Tesla's EV charging network has continued to grow with its partnerships with Ford, GM, and Rivian. Karl Brauer, iSeeCars.com Executive Analyst, and Jennifer Hiller, The Wall Street Journal Energy Reporter, join Yahoo Finance Live to discuss how Tesla’s latest partnerships is changing EV charging in America, the impact of range anxiety on customers, and the challenges of EV charging times.
Take a look at Tesla's supercharging stations. They are seen as the most reliable in the electric vehicle industry. The EV maker began building its private supercharger network back in 2012. And now Tesla has new deals with Ford, GM, and Rivian to join it. Its charging stations do tend to be larger than others. Its supercharger network. Makes up 30,000 chargers, with about 18,000 of those being fast, so-called level three chargers.
But most EV Chargers in operation use a separate charging system. It's called the combined charging system. It's known as CCS. And the US government has put billions of dollars on the table to build out this network. So as more drivers migrate to Tesla's superchargers, it could push the industry away from one universal charging standard.
The EV market, though, does remain resilient in terms of the number of new electric vehicles sold last year reached over 10 million cars across the globe. EV sales also reached a global market share of 10% last year, which was driven mainly by growth in China and Europe. Meanwhile, passenger EV sales in the US soared over 79% in the first quarter of 2023.
In addition, EV sales continue to surge and new segments of road transport, setting the stage for some big changes in the EV market. Sales for two and three wheelers gained momentum last year as the industry continues to tap into battery improvements and enhance its charging infrastructure. So, obviously, the demand for electric vehicles is here to stay.
Let's bring in Karl Brauer. He's iseecars.com Executive Analyst, and Jennifer Hiller, the Wall Street Journal Energy Reporter. Thank you both for being here. Guys, let's start with chargers. How did this happen? Is my first question. Like, I have a gas powered car. The nozzle for every gas station in the country is going to go into my car, and it's not a problem. So maybe Karl I'll start with you if you know this. Like, why are there different charging standards in the first place?
KARL BRAUER: It's a common issue when you have technology developing especially rapidly. Is that there's no way to standardize it. You have a bunch of individual players doing their own thing. And there wasn't any cohesive effort in the electric car world.
And Tesla, which became the dominant force in the electric car world so far, they had their own plug and then everyone else had a different plug. And nobody standardized them. And now they're talking about maybe we should and hopefully we will soon.
- So, Jennifer, let's talk about your coverage. Of course, we know that the government is making a big investment in EV and EV the adoption, setting aside a trillion dollars in terms of the infrastructure bill. Expecting to grow EV chargers by building 500,000 more by 2030. From your coverage, is that fast enough for what we're seeing in terms of adoption?
JENNIFER HILLER: Well, the cars are coming quickly. And the concern is that the chargers won't be there to meet them. But there are a lot of new chargers going into the ground. And I think it just remains to be seen how quickly this infrastructure can get built over the next several years.
The Biden administration, as you mentioned, wants about 500,000 public chargers out there. There are McKinsey estimates that they think we need more than a million public chargers out there. They're going to be different kind of chargers.
Not all of them will be these high way fast chargers, which has been the focus of the recent Tesla, Ford, GM, Rivian news. A lot of them are at a slower level similar to something that you might have in your garage, at home, or in an office parking lot, or something like that.
- Well, and to your point, most people charge their EVs at home, right? That's their primary thing. They plug it in at night just like I plug my phone in at night so I can use it for the next day. So for people who are driving electric vehicles, Karl, what role do these charging stations even have? Is it only to allow people to drive longer distances?
KARL BRAUER: Yeah, it's a great question. I think that you have people who need the daily use that they do with these vehicles. And it's not that demanding. And the home charging works great for them. But there still is this issue of range anxiety.
And I always tell people range anxiety isn't the fear of being stranded in the middle of nowhere with no energy. You can find a charger today. There are chargers prevalent enough that you'll likely find one. But when you do, you've got to spend the time it takes.
And as Jennifer mentioned, most of the chargers out there are not even level three. And when you've used a level three charger and you charge as rapidly as it does-- which still takes 20, 30, 40 minutes, depending on how much charge you need-- and then you go use one of these level two chargers, which are the overwhelming number of chargers out there in the country, it's like 1/10 of that speed. You have to spend hours.
