Do council EV infrastructure plans match this 7:1 ratio?

To effectively plan your charging infrastructure, you need to know how many electric vehicles (EV) will be on the road and reliant on public charging infrastructure. An EV adoption curve fulfils part of this task by helping you form a credible projection for the number of EVs in your area at any given time. The next stage is to understand how many of those vehicles will be using the public charging network and the frequency they’ll need to charge.

This mix really matters because it defines what sort of infrastructure a local authority would need to put in place. If you have lots of EV drivers who’ll frequently go to a shopping centre, then perhaps the best option is to put the chargers there. If you have EV drivers who really need chargers by their homes, perhaps for access reasons or frequency of charge, then on-street chargers make a lot more sense. Clearly, we’re talking about the needs of local residents here because visitors bring with them additional challenges.

So, what’s the view of the people closest to the residents? We’ve worked with 76 councils and asked them, given the data they have for their area and the socio-demographic profile of their residents, what mix of need did they expect?

Why 2030?

Most councils we work with are using a 2030 timeline.  This is close enough to be relevant to today’s decisions, but far enough away to help shape a strategic view.  The National Grid Future Energy Scenarios – Consumer Transformation Curve, the most commonly used EV adoption curve by local authorities in our experience, suggests that 36-38% of the total car and van fleet will have gone electric by 2030.

Who will be dependent on the public charging network?

Given this prediction, how many of these EVs will be reliant on the public charging network? There are two main factors that determine this reliance for local residents – the number of miles they drive and whether they need to park on or off-street.

These factors, on and off-street, high and low mileage, creates four groups of EV owners:

High Milers (18,000 miles per year) Low milers (5,200 miles per year)
Must Park on-street Frequent Chargers

Reliant on a full battery, will need to use the public EV charging network multiple times a week

 Occasional Chargers

Will need to use the public EV charger network but only once a week or fortnight.
Can Park off-street Home heavy chargers

Will most likely connect every night when they park at home, may use chargers elsewhere

 Home light chargers

Will connect at home occasionally for an overnight charge

Our council customers then assigned predicted percentages to these groups based on:

  • Local knowledge and understanding of their residents’ behaviours.
  • The detailed, per household On/Off-Street data provided by our EV Map.
  • The historic mileage predictions provided by the National Travel Survey.
  • The adoption expectation as provided by the National Grid Future Energy Scenarios.

What are the charging demands of the EV groups?

Taking these factors into consideration, here are the trends we’ve seen across 76 councils.

Off Street – Home Heavy and Light Chargers

This group accounts for 65% of EVs on average.  If an EV driver can park off street, they will most likely install their own home charger and be very unlikely to use the local charging network.  The local authorities we have worked with are not looking to assign chargers to support these EVs.

On-Street EVs

These accounts for 25% of the EVs and are made up of those who do not have the space to park and charge off-street.  The group is then split further into the low mileage Occasional Chargers and the high mileage Frequent Chargers.  On average 76 councils predicted an average EV adoption by 2030 of:

Occasional Chargers – 22% – Will need to use the public EV charger network but only once a week or fortnight.

Frequent Chargers – 3% – Reliant on a full battery, will need to use the public EV charging network multiple times a week.

The Frequent Charger EV prediction has been consistently very low across all our engagements, with an average of 3% and a range from 1% to 11% (see graph).

Conclusion

In 2030, when we look at who will be dependent on the public charging network, there will be 7x more low mileage EV drivers compared with high milers.

So, the question we need to ask ourselves today is whether the infrastructure that is being planned now reflects this heavily biased ratio?

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