time.
EVs still fail to answer the pollution problem, and will continue to do so until all our electricity generation is entirely pollution-free. (All they are doing at present is moving the pollution from the roads to the power station.)
There also needs to be a single standard charging regime for all EVs. (One plug fits all). Not the current multiple outlets in current use. (It’s like going back to how mobile phones used to be with each manufacturer using a different charger! )
Re. wireless charging for EVs – why not have an inductive coupler with one part installed in the road, and the car’s half automatically lowered into close proximity (laying on the road) when selecting ‘charging mode’ in the car. (Close-coupling should improve the efficiency.)
It’s easy enough for a signalling system to be incorporated, whereby two-way communication between car and charger can agree an appropriate charging regime, after which the system switches into ‘charging mode’. No need to get out in the rain and fuss about with cables and cards – leave the car and charger to sort that out automatically.
My EV runs appr. 500km on a full charge. A full charge has the energy equivalent of 10l of gasoline. An equivalent IC would use 40l of gasoline for the full distance. The CO² emitted by the IC on that distance is more the 90Kg compared to 0 by the EV. Even if the electricity is generated by burning the gasoline (50% efficiency) it would only add 45Kg of CO². But the gasoline needs to be pumped out of the ground, transported, refined, transported again and then pumped into the IC. 40l gasoline needs more than 50KWh thermal energy alone. The well to pump loss is another 8-10l of gasoline. Summary: The energy needed to get the 40l of gasoline in the tank before the IC event starts the trip is more than the EV needs for the whole trip of 500km.
100% of fossil fuel cars energy is polluting. Much less so for electric cars where the energy comes from the grid and getting less all the time.
Plus electric cars do the equivalent of around 120 mpg as they are much more efficient.
Fair comment Thomas Ingendoh: but you failed to think about what it took to generate the electricity, or to distribute it to your charging point. How was your electricity generated? (Coal, Gas, Oil, Nuclear?) What was the conversion efficiency of that generation? How much transportation was involved in it’s fuel delivery? How much transmission loss was there in the distribution?
Christopher Philips (above). ‘equivalent to 120 mpg’ – really? Then why is their range so limited?
And what about in winter when you need to put the heater on to stop your breath freezing on the windscreen? (How’s your consumption now?)
I think Graham’s an anti… Interesting as most engineers are early technology adopters. Google says… 40% of UK electricity is from renewables, and of the remainder electricity generation is far more efficient, an the emissions better filtered than our car engines.
My daily commute is short, but my parents and inlaws live 250ish and 150ish miles away. My next car is likely to be a short range hybrid I can run purely on electric for the bulk of my journies, and have the range of an IC car for the rest. I’m quite excited about the idea of pre-conditioning in the winter, the performance when running both in parallel, just waiting for the prices to drop a tiny bit more…
@ Chris,
just because “Google says… 40% of UK electricity is from renewables” doesn’t make it true.
National Grid says 24%. (there is an additional 6.5% from dirty ‘biomass’)
neatly shown here – http://grid.iamkate.com/
andyg 26th February 2020 at 1:37 pm
Disappointed that the question on why don’t the manufacturers get together and standardise batteries such that they are replaceable at a “filling station”….
Couldn’t agree more. We have the infrastructure in place already, they are fuel (petrol) stations. All vehicles must be standardized to receive a battery cage that can house any size or shape battery. You pull in to a “recharge station” (fuel [petrol] station) a high-low removes your spent battery pack and replaces it with a fully charged one. Plus most will be recharging off-peek , over night. This will also keep control on old battery’s to be recycled, just like your propane tank on your gas BBQ grill. You would then pay for a charge like toy would for fuel.
The UK is committing to a massive investment to reduce its CO2, several trillion pounds will be lost to the economy for a small saving in CO2 production. This money would be more effectively used in overseas investments to reduce the massively increasing emissions in China, India and Indonesia: better business and massively greater CO2 reduction that is now practical in the UK, where the easy bit has been done.