Public EV charging and economics

Last week I wrote a post looking at "Range Anxiety" in the Electric Vehicle (EV) world and whether it (still) holds validity or not? Of course, anxiety of any sort is totally valid, so in that sense it does; however, does the hype equal the reality?

Some respondents pointed out that public EV infrastructure, whilst it's come a long way in recent years, is not yet prevalent in many, especially rural, areas. Others were more concerned with the experience of the EV driver when trying to charge on-the-go. This article focuses on the latter of these comments and looks at what causes these suboptimal customer experiences, as well as what drives these decisions more broadly.

Let's examine the issues raised :

• Queueing discipline. You arrive at the destination to find all the working chargers are occupied, but at least you're next in queue. However, charging stations are often laid out like car parks (or in them) so it's difficult/impossible to position yourself such in a way that guarantees being next to the next one freed up. Or, worse – common when the chargers are in petrol stations – they are positioned such that queueing is impossible as it would block an exit from the site, so you have to continually loop round, making queue position unclear and subject to usurpation. This stems from a failure to think from the customer's perspective when designing the facility. The operator provisions some available space and that's that. This is not an EV driving issue per se, but what at ADAPTAVIS we would characterise as a failure to consider customers' needs. As David Anderson might say, it's not Fit-for-Purpose (in the eyes of the customer).
• Cable's are often too short. I've experienced this on many occasions: you get into the slot, but charger is configured with a Three metre cable which won't reach the socket on the car: nose in, won't reach across the width, tail in, won't reach forward enough. Three metres sounds a lot but cars have sockets in different locations. Add in safety bollards and pavement around the charger, and three metres suddenly doesn't reach three metres at all. Example: driving a Tesla Model Y around the Netherlands, I was unable to get the cable to reach the socket at a more than one charging station operated by (more than one) major multinational oil and gas company. Another: Tesla recently opened many of its Superchargers to non-Tesla drivers. Whilst it's great to have more fast charger choice, when one factors in that many Tesla cables are two metres the reality is that drivers often improvise to make it work – at Eurotunnel Coquelles, I saw a Jaguar iPace parked at 90 degrees across two bays in order to get the cable to reach, thus rendering an additional bay unusable. Whilst this as also a Fit-for-Purpose issue, the underlying reason is poor economic decision-making. The difference between a three and six metre cable is a few hundred Euros/Dollars/Pounds. The "it's cheaper and this is about profit" rationale doesn't hold water. For many EV owners a single poor experience is enough to drive them onto Trust Pilot, give the operator a one star rating, moan about the experience to as many people as will listen, then do everything within their power to never use that provider again. It doesn't take many to make this decision for the sales lost to outweigh the savings gained on the shorter cable. In other words, the cost saving was a poor economic decision. A problem here is, charge point operators see the sales they make, not the sales they don't. What's needed is to include these impacts when performing economic modeling.
• Range estimate <> distance travelled. This isn't a problem of poor economic choices or being Fit-for-Purpose, but, one of physics and the problem of estimation. Range is impacted by all sorts of factors: some within the manufacturer's sphere and some out with. For example, manufactures have no control over how cold it's been, the driving pattern (rural vs. urban), are seat warmers on/off, is the aircon on/off, the average speed the car is driven... in fact, there are over 200 variables that influence battery behaviour. Importantly, most of these are also variables also influence how many miles/kilometres per litre it's possible to get from petrol / diesel. Very few are unique to EV.
• Battery degradation. As with ICE engine parts, this is a problem over time and tends to differ per manufacturer (and efficacy of battery management systems), but it is also a function of charging behaviour. Like phone batteries, EV batteries last longer if charged to 80%, not 100%. Of course, there are times it is necessary to charge to 100% (e.g. longer journey's), but some drivers don't observe this discipline and so their batteries don't last as long as they might like.

As mentioned above, the logic of fewer costs = increased profit is flawed from an economic perspective because it ignores customer needs, as many product recalls can attest.

Making cables shorter to save money (a front-loaded "one time" economic event in the lifecycle of the charger) causes a loss of money over its lifetime. This is a recurring, and, thus, more impactful economic event. A be better economic decision would be to buy longer cables that can reach all car models, thereby increasing the number of cars from which profit can be made over the charger's lifetime.

Utilising existing space without understanding the consequences, is another poor economic choice that drives people away from using a site and, thus, reduces profit potential. Time spent planning the site around customer needs would improve queueing etiquette, increase the customer experience, and drive up usage, thereby unlocking value and increasing operator profit.

In the above, we see a loss of customer-centricity – a core pillar in Adaptavis' Business Performance Management methods.

When customers deem a product or service not fit-for-purpose in their eyes, they will seek out alternatives. That's a real issue for the bottom line.

#economics #electricvehicles #transformationalleadership #strategy