Insights from AVERE eMobility Conference 2019 at EVS32

Institutions and companies talk about present and future of electromobility

Last May Circontrol attendend EVS32 in Lyon, the most important event for scholars, governments and professionals in electromobility. This event is organized by AVERE, an European association to promote electromobility created on the 70’s right after the first oil shock. AVERE has 1.000 members from 15 countries including EV drivers, NGOs, associations, groups of interest, public institutions, research and development centres, vehicle and equipment manufacturers and other relevant companies. They aim to exchange knowledge and promote electromobility on behalf of industry, academia and users.

To achieve this objective, during EVS32 took place AVERE eMobility Conference (AEC) 2019, a congress to talk about the current situation of electromobility and its future with the presence of national and regional governments, international institutions and emobility companies.

The topics covered during these three days were: charging experience, urban mobility, autonomous vehicles, mobility as a service, electric heavy duty transport, smart charging and hydrogen ZEV.

Here are some highlights of these three days of conferences attended by Circontrol:

EV early adopters

Knowing Electric Vehicle drivers, their habits and preferences is very important to design infrastructures and technologies that suit their needs. Although current EV drivers are early adopters and its behaviour may not be representative of what will happen when the majority of the drivers switch to EV, it is still interesting to study it.

This report highlights the fact that the most important reason to choose a charging point it’s not price or time taken but its location. They overwhelmingly prefer domestic charging (61%), followed by charging at work (21%) that may replace home charging if the price is right. Public charge, on the other hand, will have a small market (8%) but it is still important because the presence of public access charger helps making the choice to switch to EV.

All these are general trends, but there are some variations depending on driver segment. Drivers who live in suburban areas represent half of EV drivers and charge their vehicles at home (65%) and at work (25%) seeking a good deal that suits with their schedule. The other half of EV drivers is made up of urban movers and rural suburban homeowners. Urban movers seek the best deal whatever the location and they are happy to use public chargers and likely to use the latest gadgets or software to help them find the next charger. Rural homeowners life in rural and isolated areas and they charge mostly at home (83%).

Long trips and anxiety range

One of the main obstacles for EV adoption is anxiety range and the difficulty of making long trips. A possible solution is the use of quick charging stations that permit to gain 300 km range in 20 minuts.

However, during AEC 2019 another solution has been discussed. This possible solution involve the use of data to improve coordination and optimize chargers’ use and to get this optimization sharing information is a key. When planning a long route, an EV driver calculates several possible combination of stops to charge the vehicle, to optimize this combination the driver may request the scheduled waiting time at the charging station for a specific arrival time, obtain a response and make a reservation for the selected charging station including arrival time and estimated charging time. With this system we will get a better charging network that avoids waiting time of more than two hours and a better usage of the existing infrastructure reducing user’s average time in the station by 38% and needed infrastructure bt 12%.