It’s one of the biggest drawbacks to owning an electric car – even if you buy one, where will you charge it? However, a new report from Pike Research suggests the situation will get better in the near future.
Its report suggests that by 2017, the US will boast more than 1.5million locations to charge vehicles, and there will be a total of 7.7million locations worldwide. This does not include standard electric outlets that have been placed near parking spots – instead it only refers to equipment with safety features for plugging in electric vehicles.
There will be increased demand for charge points driven in part by a rapid decline in electric vehicle supply equipment prices.
The sales of the electric vehicle supply equipment will be strongly related to sales of plug-in vehicles, the firm notes. It has already made a forecast that there will be 5.1million plug-in electric vehicles sold globally by 2017. Senior analyst John Gartner suggests prices for the equipment will fall by 37 per cent through 2017 as costs will be driven lower by competition by large electronics companies, as well as volume production.
The Asia Pacific region is expected to have the highest demand for both plug-in electric vehicles and electric vehicle supply equipment and beginning in 2014 half of the total equipment will be sold in Asia annually.
