The Big Question: di quante unità di ricarica per veicoli elettrici ha bisogno l'Europa?
"Se le infrastrutture di ricarica non riusciranno a tenere il passo, sarà difficile per il settore dei veicoli elettrici sostenere la crescita", ha dichiarato Manoj Raghavan, Ceo di Tata Elxsi
ALTRE INFORMAZIONI : http://it.euronews.com/2025/11/03/the-big-question-di-quante-unita-di-ricarica-per-veicoli-elettrici-ha-bisogno-leuropa
00:00That doesn't give a good user experience, charging infrastructure has to ramp up pretty rapidly.
00:05I think that is hope.
00:11Welcome to The Big Question, the series from Euronews where we address some of the most important issues on the business agenda.
00:18I'm Hannah Brown and today I'm joined by CEO and Managing Director of Tata Elksi, Manoj Rokhavan.
00:23So thank you very much for joining me, Manoj.
00:25Thank you.
00:26First of all, for those in our audience who might not know precisely what Tata Elksi do, can you just explain please?
00:32Tata Elksi is focused on product design and engineering space.
00:36We focus on three verticals. Automotive is the largest vertical for us.
00:40We also do work in the media and telecom as well as the healthcare and life sciences space.
00:44So a lot of the work that we do are cutting edge, next generation product development and maintaining the existing products and value add and so on.
00:53So that's the business that we do.
00:54So as you said there, Tata Elksi does a lot of design and technology innovation within the automotive industry.
01:00Right now there's a big push towards EVs in Europe.
01:03But in your opinion, what are the key barriers to increased adoption here in Europe?
01:07One is the cost.
01:08Most EVs today retail at about, you know, 40,000 to 50,000 euros.
01:12For mass adoption of EVs, the price comes down to around 25,000 euros.
01:16I think you will see a lot more adoption, right?
01:18Number two is the availability of charging infrastructure.
01:22Of course, you know, charging at the home infrastructure is already available.
01:26But what is more important is the public charging infrastructure.
01:29Today in Europe, maybe more than a million public charging facilities are available.
01:34And to meet Europe's goal of the Fit for 55 and, you know, reducing the carbon emission by 55 person in 2030,
01:42Europe needs minimum 3.5 million public charging, you know, infrastructure to be available.
01:48All the way to maybe some reports talk about 8 million public charging infrastructure that is needed.
01:53However, the challenge is not just about the number of public charging infrastructure.
01:57The 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, you know, to go up significantly,
02:36there 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.
02:44So 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,
02:52availability of these chargers on the highways and in rural areas are also going to be important.
02:57The electricity grid itself, right, you know, by 2030 when you have a lot more EV cars on the road
03:02and 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.
03:18So in 2024, according to the International Energy Agency, their data said that across the EU, on average,
03:26there 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,
03:36but 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
04:08or during holiday season when everybody's on the road and the chargers are clogged,
04:14that 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,
04:22it'll be difficult for the EV industry to sustain, you know, the growth.
04:27So it's very, very critical at this point.
04:29Thinking about what you do at Tetra Elksy, you know, what innovations here can help with this issue,
04:34whether 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,
04:42you can charge maybe in five minutes that 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,
05:04there 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.
05:19Of 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?
05:34Including manufacturing of all these batteries are also limited to a few countries in the world.
05:40So 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.
06:15EVs 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.
06:22So a lot of focus has been on the industry to bring down the price of the batteries.
06:27I think the industry, I think we've succeeded in really bringing down the price of the batteries over the last five years, over the last 10 years.
06:33It has been significant.
06:34I 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.
06:54And 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.
07:44Okay, brilliant.
07:44And on that note, that's all we have time for.
07:47But thank you so much for joining me today on The Big Question.
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