Electric vehicle charging station market in the US to exceed $4B by 2016

Some interesting numbers in this study: Zpryme predicts the number of EV/PHEVs sold in 2016 will reach 203,200, and that the charging infrastructure and charging services market is will grow from $776.8 million in 2011 to $4.45 billion in 2016 (CAGR of 41.6%).

The projections in the electric vehicle study by Zpryme's EV Insights Practice and sponsored by Airbiquity (download ‘The Electric Vehicle Study’ for free www.zpryme.com) show that the charging service market value is expected to grow at faster rate than the charging station market value, but the charging station market is expected to be almost eight times larger than the service industry by 2016.

With such high anticipation for the growing U.S. EV market, developing and deploying charging stations has quickly become an extremely competitive race. Both large companies and start-ups are vying for market share, including Coulomb Technologies, ClipperCreek, ECOtality, ABB, GE, Siemens, Leviton, AeroVironment and Pep Stations.


Some key market value projections (2011 - 2016):


Electric vehicle sales:

Annual EV/PHEV unit sales are projected grow by 36.2% annually from 2011 to 2016, from 43,400 to 203,200.

The total EV/PHEV stock are projected to grow from 104,200 in 2011 to 730,700 in 2016.

Charging Stations:

Home (level II) charging station unit sales are projected to grow by 37.7% annually from 2011 to 2016, from 25,400 to 125,900.

Home (level II) charging station sales will grow from $239.6 million to $1.07 billion during this time period. Home charging stations are projected to account for 32.1% of the market value in 2011 and 27.0% in 2016.

Public (level II) charging station unit sales are projected to grow by 43.1% annually from 2011 to 2016, from 13,600 to 81,300.

Public (level II) charging station sales will grow from $282.0 million to $1.60 billion during this time period. Level II charging stations are projected to account for 37.8% of the market value in 2011 and 40.7% in 2016.

Fast (level III) charging station sales will grow from $193.4 million to $1.15 billion during this time period. Level III charging stations are projected to account for 25.9% of the market in 2011 and 29.1% 2016. (see table 1 above)

Fast (level III) charging station unit sales are projected to grow by 44.2% annually from 2011 to 2016, from 2,200 to 13,500.

EV Charging Service Users:

Annual new charging service users are projected to grow by 40.4% annually from 2011 to 2016, from 27,600 to 150,400.

The cumulative total number of charging service users is projected to grow from 39,800 in 2011 to 574,900 million in 2016.

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VIDEO: How to charge your electric vehicle with home solar panels

Via EVPerspective / Los Angeles Times: Here's a video by LA Time's reporter Susan Carpenter on the equipment and costs involved with charging your electric car at home, using solar panels:

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Who will struggle the most in 2011? Non-EV American drivers

A U.S.News & World Report article featured on Yahoo! Finance lists who will struggle the most in the aftermath of the recession in the US. Among the 15 million unemployed Americans, Government employees and homeowners, American gas guzzling car drivers are listed as one of the groups that will suffer the most in the following 12 months. Here’s why:

Gas prices have been drifting upward to nearly $3 per gallon, from about $2.62 a year ago. And energy analysts expect them to stay there or go higher in 2011, thanks to oil prices that are approaching $100 per barrel. And that's happening in a fairly soft global economy that has curtailed demand for oil in many countries, which means there could be a price spike if growth turns out to be stronger than expected.

Back in 2008, when pump prices topped $4 per gallon, drivers reacted by driving less and downsizing their wheels. But for many, the lesson was short-lived: Lower-mileage trucks and SUVs have been making a comeback, thanks partly to discounts designed to move slow-selling merchandise. That could make buyer's remorse a surprise theme of 2011.

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Azores Islands, Portugal, test electric buses

The regional government of the Azores Islands, Portugal, has announced it has bought two electric buses for 700,000 euros. The two buses will be used to test the potential of electric powered public transportation vehicles in the green volcanic archipelago, which consumed electricity is partly produced by geothermal energy.

According to the Açoriano Oriental newspaper, quoted by Mobi.e, the regional government bought a 30 to 36 seats bus with an estimated autonomy of 120 kms, and another 18 to 22 seats vehicle with an estimated autonomy of 100 kms.

