Building the Charging Infrastructure for
Electric Vehicles
By Robert Huntley for Mouser Electronics
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Articles about electric vehicles (EVs) usually start with impressive statistics about
growth rates, and it's tempting to talk about projected EV sales; a figure from the
organization Energy Innovation is an example, predicting that 65 to 75% of new
light vehicles sales will be EVs by 2050, with a 32% annual growth rate from 2012
to 2016 and a rate of 45% just in the year ending June 2017 (Figure 1). Drill deeper
and some of the data on growth from different sources shows big variances.
The sales figure quoted of 70% (+/-5%) in the next 30 years has embedded
assumptions; about changes in EV affordability, future technology improvements,
oil prices, regulatory incentives, and "dozens" more. Another figure that Energy
Innovation shows is from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) Annual Energy
Outlook 2107 "No Clean Power" side case, which shows virtually no growth after
about 5% market penetration in 2025. So, take your pick.
"Adoption of electric
vehicles is set to
dramatically increase.
Charging infrastructure
must be able to keep up
with this increase."
Figure 1: Three projections of US market share of EVs: the Energy Innovation Energy
Policy Simulator (EPS) 1.3.1 business as usual (BAU) case, the EIA Annual Energy
Outlook 2017 "No Clean Power" side case, and the Bloomberg New Energy Finance
(BNEF) Electric Vehicle Outlook 2017. (Source: Energy Innovation)
