In today’s fast-paced world, technology has enabled numerous innovations. One of these is electric vehicles. Although these cars are still not as commonplace and widespread today, they’re expected to increase in number and popularity in the future. Recently, the Biden administration also proposed changes to the electric vehicle industry. It announced an extension to its tax credits.
Apart from this, it’s likely that Internal combustion engine cars will also be banned in a few years. But is an increasing rate of EV possible? Can the infrastructure keep up with rising demands and needs? Here’s how this will pan out.
What to Expect
As the EV industry continues to grow, President Biden has already announced the installation of a large number of charging stations. Along with this, the administration also announced additional storage to assist electric vehicle production. EV infrastructure sources its power from the grid, which is likely to grow in demand as production rises. According to experts, it’s likely that these charging stations will be equipped with renewable sources of power generation. However, in order to make this more accessible, it’s important to introduce new systems and programs. For these technological advances to take place, the energy transition has to take place.
The Role of Stakeholders
When planning electric vehicle production and infrastructure, it’s important to keep stakeholders in the loop. This leads to greater unity and efficiency. Currently, charging infrastructure is mostly fractured. This means that it’s harder to control and support. In this context, stakeholders are important for the EC industry. Today, most of the charging infrastructure is privatized which makes it harder to find charging units if you’re away from home. However, there are plans for a coalition between some of the most significant US utilities.
These companies, including Dominion Energy, Duke Energy, and Entergy, Southern Company have a coalition known as the Electric Highway Coalition. This has revealed that it will introduce a network of charging stations that will increase gradually.
Making EV Accessible
In order to ensure the efficiency of electric vehicles and their infrastructure, it’s important to make sure that they’re accessible to most. Moreover, stakeholders are trying to ensure that a large variety of people have affordable access. One of their core concerns also revolves around making sure that charging times are staggered.
When charging infrastructure is available readily and at various locations, demand will remain steady while the grid will stay balanced and stable. In order to make EV accessible, it’s necessary to consider factors like location, geography, housing, and economic circumstances. It’s also important to realize that based on these factors, EV functioning will be different for everybody. This is true especially if you consider locations like urban and rural areas.
Why a Change in Behavior is Important?
If EV usage is going to become widespread, it’s important to ensure changes in behavior and values. Electric vehicles are already confusing for most people. Helplines related to EV companies are already gaining popularity. As with your ISP’s helpline, where you can just call Spectrum payment center in case of queries against Spectrum Wifi or any other related service, EV helplines too are receiving a lot of questions. EV users will need to change their behavior and approach if they want this service to work smoothly. Experts believe that one of the greatest challenges would be to motivate and convince people to stagger charging their cars. If this doesn’t happen, there’s a good chance that power outages will occur very frequently.
For EV infrastructure to work, users will need to be convinced to change their outlook. If everybody waits to go home to charge their vehicles, managing EV loads will become increasingly hard. As a result, once EV becomes more common, customers will be incentivized to change their behavior. This means that they will be required to charge vehicles at different times so that demand is spread out. However, it’s likely that EV customers will remain adamant in their decisions and choose to charge at home.
While this doesn’t seem like a problem currently, it might become a significant one in the future. This is because once EV becomes more common, universal needs will need to take precedence over independent needs. If this doesn’t happen, the dynamic of EV infrastructure might suffer.
