The Big Question: Πόσους φορτιστές ηλεκτρικών οχημάτων χρειάζεται η Ευρώπη;
«Αν οι υποδομές φόρτισης δεν συμβαδίσουν, θα είναι δύσκολο για τη βιομηχανία ηλεκτρικών οχημάτων να διατηρήσει την ανάπτυξη», δήλωσε ο Manoj Raghavan, διευθύνων σύμβουλος της Tata Elxsi.
00:46Κατή ετύχησης, μιας κέντριας, φυσάχης, κερδίτησης και φυσήνες, βαλιοίδα και σομού.
00:53Παρτοί που δημιουργείται, ότι δημιουργείται για τα ειδάχη.
00:55Ως είστε, Τατσα Αξίμφεζότας και δημιουργείται μεταξαρή μου συνεργάσεις και την ασφαρή μου.
01:00Ρτάχης, δημιουργείται για τα σύνορα ευρώπους.
01:02But in your opinion, what are the key barriers to increased adoption here in Europe?
01:32The challenge is not just about the number of public charging infrastructure, the challenge is also about the number of fast chargers that are available.
02:00Because people would not like to spend more than 10 minutes or 15 minutes charging their cars.
02:06And so unless you have the fast chargers that are available, the experience for the driver and the passengers is not going to be great.
02:13So I think today about 13.5% of these chargers are fast chargers.
02:18However, to reach the goals of 2030, maybe at least 60-70% of these chargers have to be fast chargers.
02:25Most of these public chargers are concentrated in three major countries, Netherlands, Germany and France.
02:31However, for EV uptake to go up significantly, there has to be an equitable distribution of these public chargers in other countries as well.
02:40Especially where people need to use it, along the highways, in rural areas.
02:44See, a lot of the infrastructure is built in the cities and so on.
02:48But looking at, you know, people driving long distances and so on, availability of these chargers on the highways and in rural areas are also going to be important.
02:56The electricity grid itself, right, you know, by 2030, when you have a lot more EV cars on the road and all of them charging into the network, the EV grid has to be updated.
03:06These are some of the issues that Europe has to address, you know, before, you know, EV can meaningfully pick up speed.
03:12So in 2024, according to the International Energy Agency, their data said that across the EU, on average, there was around one charger for every 13 EVs.
03:29But that was a decrease of about 10% on 2023 ratios, which means that EV ownership is growing, but we're not matching that with infrastructure growth, right?
03:39So what ratio should we be looking for and what would be the consequence if we don't keep up with that charging infrastructure growth?
03:46Charging infrastructure has to ramp up pretty rapidly, right?
03:49So we are looking at between 1 to 2 or 1 to 3 sort of ratios, right?
03:55So it's a, you know, far higher ratio as compared to 1 to 12 or 1 to 13 today that you have.
04:00That is definitely going to be critical because as you have more EVs on the road and especially during either peak hours or during holiday season when everybody is on the road and the chargers are clogged, that doesn't give a good user experience.
04:16People will soon start missing their ICE engine.
04:18So I think unless the charging infrastructure, you know, keeps up, it'll be difficult for the EV industry to sustain, you know, the growth.
04:26So it's very, very critical at this point.
04:29Thinking about what you do at Tetra Elksey, you know, what innovations here can help with this issue, whether that is with chargers or with batteries?
04:37In five years or in 10 years, we'll have a lot more new materials that come out that, you know, you can charge maybe in five minutes.
04:43It gives a thousand kilometer range and so on.
04:46So I think the industry demands, you know, range, industry demands fast charging.
04:52And I'm sure that, you know, all of that will come out in no time.
04:55And the range anxiety, I would say, would be a thing of the past, right?
04:59I mean, today, if you see some of the technologies that are there in China and so on, there are some OEMs that are talking of, you know, battery swapping.
05:07You don't need to wait for you to charge 15 minutes or half an hour and so on.
05:10You drive in to a battery swapping center.
05:12They remove the battery and give you a fresh, fully charged battery all in under five minutes.
05:18Of course, when you talk of battery, it is, you know, lithium and NMC.
05:22And, you know, all of these are either bare earth and the supply is available only in certain parts of the world.
05:28And today, if you look at it, only a few countries have monopolized the entire lithium and lithium ore and so on, right?
05:35Including manufacturing of all these batteries are also limited to a few countries in the world.
05:41So that puts a lot of, you know, supply chain risks as well.
05:44I think the best case situation for Mother Earth is that we have some alternate material that is available in abundance, right?
05:52Maybe silica, maybe sand, maybe sodium and so on.
05:55A lot of research that is happening.
05:57In which case, then, we really don't need to do all this mining for lithium and, you know, the other rare earth heavy metals and so on.
06:04So actually, all of these design innovations that we've discussed could all be massive game changers in the evolution of EV adoption.
06:11But what will all of these things do to the price?
06:14Yeah. EVs are definitely not cheap.
06:17I think the major component of, you know, if you look at an EV from a price perspective is the batteries.
06:23So a lot of focus has been on the industry to bring down the price of the batteries.
06:27I think the industry, I think they've succeeded in really bringing down the price of the batteries over the last five years or last 10 years.
06:33has been significant, I mean, by a factor of two or three, the price has come down, right?
06:37And I'm sure moving forward in the next five years and so on, the prices would still keep coming down.
06:44And the focus is to see how we can use commonly available material, right?
06:48So definitely the hope is that it won't involve expensive processing and so on.
06:53And we will be able to bring down prices even for the alternate technologies that we're looking at.
06:59So from a technology perspective, from a design thinking perspective, with tools like AI and what it does is it helps companies get it right first.
07:07You simulate, you do everything on a virtual platform, you design digitally, you sort out all the issues ahead of time, and then you put it into the car and so on, right?
07:16Of course, you still need to manufacture a few prototypes, but earlier, before you launch a car, you manufacture, you know, 200, 300 units, and each of these units are very expensive, and so on, and do a full driving and end-to-end testing using those prototypes.
07:30Today, a lot of that can be done virtually using simulation platforms.
07:34So, yes, I think technology that is available, you know, moving forward will really help, I would say, bring down the price even further.
07:42So I think that is hope.
07:43Okay, brilliant. And on that note, that's all we have time for, but thank you so much for joining me today on The Big Question.
Be the first to comment