New research on electric vehicle charger growth finds that there will be 40 million charging points by 2030. But has China peaked too soon? RenewEconomy’s Bridie Schmidt explores the issue.
Electric vehicle sales are trending upwards almost everywhere on the globe, and there’s not much argument about the fact that for this to continue, an effective charging network is an absolute necessity.
A recent study released by Wood Mackenzie suggests that this indeed is happening, and penetration of EV charging add up to 40 million charging points globally within the next 12 years. But in China, they have built too many chargers too soon.
This figure is made up of both public and private chargers, according to Wood McKenzie subsidiary GTM Research, and is based around the prediction that 11 percent of all vehicle sales by 2030 will be electric.
Urged on by financial incentives and government policy, many countries are making deals with charging infrastructure companies to bring their networks in line with increasing EV sales.
These include Australia’s Tritium whose output of high-powered fast chargers has dramatically increased from 720 to 6,000 units a year following a range of deals they’ve recently struck across Europe.
“The EV charging infrastructure ecosystem is very complex, and most projects require strong partnerships between both public and private stakeholders to deploy necessary infrastructure,” said Timotej Gavrilovic, the lead author of the report.
Wood Mackenzie estimate that over a quarter of the chargers predicted to be installed globally will be in the USA, where the industry will yield $US18.6 million by 2030 — and that while 1.2 million of those will be public chargers, the number of private chargers will be tenfold.
