By Rich Heidorn Jr.

WASHINGTON — Growing the electric vehicle market beyond early adopters will require creative regulations, an expanded charging network and a vastly improved customer experience, speakers told the Institute for Electric Innovation’s (IEI) spring 2018 forum Wednesday.

“The early adopters were able to deal with some of the challenges of interacting with five different charging networks and the fact that sometimes stations didn’t work; maybe they’re in the back of a parking lot that wasn’t well lit and it was kind of dangerous,” said Scott Fisher, vice president of market development for Greenlots, which sells EV charging software and services.

Fisher said he senses increased momentum for EVs, with moves in Europe to ban diesel vehicles and Volvo announcing all its models will be electric-powered by 2019.

“There seems to be a commitment among large credible companies to create this positive customer experience. So, it’s not going to cater to the 1% anymore. … To get to that 5% or 10% — that next stage of early adopters — thinking about the customer experience that’s needed” is crucial, he said. “Some of it’s in place, but making it more consistent is a really important objective.”

Alan M. Oshima, CEO of Hawaiian Electric and the owner of a plug-in Ford Fusion, agreed. “The [conflicting] charging protocols we have right now is even worse than Betamax vs. VHS,” said Oshima, who moderated the panel discussion.

“It can’t be depending on niches. It can’t just work in California or Massachusetts or New York,” said Mark S. Lantrip, CEO of Southern Company Services. “Somehow we’ve got to think about how we bring everyone along. Until that, it’s going to be a series of fits and starts.”

Exhibit A is Georgia, which — thanks to a $5,000 state tax credit — was the fastest-growing EV market in the U.S. between 2010 and 2014, according to the Edison Electric Institute, which funds the Edison Foundation and IEI. When the tax credit expired, EV sales in the state plummeted. (The federal government continues to offer a $7,500 tax credit.) Still, with 25,500 EVs as of 2016, the state ranked second to California in EV sales between 2011 and 2016.

Wooing Newcomers

Although U.S. EV sales increased by 26% last year to almost 200,000, they still represented only 1% of new vehicle sales. Globally, EV sales jumped by more than 60% last year, with China responsible for more than half the sales in the third quarter.

Fisher said the best marketing EVs could get is more charging stations. “Whenever I talk to my liberal friends in Princeton, N.J., where I live, [they say] ‘Oh, that’s a great car, but where would I charge it?’ If I have to explain to them, I’ve already kind of lost them.”

Lisa Wood, IEI’s executive director, said EVs also will benefit from the increasing visibility of electric fleets such as city buses, United Parcel Service delivery vans and school buses that can provide energy storage in summer. Electric companies have increased their EV fleets by more than 40% since 2015, according to EEI, with more than 70 companies investing more than $120 million last year alone.

Lantrip said proponents are discouraging potential adoptees from making the switch with talk of EVs’ potential as distributed energy storage.

“We’re trying to get people to just even entertain the idea of buying [an electric] car, and what I see in so many presentations on electric vehicles is they immediately go to vehicle-to-grid, vehicle-to-home, and that freaks out the average new potential buyer … because they just don’t get it or want it. It’s like, ‘You’re going to drain my battery?’ We have to separate those two conversations.”

Lantrip predicts EV penetration will not surge until there is price parity between EVs and conventional vehicles and charging times are reduced to five minutes. “We have to manage our expectations,” he said, warning that current investments in the technology and charging infrastructure should be limited to “no regrets” steps while the market remains small and different technologies are competing for dominance.

About 80% of EV charging is done at home, where residents can use either a Level 1 charger (a standard AC outlet providing up to 1.5 kW of electricity that takes 30 hours to fully charge a 115-mile battery) or a Level 2 (a 240-V AC outlet delivering up to 9 kW, which can charge in 5.5 hours). Commercial charging locations with DC-powered fast chargers deliver 50 kW and reduce a 90-mile charge to 30 minutes. In Europe, a new generation of chargers is being installed offering 350 kW, which would complete a charge in 10 to 15 minutes, but no vehicles currently offered can use them.

Policy Questions for Regulators

Norm Saari, a member of the Michigan Public Service Commission, shared Lantrip’s concern about investing in technology that could be rendered obsolete.

Saari said policymakers could be hesitant to act because of uncertainty over what is the “proven, right technology.”

“[Do] you want to have a Level 1 or Level 2 or DC fast charging? Or do you want inductive charging on the road? Or let’s forget about that. Let’s go to hydrogen fuel cells instead. There’s a lot of issues that still have to be resolved,” Saari said.

The Michigan commission held its second technical conference on EVs in February. Saari said he and his colleagues are concentrating on four primary areas: customer education, rate design, the impact of EVs on the grid and charging infrastructure — “who is going to build what, where and how is it going to be priced out?”

Under the “make ready” model, the utility supplies the service connection and supply infrastructure, with the customer supplying the charging equipment. Another model would have the utilities assume full ownership of the charging equipment — the opposite of the business-as-usual model in which the customer is responsible for all equipment.

Saari said he expects both DTE Energy and Consumers Energy to request money for EVs in rate cases the companies will file later this year.

Lantrip said Southern Co.’s Georgia Power will propose several pilot projects to regulators later this year on getting EVs to low-income customers. “It could run the gamut from something like Zipcars or it could be electrified Ubers targeted in certain areas or something in between that,” he said.

Lantrip called on utilities and regulators to be “creative in developing new rate designs.”

Fisher said that although higher EV penetration will mean more electric demand, the grid investments required to expand the market are “going to turn out to be a wise ratepayer investment.”

In California, which has more than 277,000 EVs — about half of the nation’s total — a joint study by the state’s three investor-owned utilities reported the costs of distribution upgrades to serve EVs have been “immaterial.” But Southern California Edison has said 25% of its network must be upgraded to support new chargers.

Dan Adler, vice president of policy for the Energy Foundation, which promotes energy efficient buildings and appliances, said the industry needs “durable” coalitions to ensure regulatory policy does not become an obstacle to growth. “You get better policy outcomes … if the coalition is formed ahead of time,” he said.

Role for Gas Stations

From the audience, D.C. Public Service Commission Chair Betty Ann Kane asked whether the industry was working with gas stations that might otherwise become “stranded investments” in an electrified transportation system.

“If you get the charging times down, there’s an opportunity to work with that community,” Adler said. Because gas stations make most of their profits from snack and beverage sales and not fuel, Adler said, station owners may welcome a new way to generate foot traffic.

Lantrip said new gas stations are increasingly being designed to be fit with electric charging. He said they may be the best locations for charging in urban areas where few residents own garages. Last October, Royal Dutch Shell announced it was buying one of Europe’s largest EV charging providers; it is also beginning to add EV chargers at its stations in the U.K. and the Netherlands.