Electrification: solutions in dire need of a whole product experience (Part 1: evs)

A three-part article.

Part 1: evs

Introduction

I have been banging on the drum of whole product solutions for a long time as many who know me will attest! Here are some personal experiences to illustrate what I mean, starting with evs, as all is not rosy in the world of electrification…

My ev experience

I have owned an electric vehicle for 5 years and last year my son and a close friend also bought one: evs are definitely becoming more common. Five years, 50,000 miles, multiple long trips including twice to France and the Tesla charging network has never let me down. I have thoroughly enjoyed my ev and not had a moment’s range anxiety. I cannot say the same for my son and friend.

They both bought Audis with a smaller battery size which has turned out to be a false economy. The cars are brilliant – very good quality, spacious and simple to drive – but they are a nightmare to charge other than at home. They both carry multiple cards and apps to access the various charging networks because they have found that on average 50% either don’t work or deliver a far slower charge than advertised. They always maintain enough battery charge to divert if the charger they are planning on doesn’t work. As a consequence, they have wasted a lot of time, travelled a lot of extra miles and suffer from range anxiety every long trip. They would not take their cars to France and even think twice about taking them more than just locally.

I too have had similar experiences with public chargers. When I first owned my Tesla I tried 3 or 4 times to use a public charging network: at a supermarket, at a service station, at the kerb in Milton Keynes and at the NEC. The only one that worked, and then only after I had to phone up and move to a different car park wasting 30 minutes, was the NEC one. I now steer clear of them.

Technology is trying to close the gap. Zapmap informs users of defective chargers so that they can plan their journey more effectively – but this doesn’t affect the high number of chargers that fail to deliver the promised service. Meanwhile “Hubject’s global eRoaming EV charging network data” is meant to make accessing other charging networks seamless…

The point is that whilst Tesla build an end-to-end system, others just build cars. Without a comprehensive charging network that is reliable and has sufficient capacity evs are really only commuting cars. My concern is that a sufficient public infrastructure is a long way off so we are a long way off providing a whole product experience, of which technology is an important part, but not the whole story. In the meantime, there is a significant risk that people who are trying evs talk about their frustrations, put others off and ev uptake will be delayed by some considerable time.

Will that disappoint car manufacturers? Or will they just go on making profits, using their expensive production lines whilst leaving it up to others spend large sums of money and to take risks? I know what I think is happening…?

Small commercial evs

A further illustration is about the world of small commercial evs. Another friend won a large new contract and needed to set up a fleet of 6 local delivery vehicles.  For 2 weeks he spent a lot of time trying to get 6 evs but the challenge of finding out what is available when, how to charge them and where, how to pay his drivers for charging at home, even how to insure them was just too difficult. In the end he couldn’t spare the time and went to a local dealer.  He was given a turn-key petrol solution delivered the following week complete with maintenance contracts, insurance etc. No competition.

Delaying the uptake

Both stories – my son and friends’ stories - are about the lack of a whole product experience. Their frustration is all too evident, the impact of which is likely to be a delay in others following their example and the plans for decarbonisation. 

Author: Simon Anderson