The EV World Congress has kicked off today at the Leonardo Royal Hotel Tower Bridge, bringing together the best and brightest from the emobility sector for a series of panels and presentations.
Current± will be covering the biggest stories from the event over its two days, bringing you all the insight, news and views from the conference.
90% of cars sold in Norway electric
“90% of the cars sold in Norway have been electric vehicles,” said Sture Portvik, project leader electric mobility (EVs), Agency for Urban Environment at the City of Oslo.
This figure could foreshadow similar trends associated with the UK’s 2030 internal combustion engine (ICE) sale ban. Norway on the other hand has been ambitious and targeted a 2025 ICE ban.
The ban has spurred rapid adoption of EVs in the Nordic country and as a result, the UK could reach these levels by the end of the decade.
This coincides with an International Energy Agency (IEA) report that found EV sales doubled worldwide in 2021, with the organisation forecasting an increase in global renewable capacity of 8% in 2022.
Revealed in the first annual Breakthrough Agenda Report, the IEA found that across the globe, EV sales increased to a record of 6.6 million whilst forecasted global renewable energy capacity deployments in 2022 are set to push through the 300GW mark for the first time.
In the UK, the IEA figures back up recent EV trends in the transportation sector with EV sales in August having accounted for one in seven new cars registered, according to data from New Automotive.
Long way to go before V2G is deployed at scale
Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) is now a proven technology but there is still plenty of work left to do for it to scale, including increasing how much of the value is passed on to consumers.
“We’ve proven the technology works and it is now very easy to buy bidirectional chargers for your EV,” said Josey Wardle, innovation lead EV charging and V2G at Innovate UK.
Rob Mangan, senior policy advisor at BEIS agreed but said the price needed to come down further. John Murray, head of EVs for research firm Delta-EE, added that although the payback on the upfront capital cost was still very long, providing a back-of-the-envelope calculation of eight years.
A future where people buy EVs with the surrounding infrastructure needed for V2G, with financing as available as it is today for the car, would help solve this.
And even when it comes to smart charging, which could be seen as a precursor to V2G, only a small number of people do it, said William Goldsmith, head of grid and data services, Ev.Energy.
Thalia Skoufa, transport practice manager at the Energy Systems Catapult, said locations where fleet downtime is predictable (airports, fleet bases etc) held good potential for V2G, but it was hard to assess exactly how until the market was more developed.
Scaling-up on-street charging would have the greatest impact in achieving a just transition on UK roads
“Areas we can make the greatest impact is by providing people who do not have access to home charging, a place to charge their vehicles,” said Elizabeth Bohun, lead technologist EV integration at Oxfordshire County Council.
On-street charging has been thrown into the limelight in recent months given the rise in energy costs. People using home charger benefit from the Energy Price Guarantee providing households an energy price cap at 34p/kWh.
However public chargers do not benefit from such measures. This has created a loss of parity between home chargers and public charging. In fact, public charging costs increased by 42% from 18.75p/kWh in May to an average of 63.29p/kWh, according to the RAC.
The cost per mile for an average-sized EV driven reasonably efficiently is around 9p, making the cost to charge a car to 80% at home around £17.87.
In comparison, public charging will see the cost of an 80% charge set at £32.74, up from £26.10 in May, a 25% increase, and from £17.51 in September 2021, an 87% increase.
Providing on-street charging infrastructure could also ensure a just transition on the UK’s roads. “We must achieve a just network and make sure we hold people accountable to ensure they are creating a wider EV charging network for everyone,” said Neil Isaacson, CEO, Liberty Charge.
Supporting a just transition will form part of former energy minister Chris Skidmore MP’s rapid three-month review aiming to identify the best routes in achieving net zero and decarbonisation.
Harder now to make business case to developers for EV batteries at charging stations
The business case for developers to use battery energy storage systems (BESS) at EV charging stations instead of upgrading electricity networks is now harder after recent regulatory change.
“From next April, developers won’t be paying for those grid upgrades, it will be the DNOs so that price signal has disappeared. So right now, it’s hard to make a case for stationary batteries to reduce costs for the developers,” said Simon Gallagher, managing director of eSmart Networks.