Related: South Korea starts commercial operation of electric battery buses in Seoul

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Nissan Leaf drivers to be ranked for efficient driving via telematics system. Yes, like a video-game

Driving or video-gaming? Both. From Edmunds Inside Line: The 2011 Nissan Leaf is already a techno-geek's dream, but the new electric car's telematics system offers something most probably didn't expect: competitive rankings for energy use.

Nissan's Carwings system records and displays daily, monthly and annual data for distance traveled, electricity consumption and average miles per kilowatt-hour (kWh), among other figures. Best of all, it shows drivers how they stack up against other Leaf owners — and awards a virtual trophy to the top scorer. Check this image below originaly posted on MyNissanLeaf:

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READ MORE - Nissan Leaf drivers to be ranked for efficient driving via telematics system. Yes, like a video-game

5 electric vehicle predictions for 2011 by PluginCars.com

PluginCars.com's John Gartner is not alone when he says that 2011 will be the year of the revenge of the electric car, but he reveals some interesting key trends identified by Pike Research in this white paper. Some can be summarized in these 5 electric vehicle predictions for 2011. Having worked in the media industry, I cannot help myself but laugh at #5. So true.

1 - The majority of people who drive a plug-in vehicle won't own it. Thanks to car rental fleets, taxis, and car share programs, getting people into plug-in vehicles will be more influential in the long run than getting them to sign on the dotted line.


2 - Automakers will get push back from EV owners about how long it takes vehicles to fully charge. Most vehicle charging will be done overnight, enabling owners to wake up to a fully charged battery without concern for the rate at which it was charged. But because automakers decided to take the cautious (and less expensive) approach of installing onboard charging equipment that provides a maximum of 3.3 kW to the batteries, a full charge will take longer than necessary leaving some consumers feeling like they overpaid for charging equipment.


3 - The most popular selling EVs won't have four wheels. Electric two-wheeled vehicles, including bicycles, scooters and motorcycles are a huge global market that will continue to overshadow electric passenger vehicles for the foreseeable future. China is by far the largest market, with more than 48 million sales projected. In North America, the sale of two-wheeled EVs will outnumber passenger PEVs by approximately 8:1 in 2011, but the gap will be narrowed to close to 2 to 1 by 2015 as passenger vehicles sales will grow much more quickly.


4 - Many EV charging stations will spend the majority of their time idle. The strategy of installing a network of charging equipment may be good psychologically for EV owners and the automakers, but the business benefit for the owners of charging equipment will be lacking during the early days of EV sales. During 2011 and 2012 there will not be sufficient penetration of EVs for charging spots to see many visits–if any—per day.


5 - Somebody somewhere will have a bad EV experience and the media will overreact. The first time a driver is left "stranded" by running out of charge will be cause célèbre for the doubters to highlight the superiority of gas cars. The potential also exists for EV owner frustration if the promised all-electric driving range advertised is not realized. Heavy-footed drivers and trips taken in extreme weather will substantially cut into driving efficiency, but that should not be a surprise or especially noteworthy.

Read more of it and get the white paper at PluginCars.com

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VIDEO: Deepwater Horizon's Final Hours, by the NYT

Tweet this post From the New York Times: The worst of the explosions gutted the Deepwater Horizon stem to stern. Crew members were cut down by shrapnel, hurled across rooms and buried under smoking wreckage. Some were swallowed by fireballs that raced through the oil rig’s shattered interior. Dazed and battered survivors, half-naked and dripping in highly combustible gas, crawled inch by inch in pitch darkness, willing themselves to the lifeboat deck.

It was no better there.

That same explosion had ignited a firestorm that enveloped the rig’s derrick. Searing heat baked the lifeboat deck. Crew members, certain they were about to be cooked alive, scrambled into enclosed lifeboats for shelter, only to find them like smoke-filled ovens.

Men admired for their toughness wept. Several said their prayers and jumped into the oily seas 60 feet below. An overwhelmed young crew member, Andrea Fleytas, finally screamed what so many were thinking:

“We’re going to die!”

It has been eight months since the Macondo well erupted below the Deepwater Horizon, creating one of the worst environmental catastrophes in United States history. With government inquiries under way and billions of dollars in environmental fines at stake, most of the attention has focused on what caused the blowout. Investigators have dissected BP’s well design and Halliburton’s cementing work, uncovering problem after problem.

But this was a disaster with two distinct parts — first a blowout, then the destruction of the Horizon. The second part, which killed 11 people and injured dozens, has escaped intense scrutiny, as if it were an inevitable casualty of the blowout.

It was not.