So range anxiety comes from the fact that when you run low of energy in electric car, unlike a gasoline car, you don't solve the problem in five to 10 minutes just by looking around and finding the gas station. You have to find a charger and you have to dedicate a long amount of time.
So the home charging is great, but it still tethers you to your home. And if you go further than what you're comfortable with going away from your home, you've got to deal with somehow figuring out where to charge and how you're going to make the time and energy to do that.
- So, Jennifer, to elaborate on what Karl is talking about here on the range anxiety issue, how do I find-- so similar to Julie, I have a gas powered car. So eventually I want to get there with EV. But given this range anxiety issue, I know, for instance, if I want to gas up, I generally know where gas stations are and I can look on gasbuddy.com or GasBuddy the app or whatever to find. And that's more for cost, seeing what's the cheapest price around me. How do I even find where to charge my vehicle?
JENNIFER HILLER: So there are apps similar to GasBuddy. There are apps like Plug Share that will help guide you to public chargers as you travel and help you do some trip planning. Depending on the kind of EV you have and how new it is, the EV will help guide you where you need to go in terms of finding public chargers. So that aspect of it is available. It requires a little bit of technology.
But to your point, it is-- gas is not something that we think about. It's sort of all over the place. It's very rare on a road trip that you're really thinking, oh gosh, I need to fill up in case I can't in a little while. And the idea of having to do complicated road trip planning shows up time and time again as a hurdle in driver surveys about EV adoption. There was just a JD Power survey that came out last week that said of nearly half of people who will not consider an EV said that their top reason was a lack of public charging.
- Jennifer, why are the charging companies still even bothering with those level two chargers? Why aren't all of the-- certainly the new chargers at least-- level three?
JENNIFER HILLER: Well, a lot of people think what we need is actually a lot more of the level two, a lot more of the slower chargers everywhere. And that that's just the predominant way that we are all going to be charging because our cars are realistically parked a huge number of hours of day. They're either parked often at work, they're parked at your house or apartment. And that we need to bring those just slower chargers that let you sip electricity all over the place, and make those more ubiquitous.
And so there is a little bit of debate within the EV industry and among EV advocates as to how much resources should go towards these faster chargers and how much should go towards these level two slower chargers. Most people would say we need a lot more of everything. It's also a lot cheaper to put in the slower chargers.
So that's another issue, is there's a lot of federal money on the table. But it is a limited amount of money. There's a limited amount of capital that can go into building out all of this new infrastructure. And so it's like, where are you going to get the bang for your buck? So there's a bit of a debate about that as well.
- And, Karl, I got to ask, speaking of that debate and in terms of like wider EV adoption, I think about road trips and that being one of the concerns. So I'm going to use a phrase from a song, I don't know if you know this one. "Are we ready for the road?" I'm not doing the Caribbean intonation for it but you know what I'm talking about. Are we?
KARL BRAUER: Yeah, we're not ready for any kind of serious road trips for electric cars. I mean, people have been driving across the country in Teslas. And to his credit, that was one of the focuses for Elon and for Tesla, was to put those superchargers on the main thoroughfares across the country. So you can and people do drive their Teslas across the country. And non-Tesla people will now have access, so that will help the road trip situation.
But I think about the fact that one of the big pools for Tesla vehicles was their own unique, dedicated network, supercharger network. And now that's not going to exist. So I worry about what that's going to do-- or I don't worry but I just wonder about what that's going to do to Tesla's demand because it does impact negatively his appeal.
But it's still down to the fact that we have less than 10%, somewhere between 5% and 7% of cars out there are electric. And you still can be challenged to get them charged, whether it's finding one, whether it's been vandalized, or isn't working when you get there, and whether there's a line of people in front of you, which happens a lot. For instance, at Tesla superchargers during travel weekends.
And so as Jennifer said, we need a lot more chargers of all kinds. And the Tesla charger network opening up to non-Teslas will help but I think the term drop in the bucket really applies here if we're going to have 2/3 of new cars being electric, which is what the current administration wants in the next 10 years.
- All right, we'll have to leave it there. Thank you so much, Karl Brauer, iseecars.com Executive Analyst and Jennifer Hiller of the Wall Street Journal Energy Reporter. Thanks so much to both of you.