40 million EV charging points for 11% of all cars by 2030

GTM Research, a Wood MacKenzie company, has released a report which gives a broad perspective on the EV industry’s attempts to roll out electric car infrastructure to support an expected 13 million electric vehicles.

Up to 40 Million EV Charging Points Globally by 2030 predicts increasingly rapid changes, with the North American market totaling only $2.7 billion in the next two years, but $18.6 billion by 2030. The investment is split between physical equipment, and installation, operations and maintenance (O&M) services.

As the report breaks down the above groupings of deployment type, they also cross that with the specific companies that exist within each space – and those crossing multiple spaces. Focusing on the annual energy market transactions in North America, GTM Research predicts an increase to a combined $13 billion in 2030 in the combination of energy and delivery of grid services.

The report also forecasts that 12 million residential charging points and 1.2 million public charging points will be installed in North America by 2030, but these changes are definitely global. Europe is expected to face similar trends, with estimated 9 million residential and 1.6 million public charging points. Overall sales may soar 24 percent each year on average through to 2030, with China expected to become the biggest market.

One investment line is called out in particular: services that will enable EV chargers to be grid interactive, enabling EVs to participate in energy markets and distributed energy resource aggregation. This will make EVs part of the greater connected, distributed energy landscape. This is especially important to the energy storage side of the equation. As we know from Tesla’s Q2’18 report, that electric cars and energy storage directly compete for manufacturing resources.