Read more of this extensive piece by the New York Times, or watch the video below:

READ MORE - VIDEO: Deepwater Horizon's Final Hours, by the NYT

Keys to tomorrow's roads may be in lithium

Tweet this post From the Washington Post / St. Paul Pioneer Press: It's the lightest of all metals, skitters wildly on water and can unexpectedly explode. To mine it commercially requires an elaborate process involving drilling, evaporation tanks and chemical processing.

But if President Barack Obama is to fulfill his goal of putting 1 million electric cars on the road by 2015, a once-obscure metal crucial for the batteries in those cars, lithium, will probably be mined by the tens of thousands of tons here in the high Andes. Its boosters say lithium will one day rival petroleum in value, and that has prompted a race to secure mining rights across this craggy, bone-dry mountain range where vast salt flats contain some of the world's largest deposits.

"These are the most notable reserves at the moment," said Horacio Dias, a geologist who manages operations here for Exar, an Argentine affiliate of Canada's Lithium Americas Corp. "We think there is enough here to last many years." Mining executives are banking that lithium-ion batteries, which carry a longer-lasting charge than the lead acid variety long used in vehicles, will become cheap enough to help spur a mass market for electric cars or gas-electric vehicles. The Obama administration, trying to reduce America's reliance on foreign oil, has provided $2.4 billion in grants to car companies, battery makers and suppliers.

Whether the salt beds here in the heart of South America become a lithium mecca, as mining companies predict, depends as much as anything on American scientists as far away as Watertown, Mass.
There, A123 Systems, a battery technology company with roots at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology, is working to create lithium-ion batteries that would give electric cars a greater range — say, 200 to 300 miles — between recharging. A typical battery uses only a few pounds of lithium, but other components make such batteries expensive — by some estimates, well over $10,000 each — and bulky.

Failure could mean that cars such as General Motors' new Volt, a gas-electric hybrid that costs $41,000 before a $7,500 federal tax rebate to buyers, will remain too pricey for all but a small number of American car buyers. The Volt can go about 40 miles on an electric charge before the driver must switch to the car's internal-combustion engine. Fully electric cars can go 100 or more miles between recharges.

"We need to demonstrate that we can reduce the cost of this over the next four or five years to make the sale of these things take off without government stimulus," said David Vieau, chief executive of A123, which received a $249 million federal grant to build factories in Michigan. "It is a critical component for getting the volume up and helping drive the cost out while we make these batteries more efficient." Some of the projections on the future of electric cars — and lithium use in cars — are promising.

Nissan has said that by 2020, one in 10 cars worldwide may use lithium batteries. And Pike Research, a consulting firm in Boulder, Colo., said the market for lithium-ion batteries could expand to $8 billion in five years, from less than $900 million this year.

"Virtually every major car company around the globe has some sort of a hybrid electric vehicle program going," Vieau said.

Electric cars and their gas-electric cousins are not new. Ferdinand Porsche's hybrid was presented at a Paris exhibition in 1900. In the United States, there were 50,000 electric cars plying the roads in 1918. But big oil discoveries and Henry Ford's introduction of the Model T quickly established the dominance of the internal-combustion engine.

It is only now, with the United States consuming more than twice as much oil as it produces, that policymakers are considering a shift that would place less emphasis on gasoline-powered vehicles.

If that happens, the role of lithium will expand dramatically, with mining companies scrambling to secure the metal, said Ann Marie Sastry, chief executive of Sakti3, an Ann Arbor, Mich., company that is working to develop batteries with more juice. Lithium is now used in ceramics, to power cell phones and laptops, and even as a component in drugs to treat manic depression.

Much of the world has had its eyes on Bolivia, which President Evo Morales claims has infinitely more of the metal than all other lithium-producing countries combined. His socialist government is trying to lure mining companies, but Bolivia's terms call for those investors to also fund a Bolivian-based lithium-ion battery industry.

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READ MORE - Keys to tomorrow's roads may be in lithium

Off-topic: Nigeria drops bribery charges against Cheney after $35 million dollar settlement

Tweet this post From the New York Times: The Nigerian authorities have dropped criminal bribery charges against Halliburton and Dick Cheney, the former vice president following the oil services giant’s agreement to a $35 million settlement, the company said in statement this week. Nigerian officials said last week that the settlement would amount to $250 million.

