TRIBUNE – Supporting the actions of the French government in favor of the electric vehicle market, Jean-Baptiste Guntzberger, director of Southern Europe of Shell Recharge Solutions, now calls for international cohesion in terms of infrastructure.
Jean-Baptiste Guntzberger, director of Southern Europe for Shell Recharge Solutions.
The electrification of mobility is currently accelerating in France. While the health crisis does not seem to have slowed down the momentum desired by the French government for more than a year to make the car fleet greener, are the charging infrastructures only capable of supporting this growth? Beyond that, is the growth of the electric vehicle market viable in the long term?
Despite the pandemic, the EV market continues to grow
195 000[1]it’s the Name of electric vehicles sold in France in 2020. And if it may seem modest compared to the some 40 million cars currently in circulation in our country, this figure has not stopped increasing for a decade: remember that it is There were only 184 sales of electric vehicles in 2010! The almost exponential growth that the EV market has experienced each year for a decade has not been slowed down by the health crisis, quite the contrary.
Indeed, in 2020, sales of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles seemed relatively impervious to the prevailing gloom, posting 180% growth over the year while the automotive market as a whole showed a decrease by – 25.5%. In addition, all the signals are green for the current year, since the number of registrations of electric vehicles is already much higher than last year. However, it should be remembered that this progress was greatly facilitated by the expression of a political, economic and energy course.
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As the coronavirus crisis amplifies the pre-existing difficulties of the French car industry, the French government unveiled in May 2020 a support plan for the sector[2], combining several measures intended to boost demand and renew the vehicle fleet, so that it becomes greener. It was thus planned to accelerate the deployment of charging terminals throughout the territory in order to reach the objective of 100,000 terminals in 2021. The ambition displayed on this occasion – namely “to make France the first producer of clean vehicles in Europe” – has since been confirmed with the announcement last October of the France 2030 investment plan. This provides for the production of nearly 2 million electric and hybrid vehicles in France over the next ten years.
For more than a year, the government has activated the consumption lever, through a reinforced ecological bonus and a conversion bonus extended to households whose income is less than 18,000 euros per year. On the manufacturers’ side, the various rescue plans and public investment in innovation aim to encourage the country’s major brands to intensify their production of electric vehicles over the next few years, so much so that PSA and Renault have already taken strong commitments in this direction.
Beyond the national framework, the announcement of the European Green Deal by the European Commission in July 2021 is also an encouraging step forward. It includes the decision that all new cars registered from 2035 will be zero-emission vehicles. Electrification projects for the next decade are therefore underway in France. However, their full realization is conditional on the development of the required infrastructure. Thus, to predict the growth of the electric vehicle, the question of the charging station, its installation and its use is essential.
Without a robust network of charging stations, there is no growth
Drivers of electric vehicles will need a sufficient number of charging stations, available in the right places and at the right times, to be able to move around without hindrance: this statement may seem trivial in its logic; however, it is essential if we want to achieve the objectives of electrification of the vehicle fleet set in France by 2030.
To do this, it is necessary to consolidate the infrastructures supposed to support the electrification of mobility. From a quantitative point of view, while sales of electric cars are increasing sharply in France, we see that the number of charging stations is not growing as fast as it should. In November 2021, 51,243 terminals were available, and the objective of 100,000 was therefore not reached at the end of the year. And from a qualitative point of view, we see that access to a fast charging station is still too rare. Faced with this situation, the public authorities are not the only ones who can act. Businesses and the entire real estate industry need to invest heavily in installing charging infrastructure to facilitate charging at work and at home.
Currently, 31% of European drivers travel with two charge cards
In addition to the quantitative and qualitative reinforcement of infrastructure, it is also necessary to promote smart charging. By connecting charging stations to an online platform, it provides access to new services. Real-time data transfer, for example, optimizes the amount of energy to be supplied to a connected electric vehicle and thus reduces the pressure on the entire network. 64% of French people believe that smart charging would promote wider adoption of electric vehicles. This need concerns both professional drivers and individuals. For companies, the installation of such terminals would not only support the electrification of transport, but also offer significant advantages to employees, in particular those who do not have the possibility of recharging their vehicle at home. At home, smart charging can integrate renewable energy sources such as solar panels, or automatically recognize the vehicle without the need for a card or app.
Finally, interoperability of charging stations is essential in order to make the charging experience more accessible to all users, to ensure that networks operate at full capacity and to support the growth of the EV market. Currently, 31% of European drivers travel with two top-up cards, while 36% prefer a single charging card accepted at all public charging stations. This rate is certainly falling, but too slowly, because for an optimized charging experience, a single card to access all public charging stations should suffice. It is therefore the responsibility of the owners of the corresponding infrastructure to take the necessary measures to guarantee access to the network for any mobility operator who requests it.
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The expected growth of the electric vehicle is therefore to theory what the charging infrastructure is to practice. If the network of charging stations is not quickly consolidated at the same pace as the expansion of the electrification market, the momentum observed in France for a decade and accentuated by the pandemic crisis could be slowed down. To avoid this pitfall, it is necessary to invest massively in the installation of fast, intelligent and interoperable charging stations. However, any charging point operating on the basis of a network, the national framework alone will not be enough to deploy the effort necessary to strengthen the infrastructure. European coordination focused on mobility and electrification is vital in this sense.
[1] Source: Avere-France (National Association for the Development of Electric Mobility), avere-france.org, December 2020
[2] Source: Greener and more competitive: our support plan for the automotive sector, www.elysee.fr, May 2020