What Does EV Ownership Mean for the Owner?

Aug 6

The Market State Today

The US has around 150,000 gas stations (Source 1), most (~85%) of which have small convenience stores attached, the remainder being standalone, part of a grocery store, or a marina. The biggest appeal of this model is convenience: the customer spends a short amount of time filling a tank, and then can travel a reasonably long distance before needing to refuel. There is no option for a typical person to have a gas station at their home, so gas stations are equal-access in that respect, but less so when looking at distance between a person’s home and the nearest gas station.

The number of US EV Charging stations is a bit harder to pin down, because this includes Type 3 fast-charging commercial stations at around 5,000, Type 2 (“medium-speed”) chargers at around 40-50,000, or slow chargers that could simply plug in people’s homes that are car-compatible (approaching 100,000). (Sources 2, 3) Of these, approximately a third are in California (Source 3), which leads the US market in both number of sales and percentage of sales (8% of vehicles sold in 2020) (Source 4). An estimated 80% of EV owners charge at home (Source 5). However, the model for charging an EV looks very different from gasoline because charging usually takes more time, and electricity rates can be place- and time-dependent (e.g. in California, residential rates are lower than commercial, and “peak hours” from 4pm – 9pm can cost twice as much as from midnight to 6am).

While the average age of cars on the road is around 12 years old and has been steadily increasing (Source 6), the average age of an EV is only about 4 years (Source 7). This means—as would be expected due to the relative new-ness of the technology—that the “typical” buyer of an EV today is higher-income and likely a homeowner, given they are able to charge their car at home. Given the difference in both accessibility and availability, as EVs become more common—and this is certain to happen, as so far 14 countries (Source 8) and 15 US states (Source 9) have set mandates on EV-only sales for the future—charging will become a more contentious issue and apply to many more car-owners.

EV chargers fall under three categories (Source 10)

Level 1: Charges with a typical wall outlet and requires no special equipment. This gives 3.5-6.5 miles of driving per hour of charging, meaning if you can plug your car in at home overnight, you can get 30 – 40 miles per day.

Level 2: Requires special equipment to be installed to use 240 or 208V, but can still happen at a home or work place. This gives 14 – 35 miles of range per hour of charging, meaning if you can plug your car in at home overnight, you could get the equivalent of “filling up the gas tank”.

Level 3: DC fast-charging, requires special equipment and voltages not available in the typical home, and is not compatible with all types of EVs. This gives up to 10 miles of range per minute of charging. This is most analogous to “filling up a gas tank” in that you would need to go somewhere outside the home to do it, you would pay a commercial rate to use the charger, and it would be compatible with long drives/road trips where you would stop, “re-fuel”, and continue driving right away. This category of chargers within the US is currently ~5,000.

Some Benefits to Electric Vehicles

There are some obvious benefits to EVs, including moving away from fossil fuels, lower emissions, and considerably lower maintenance costs over the life of the vehicle—often said to be about half (Source 11). They also typically have faster acceleration and are quieter (or even nearly noiseless). They are approximately four times as efficient as ICEs (Source 12, 13), and in many cases the charging model is passive time (the car charges while you’re at work, shopping, or at home rather than while you’re occupied at the gas station).

Some Concerns with Inequality in EV Charging

A Type-3 charger is most analogous to how a gas station works and how most people think about putting energy into their vehicle—pull up, fuel up, and get going—but these chargers have a long way to go to be common enough to replace standard gas stations, and the availability of other types of charging is going to have stark differences across economic lines. If a car-owner lives somewhere where they park on the street or in a lot without a power supply, the cheaper and easier model of “charging the EV overnight” is not available to them, meaning they must pay higher rates and spend dedicated time to charge their vehicle. For example, if the car owner is a busy single parent working multiple jobs, it may be the case that their best charging option is at the grocery store, but in their area (if that option exists at all), it may only be a Type 2 charger. This means they must make a compromise between how much charge they can get while running necessary errands (or not having time to run errands at all!), or waiting around for their car to charge when spending time costs them money (or opportunity). It will also introduce complications of where charging infrastructure exists—typically shopping centers now will introduce only a few EV charging spaces, but the ratio of charging stations to EVs on the road is still better than gas stations to combustion engine vehicles (Source 14). However, as more EVs are sold, depending on the rate of charger installations, there will naturally be times and places where scarcity is an issue, and this will be compounded by time needed to charge versus time the car needs to be parked. Meanwhile, a car-owner with an EV and charge-at-home capability can take advantage of cheaper charging rates and the convenience of it happening overnight, without having to worry about “when” or “where”.

How Does PI Energy Fit Into this?

Having solar PV integrated on an EV means, if there is sunlight on the car, it can charge and add extra mileage without fossil fuels, plugs, or any additional cost. Just as some types of hybrid vehicles today include technologies like regenerative braking, once a vehicle has a battery in it that powers movement, additional options become available sources of power that aren't the "stop and fill" model. Whether for cars that sit parked in the sun during the day while the owner is working, or for cars parked on the street or in an apartment parking lot nowhere close to an outlet, PI Energy’s technology offers a source of re-charging and mileage addition that can happen passively, is entirely renewable, could be supplemental or primary depending on the driver's needs thus lowers or eliminates trips and time spent at charging stations, and gives an option if charging stations are not available. This change in vehicle powering is only starting to become possible, but is guaranteed to become more necessary.