The Nigerian charges, filed in early December, were just the latest fallout from a $180 million bribery scheme that Kellogg Brown & Root, a former Halliburton subsidiary, has admitted carrying out with three other companies in a joint venture to develop a liquid natural gas facility in the Niger Delta.

In 2009, Kellogg Brown & Root, a former Halliburton subsidiary, pleaded guilty in federal court in the United States to paying the bribes. Halliburton and KBR paid a record $579 million fine to settle the federal charges, and this April, a top KBR executive was sentenced to seven years in prison for his role.

As a result of this week’s $35 million settlement, “all lawsuits and charges” against KBR and Halliburton have been withdrawn by Nigeria, and government officials have pledged not to bring further criminal charges or civil claims against the company related to the bribery offenses, Halliburton said in its statement.

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VIDEO: Honda debuts solar powered plug-in charging station

Tweet this post Honda has announced it is conducting real life tests on its network of solar powered plug-in charging stations in Japan's Saitama Prefecture.

The company is also developing smaller sized solar hydrogen stations for individual costumers that could fit in a garage.

Watch the video after the jump, from NTDTV:

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Electric vehicles are here, charging stations are not

From the New York Times: The Chevrolet Volt and Nissan Leaf were delivered to their first customers last week, and a small fleet of Think City electric vehicles were handed over to the State of Indiana for use in state parks. The plug-in E.V. has arrived, and it begs the question: will a public charging network be available to support the cars?

Led by Coulomb Technologies and Ecotality, the first home chargers are being installed. A robust and targeted public network is coming, but it is still very much a work in progress.

Read more at NYT...

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MSNBC's piece on new car charging installation projects

MSNBC Environmental Entrepreneurs' piece on electrical mobility and plug-in charging systems in the United States:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Hat tip to Cars21's Arnaud de Coninck

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Better Place's answer to range anxiety? 60 seconds battery swaps

It's the biggest fear for any EV driver. Where and when are you going to find a plug-in charging station? Whereas in countries like Portugal mobility networks are moving fast towards ubiquity with projects like Mobi.e, most nations are still far from it, with just a handful of charging stations in a few cities, with the most unusual service schedules (take San Francisco, for instance).

More than an electric vehicle's relatively high price, it's the lack of a comprehensive charging infrastructure, especially when gas stations are everywhere, that keeps many consumers from buying a Nissan Leaf or a Chevrolet Volt right now. It shouldn't be a problem if you have your own charging device at home. But it is. Today's electric vehicles get between 30 to 150 kms with a full battery. When it runs out, it can take up to four hours to fully recharge it. That means that going away for the weekend with your EV is still out of question, unless you don't mind stopping every other town for several hours.

This is why Better Place presents quite an interesting solution. Instead of plug-in stations, the California based company offers a network of battery switch stations that use a robotic system to switch depleted batteries for fully-charged ones, and charge the depleted batteries in inventory, so that there's a fully-charged battery ready to be installed, in a matter of seconds (60 second switches have been accomplished in tests) each time the vehicle arrives at a station. Kinda like changing your son's toy's AA battery, instead of recharging it every time it runs out.

The concept is already in practice in Israel, Denmark and Australia, though on a limited test basis. The US, Japan and China are the next targets for Better Place's internationalization strategy.

Sure, there are doubts about the practicability of this idea in the long run. Will everyone abdicate of being the owner of their own car's battery? What are the legal implications of that when, say, someone crashes their car and loses a battery? Will Better Place's closed model of business keep companies from developing better batteries with longer lives? And if and when they do develop them, what's the point of such a battery swap system? The German reflection group on mobility has said no to battery swaps, just as Volkswagen did. What does that mean for Better Place? Anyway, it is a brilliant idea, at least on paper, and it could well be a practical solution in these first years of the EV revolution.

READ MORE - Better Place's answer to range anxiety? 60 seconds battery swaps

Malta adopts Portugal's Mobi.e mobility solution

The governments of Portugal and Malta have signed an agreement this Wednesday for the implementation of the Mobi.e mobility network solution in the Mediterranean archipelago. Lisbon will provide Malta with technical solutions as well as legislative and fiscal advisory based on the Portuguese experience with Mobi.e.

Portugal is the first country in the world to implement a nationwide EV charging network. There are currently over one hundred plug-in stations across the territory, and the number will increase to 1.300 until June 2011. Mobi.e's network is the world's only user-focused, inter-operable smart grid to date open to every manufacturer, utility company and private operator, the project website states.

