ev.energy’s electric vehicle trends to watch in 2023
Opinion piece by Chris Darby, CTO and Co-Founder at ev.energy
We are going to see more and more EVs on the road. EVs will continue to be the most popular form of renewable vehicle for consumer transport—far outweighing the number of hydrogen-powered cars.
This will gradually remove the gas guzzlers from the UK’s roads – and hence reduce pollution. In fact, even if electrification is powered by coal power plants, it is still a more efficient way to convert energy for use as electricity. Indisputably, electrification lowers carbon in the atmosphere. And fortunately, this is the path that the UK is on.
Of course, this is important from a geopolitical perspective. We have an energy trilemma in terms of accessing cheap, secure and environmentally sound energy—not helped by the war in Ukraine and disruption to energy reserves. But properly electrifying transport presents an opportunity for the energy grid to get a handle on things.
Whilst demand for energy will rise, vehicle-grid integration (also known as smart charging, and vehicle to grid) solutions will minimise the impact. We anticipate around a 10% increase in peak energy demand driven by the electrification of mobility, provided it’s smartly managed. In the long run, there’s also going to be a fall in the energy required to refine fuel—refining petrol uses electricity too!
Micro-mobility enhances the community
Beyond EVs, we’ll also see more e-bikes, e-scooters, and the like on the UK’s roads, and new community-ownership models for all transportation, providing more equitable access to shared transport mechanics.
This feeds in nicely to the work we are doing at ev.energy with our multi-user EV charging software. Put simply, our technology allows the sharing of chargers across multiple parties or publicly. Individuals can effortlessly set up multi-user EV chargers—while ev.energy handles charge authorisation, cost settlement, driver experience and circuit loading.
This is perfect for people that don’t have a driveway or their own charging point.
Boosting accessibility to EVs is only set to grow in 2023.
Increased simplicity and EV security
Beyond ‘tap and go’, we’d like to see EVs fully enter the ‘plug and charge’ space. This would mean that users wouldn’t even need to get their cards out to pay. Simple.
2023 must also see all in the EV world agreeing to the same, open security standards.
The biggest gap we must close is the ‘adoption gap’. We don’t need to invent anything new (the first EV was invented nearly 200 years ago!), but we do need to adopt new standards, and expand access to electric mobility. More joined-up thinking in the industry is likely to come out of 2023.
A Final Word
With full electric vehicles likely to surpass 1 million on the UK’s roads by the end of 2023, the industry will only evolve in more sophisticated ways. Continued electrification efforts will remove petrol and diesel cars from our roads, EVs will play an increasingly important role in addressing the energy crisis, and accessibility will improve, as will simplicity and security. The EV industry has an exciting future ahead!
For more information about how ev.energy provides cheaper, greener, simpler electric charging, for everyone, visit https://ev.energy/
