Chinese EV charging suppliers whose chargers are cheap as 30 percent of the ones manufactured in EU and US are looking forward to expand its production globally
Strategic research provider BloombergNEF has now unveiled its latest survey report on Zero-emission vehicles, which highlighted the details of cumulative investment in EV charging hardware and stated that the installation would reach around $62 billion towards the end of 2022. This year, around $28.6 billion have been invested in this sector, which is an increase of 228 percent a year back. Apart from this, 61 percent of investment has been pushed to more than 6,00,000 public chargers installed in China alone.
Internationally, the cumulative investment would surpass the $100 billion mark in 2023 if China keeps up the momentum. Jigar Shah at the US Loan Program added that $100 billion of the investment deployed showcases a potential to counter systemic hindrances in the industry and opens the gate to low-cost capital, which is needed to reach the $1 trillion mark. There are a couple of indications that show the transformation is happening rapidly. Purchase commitments are escalating and industries are improving their technology. Throughout the charging industry, there is a stream of infrastructure investors and coordination. The retail, utility, and the automotive, and charging sectors working jointly.
During the phase of EV charging 1.0 and 2.0, the Nissan Leaf was unveiled in 2010. In 2019, the second phase started and the industry started moving towards a new journey. It is when the public charging stations started increasing and the charging speeds were augmented. At that time, Tesla was considered to be a single performer that established 12000 international superchargers with a maximum speed of 120 kilowatt. The BloombergNEF report also stated that in the next few years, Ionity and other companies unveiled 350 kW stations and many electric cars started appearing in the market with 100kW+ charging. Then, the supply chain ecosystem was localized, but the charging companies were not having ample revenue growth because the challenges of reliability from technology to operational issues are still ongoing.
The report also exclusively added that unit economics should escalate with factories expanding their production unit. Headquartered in Spain, the smart electric vehicle charging and energy management provider Wallbox at its plant in Texas will have the potential to manufacture 1 million chargers every year by the end of 2030. In fact, an agreement has been signed by Shell with companies ranging from Swedish-Swiss multinational ABB to lesser-known companies like Taiwanese manufacturer Phihong. TGood, the biggest charging operator in China, distributed 4 terawatt-hours last year, compared to 15 TWh for Alphabet and 24 TWh for Amazon, as per the BloombergNEF report.
The passenger electric vehicle fleet in Europe and in the US would reach around 15 percent to 33 percent between 2030-2035. There will be gradual slowdown in demand of the big oil companies, whereas the adoption of autonomous vehicles will also increase. This will lead to the growth and relevance of robotics and wireless charging technologies.