Electric vehicles are here to stay and by 2035, thanks to Gov. Gavin Newsom's executive order, all new passenger vehicles will have to be zero-emission. But will we be ready to power and charge all of our electric rides?
Here are five things to know:
- A recent report shows that California will need over a million new chargers to juice up about 8 million electric passenger vehicles by 2030. So far, we have around 70,000 public and shared chargers with over 100,000 due by 2025. So we’ll have to hit the fast lane a bit if we want to catch up!
- Most electric vehicle owners are likely to charge them in the evenings after work, inevitably during peak times when demand for electricity is at it’s highest. This will put a strain on the power grid as more juice will have to be generated, most likely using fossil fuels and that’ll make it way more expensive to charge your car. But there may be a solution to that.
- One way is dynamic smart charging. Most EVs only need a top-up of a couple of hours. One programming tweak could mean your EV doesn’t start charging until later in the evening, when there’s less demand and cheaper and greener energy is more available.
- This would mean EV drivers could get a saving of up to a $1000 a year according to a report. Another way is the utilities companies themselves could even be able to pause the charging of EVs remotely in neighborhoods at a time in order to help create even more savings and less demand.
- By doing all this it will help the managers of the electric grid balance supply more effectively and use greener options for electricity generation without having to upgrade the grid drastically or quickly. So it’s win-win!
Another report suggests that electricity demand by 2030 is likely to increase by at least a quarter. If that’s the case you can see why it’s only going to be more important that we’re ready for the future because unfortunately, electric vehicles don’t go very far if you can’t charge them!