Charger Sharing Could Be the Solution to the EV Infrastructure Problem

James Morris

Most of the discussion around electric vehicles is about the cars themselves. Do they have enough range? How fast can they charge? How much do they cost? Are they reliable and with a long life? But the EVs currently available are not the problem with the electrification of transportation. The real issue is charging infrastructure. And as EVs get more popular, that’s only going to get worse.

Although the main reason people give for not switching to electric is the high price, the second and third biggest fears are charging related. In fact, the vehicles are almost there in terms of cost. There has been a lot of talk about Tesla promising a $25,000 car by 2023/4, but we’re very nearly at that level already. In the UK, the MG5 EV – a station wagon – recently arrived. This has a base list price of £24,495 ($33,000) but can already by purchased from some dealers for £21,000 ($28,000), which implies that a $25,000 mainstream EV will arrive sooner than 2023.

The MG5 EV lasts for 214 WLTP miles, which is well below the benchmark set by the Tesla Model 3 Long Range and budget competitors like the Renault Zoe. It’s also not the most exciting of designs, to say the least. But the MG5 EV presages what will happen to EV pricing very soon, because it’s Chinese made and there are much cheaper cars than this already on sale in China. In fact, the best-selling EV in China in November was the Wuling Hongguang Mini EV, which only costs $4,200.

On the other hand, charging infrastructure, in virtually every country, is much further behind. It’s growing fast, with the UK government claiming there were five times as many chargers in July 2020 as there were in 2015. But plug-in electric vehicle ownership is growing much faster. Battery electric vehicle purchases were up 168.7% in the year-to-date for October 2020 in the UK, and plug-in hybrids up 91.5%. So demand for charging points, already inadequately fulfilled, is going to outstrip supply even further if nothing comes along to provide more charging capacity.