NYT Piece today: When Electric Cars Rule the Road, They’ll Need Spots to Power Up

[kindofblue]

Hi all, I thought you might be interested in this piece in the Times today. A wireless infrastructure company is betting it can figure out how to locate and install charging stations for a growing wave of new vehicles.

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[Carsinmyblood]

At least he's wearing the team colors.

 

[OWG]

Links behind paywalls are no fun.

 

[kindofblue]

A wireless infrastructure company is betting it can figure out how to locate and install charging stations for a growing wave of new vehicles.

Mark LaNeve, president of Charge Enterprises, at the company’s headquarters in Bloomfield Hills, Mich.Credit...Jarod Lew for The New York Times
By Jamie Lincoln Kitman
March 3, 2022
“The sexy stuff is the vehicles themselves. Obviously.”
So says Mark LaNeve, a longtime auto executive who, after a brief retirement, threw his lot in with Charge Enterprises. With the trickle of electric vehicles hitting American roads poised to become a steadier flow this year, his company is betting on the business that will help charge those vehicles. It is offering a nationwide soup-to-nuts service that provides siting, planning, permitting and construction of E.V. charging stations.
“Tesla’s been dominant, but now everybody else is getting into the fray,” said Mr. LaNeve, who is 62 and based in Detroit. “And there’s a lot of excitement around the new Hummer, Mustang Mach-E, Ford Lightning, the Silverado and Rivians. People are starting to pay attention to the chargers, too. But no one pays any attention to this: You’ve got to install this stuff. You’ve got to engineer it, and we think it’s a huge business if done right and done at scale.”
Mr. LaNeve made his bones in an industry powered by fossil fuels. A onetime C-suite sales and marketing star at Cadillac and Ford and, for three years, Volvo’s North American chief executive, he joined Charge last year. The company, based in New York, has expanded its initial focus — building out wireless communications infrastructure — with its E.V. push.
“I basically ran sales and marketing at General Motors and Ford — Big Three, Fortune 100 companies — and enjoyed it immensely,” Mr. LaNeve, now Charge’s president, said during a recent interview. “Got to do things I never dreamed of, frankly. But about four years ago, we had a Tesla in the fleet at Ford. As a kind of a traditional war horse in the auto industry, I didn’t want to like it. I’m like, ‘What’s going on here?’ And I had it for about three days and, I’ve got to tell you, I freaking loved it. And I told everybody there, ‘Guys, this is the future.’”

Rick Wagoner, the former G.M. chairman who is on the board of ChargePoint Holdings, which operates charging stations nationally, introduced Mr. LaNeve to Andrew Fox, one of Charge’s founders and its chief executive. Mr. LaNeve sensed an opportunity.
The $7.5 billion allocated for charging stations in the bipartisan infrastructure bill passed by Congress last year, he said, only increased his optimism.
With carmakers and state and federal government entities increasingly looking to combat carbon emissions with electric vehicles, one of the major sticking points to their widespread adoption remains the nation’s undersized and spotty charging infrastructure. That concern was reflected in the infrastructure bill’s call for 500,000 additional E.V. chargers.
A Critical Year for Electric Vehicles
The popularity of battery-powered cars is soaring worldwide, even as the overall auto market stagnates.

• Going Mainstream: In December, Europeans for the first time bought more electric cars than diesels, once the most popular option.
• Turning Point: Electric vehicles account for a small slice of the market, but in 2022, their march could become unstoppable. Here is why.
• Tesla’s Success: A superior command of technology and its own supply chain allowed the company to bypass an industrywide crisis.
• Rivian’s Troubles: Investors first embraced this electric vehicle maker. Now they worry it may not live up to its promise.
• Green Fleet: Amazon wants electric vans to make its deliveries. The problem? The auto industry barely produces any of the vehicles yet.

According to the Energy Department, there are roughly 50,000 (overnight or workday) Level 2 charger locations in service in the United States and Canada, and about 7,000 Level 3 fast charger locations, of which 1,400 are part of Tesla’s supercharging network. (Level 1 charging for the current and future generations of E.V.s is painfully slow.)
Mr. Fox, who founded the company in 2003 with Craig Denson and Kenneth Orr, compared the current moment in E.V. charging to one that faced cellphone makers 35-plus years ago. “Just as cellphone utilization was starting out — when utilization was relatively low and they were still a novelty item — over the next 30 years we believe that the infrastructure for E.V. charging is going to mimic the range coverage that you have now with the cellphone industry,” he said.

 

[kindofblue]

Links behind paywalls are no fun.

Apologies, I hadn't thought about that. I've cut and pasted the content above.

 

[OWG]

Apologies, I hadn't thought about that. I've cut and pasted the content above.

No worries, and thanks for making the article available.

 

[kindofblue]

No worries, and thanks for making the article available.

De nada.

 

[Maquis]

Apologies, I hadn't thought about that. I've cut and pasted the content above.

Wait, I thought everybody had a subscription to The Times! ?

 

[ARK]

Thanks for sharing, I thought this (sort of off topic) quote was fascinating:

“While many current E.V. owners tend to be affluent and can arrange to do most of their charging off street and overnight in their own garages with slower Level 2 chargers, Mr. Abuelsamid noted, “the vast majority of Americans don’t ever buy a new vehicle in their lifetime — about three and a half times as many used vehicles are sold every year as new.””

I would never have guessed it would be so lopsided. I wonder if this is accurate.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

Thanks for sharing, I thought this (sort of off topic) quote was fascinating:

“While many current E.V. owners tend to be affluent and can arrange to do most of their charging off street and overnight in their own garages with slower Level 2 chargers, Mr. Abuelsamid noted, “the vast majority of Americans don’t ever buy a new vehicle in their lifetime — about three and a half times as many used vehicles are sold every year as new.””

I would never have guessed it would be so lopsided. I wonder if this is accurate.

I think the sentiment is not inaccurate, but I don't know about the specific numbers.

I do know that the first round of used BEVs and PHEVs is basically available now, which means the less affluent are now able to buy into this market (or would be if it weren't for the very weird market right now).

I'm on the boards of several housing-related non-profits and one of them recently purchased a hotel to renovate into transitional housing. We wanted to install chargers there, but the utility wouldn't help us out. :/

 

[RMoore]

Thanks for sharing, I thought this (sort of off topic) quote was fascinating:

“While many current E.V. owners tend to be affluent and can arrange to do most of their charging off street and overnight in their own garages with slower Level 2 chargers, Mr. Abuelsamid noted, “the vast majority of Americans don’t ever buy a new vehicle in their lifetime — about three and a half times as many used vehicles are sold every year as new.””

I would never have guessed it would be so lopsided. I wonder if this is accurate.

I read the article earlier today and noticed the pony on his vest—is that a generic Mustang vest or is it specific to the MME? I guess it’s from his Ford days. As to the comment about most people buying used cars, I’m not surprised. Cars traditionally have depreciated a lot after a few years so used cars make sense financially particularly if one has many other more pressing expenses as is the case for much of the country.

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