Paul Jewell, system development manager, Western Power, agreed but said there were still some opportunities for BESS units. This could be for Western Power’s own process of upgrading its infrastructure to accommodate new EV charging capacity, or as a short-term solution for developers waiting for the infrastructure upgrade they need to be completed.
Grazia Todeschini, reader in engineering, Kings College London, pointed out that 22TWh of energy will be needed by 2050 needed to charge the anticipated number of EVs on the road.
Around 21% of UK energy will be required to cater for EVs
“Based on 2019 figures of 323TWh produced by the UK grid, around 20% or 21% will be required to support the anticipated number of EVs on the UK roads,” said Geoff Dawson, head of product and innovation at Drax.
Adoption of EVs continues to soar across the UK, and with these increasing figures, there is a need to scale energy generation in order for the UK grid to be able to cope.
The adoption of EVs has seen an increase over the course of 2022, with pure battery electric vehicle (BEV) figures having exceeded half a million to reach 519,266 at the end of June 2022, the RAC revealed.
This has also seen a rise in public EV chargers. Dawson expressed that public charger figures in 2019 sat at 330,000 however this will rise to around 2.3 million by 2030, highlighting the need to increase both charging infrastructure and the energy readily available to cater for the market.
To support this, flexibility could be vital. “There is a heavy emphasis on flexibility currently to cater for the heavy demand. This would allow them to dispatch the power needed to meet that demand,” Dawson said.
Available space and speed of connection the two major challenges for large-scale projects
“The main challenges associated with large scale EV charging projects are the speed of connection and the available space on site,” said Adam Woodley, founder and CEO of Sinewave, at the EV World Congress.
The need to develop large-scale charging projects is vital in scaling the amount of charging points available for EV drivers. However, despite the positives these can bring, there are challenges associated with the development of these projects.
With forecourts, hubs and mixed-use sites falling under this bracket, ensuring the process is as simple as possible is crucial in creating accessible charging infrastructure across the UK.
“Construction of the site can be the same nationally, the only variable factors being the Distribution Network operator (DNO), Rig Main Unit (RMU) and incoming cables,” Woodley said.
On top of this, substations over 1MVA with DNO’s require additional substation and more space requirements. This adds another level of complexity to the projects.
20% of public chargers across Europe are currently not working
“A study conducted by the University of Berlin found that 20% of public chargers across Europe are currently not working,” stated Cecilia Routledge, global director energy and facilities for CTEK, during the keynote panel at the EV World Congress in London.
Although the rollout of EV charging infrastructure continues to gain considerable pace, reliability issues have come to the forefront of this monumental movement.
As alluded to by Routledge, 20% of chargers not working in Europe ties into the wider customer experience debate currently plaguing the industry and preventing further adoption.
“We do not know the main reason for the chargepoints not working. It could be several issues including energy supply, 4G signal for people to access the charging app, among other things,” said Routledge.
“If you don’t have signal and the charger doesn’t work, what do you do?”
If all the partners developing the charging infrastructure banded together to have reliable and accessible EV chargers, it would have a large impact on the adoption of EVs and support its global rollout.
Reliability will be a crucial area to tackle as infrastructure works to expand fast enough to meet the growing demand from EV adopters. The UK gained 1,100 EV charging devices in September alone, according to Zap-Map.
According to statistics, there are now over 34,000 public charging devices in the UK, across nearly 21,000 charging locations. This represents a 35% increase in the total number of charging devices since September 2021.
Public charger disparity still a hurdle to fleet transition
Drivers want to adopt EVs but are simply not always equipped to do so, said Alexandre Page-Relo VP international technology GF at WEX within the opening presentation of the EV World Congress.
This can be where fleets come in, but there is still work to do to turn hurdles into opportunities.
One of the core challenges, Page-Relo highlighted, is the disparity around public chargers, in particular for fleet managers operating across multiple countries.
For example, the Netherlands has nearly 50 chargers per 100km. However, in other markets like Lithuania this drops as low as 0.2 chargers per 100km.
Undoubtedly, this is a concern for businesses looking to decarbonise their operations by transitioning their fleet to electric vehicles.
But it is important to also flag the array of benefits beyond carbon savings, for example, Page-Relo said that for the companies WEX works with, they’ve found that EV repairs are 50% cheaper than petrol vehicles.
