According to Pike Research, global sales of electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE) will follow a compound annual growth rate of 37 percent between 2012 and 2020. During that same time frame, global sales of plug-in vehicles will grow from fewer than 200,000 units sold in 2012 to 2.4 million units in 2020, says Pike.
Additionally, Pike believes the plug-in industry is quickly moving from government-funded to privately backed deployments of charging equipment. Pike's latest "Pulse" report focuses on 14 electric vehicle charging equipment manufacturers and how they rank based on several criteria.
At the top of Pike's list is ChargePoint (formerly Coulomb Technologies) and DBT. Pike says that both of these firms are "leaders" as a result of their extensive range of EVSE offerings, market share, geographic reach and future vision.
Most U.S. EV drivers are familiar with ChargePoint—but less so with DBT USA, the Chicago-based subsidiary of European EV charging infrastructure leader DBT. With more than 10,000 charging stations installed in 32 countries and three continents across the globe, DBT plans to make a major step in the North American EV charging station market in 2013. In fact, ChargePoint and DBT will use CES to showcase a "joint EV charging station innovation" during the 2013 International Consumer Electronics Show, taking place January 8-11.
Pike believes today's leaders, to maintain their position, will need to reduce costs; enhance charging equipment technology and features; and create a viable future business model that includes expansion into countries that don't currently have significant charging infrastructures.
Pike lists several criteria that must be met to be included in its ranking, most notably that EVSE suppliers must offer Level 2 charging equipment in at least two "Top 10" plug-in vehicles countries. These countries include Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, South Korea, United Kingdom, and the United States.
Additional criteria for ranking include:
- Strategy: vision, partners, production strategy, technical innovation, and geographic reach.
- Execution: sales, product performance and features, pricing, and staying power.
Better Place, the company that has received the most support from investors, is notably ranked lowest for both strategy and execution. Better Place, until recently, was focused on robotic EV battery-swapping, as an electric car refueling strategy. In 2012, after failing to expand its small swap networks beyond Israel and Denmark, Better Place is placing greater attention on EV charging, rather than battery swapping.
The price of EVSEs will fall rapidly over the next several years. At that point $200 will fetch you a serviceable L2 EVSE. Installation will be the big cost factor, especially if a long 240v circuit run needs to be pulled.
As for public charging, I think the model is broken. A large portion of the cost is transaction costs. If public EVSEs could accept coins and/or bills, the operator could save a lot on their transaction costs.