Malta will be the first European Union state to import the Portuguese mobility solution.

READ MORE - Malta adopts Portugal's Mobi.e mobility solution

Swedish region becomes independent from oil for heating

Green heating? It is possible, tell the swedes and the New York Times: Over the course of the last decade, Kristianstad’s government has orchestrated a conversion from mostly oil heating to various “green” fuels like biomass, food processing waste and wood pellets.

It’s quite interesting because it is so easy to think, “Impossible!” when some environmental policy experts suggest that countries should cut emissions by, say, 20 or 30 percent by 2020. As many of the articles in our “Beyond Fossil Fuels” series point out, some methods for drastically reducing emissions exist. But they come with economic costs (at least in the short term) and require a political commitment.

Having cut out fossil fuel for heating, Kristianstad’s per-capita carbon dioxide emissions are now only about 4.1 tons per person. Compare that to 19.18 in the United States and 4.91 in China, a far less developed country than Sweden.

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READ MORE - Swedish region becomes independent from oil for heating

Germany calls for global EV and mobility standards

The standard use of AC charging plug standard IEC 62196-2 Type 2 vehicle inlet, priority for wired charging over inductive charging and battery swapping and the standardisation of batteries at cellular level are some of the proposals made by the German National Platform for Electromobility in an interim report revealed by Cars21.

The working group led by Audi and RWE utility company also calls for increased cooperation with China, for a German-Chinese led standardisation process. The uniformisation of charging interfaces, charging stations and battery safety rules is identified by the group as the most important requirement for a successful market introduction of electric vehicles.

Read more at Cars21 and download the interim report (in German)

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US still lack charging infrastructures

From NPR: The electric car is no longer just a project for smarty-pants MIT students. Here in the U.S., plug-in electric cars are now in showrooms and on the highways. What's missing, though, is a convenient way to refuel those cars with electricity.

That's what Russell Rankin has discovered. Rankin is an enthusiastic entrepreneur who has 13 electric vehicles charging up at the back of the Loews Hotel in Annapolis, Md. They're not quite cars, but they're more than golf carts — three rows of two seats, open on the sides, about 12 feet long. "Everybody kind of calls it a golf cart on steroids," says Rankin. "Or maybe something you'd see at Disney or something like that. It has a big bubble roof on it — it's very futuristic looking."

The vehicles are made by Global Electric Motorcars, owned by Chrysler. Rankin's company, eCruisers, uses them to squire people around the city for free. Advertising on the cars pays the freight.

After about 30 miles, the cars come back to recharge. "Our vehicles just run off a regular household outlet," Rankin says. "We have a regular three-pronged plug that you'd have on any household appliance." So that part is easy. The hard part is keeping cars charged when they're needed.

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Cars21: Germany's electricity grid ready for millions of EVs

From Cars21: An interim report of the National Electromobility Platform concludes that Germany’s grid is ready for electric vehicles. Only upgrades in some regions are needed to handle far more than the 1 million EVs on the street forecasted for 2020.

As part of the National Electromobility Platform (NEP), the working group "Charging Infrastructure and Network Integration" is chaired by experts from energy service provider E.ON AG and Siemens and submitted their key findings to the German federal government recently. The report points out that the German government’s smart grid plans, including the integration of up to 1 million electric cars by 2020, will generally not pose a problem for the power grid. Only in cases of a locally high density of electric cars could isolated segments of the grid be overloaded and require upgrading.

Read more (includes download links for the reports in German)...

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NPR: The new gold rush? Lithium

Listen to this NPR story online: The Obama administration wants to see 1 million plug-in hybrid electric cars on the roads by 2015. That's going to require the production of a lightweight metal now used for everything from cell phone batteries to the treatment of mood disorders. It's lithium, and to get it requires going far from American shores. That has mining companies scrambling to secure mining rights in the far reaches of the world.

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Related post: Bolivia could be the single biggest winner from the EV revolution

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Electric cars and coal: a reasonable doubt?

Yes, but not enough to make EVs a dirty choice, says CNN Money:

Ever since electric cars began commanding headlines a few years back, some have questioned whether the vehicles are really better for the environment. Typical arguments look more or less like this one posted by a Facebook user in response to a CNNMoney.com story: "What is the point of the plug-in when electricity has a carbon footprint since it's generated mostly by coal?"

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READ MORE - Electric cars and coal: a reasonable doubt?