Electric Vehicle Investment Opportunities
This video discusses electric vehicle (EV) investment opportunities as well as exposing some of the hidden risks.
I explore:
Massive investment needs:
From car manufacturers to power grids, a complete overhaul is required. ️Lucrative opportunities:
Potential winners in charging infrastructure, power plants, and more.Major challenges to consider:
Labour shortages, customer adoption, and infrastructure delays could slow the EV boomIs the EU's rapid EV rollout feasible?
I discuss the potential consequences of their ambitious plans.
Watch now to learn more about the exciting (and risky) world of EV investments. (If you would prefer to read about it instead, there is a transcript below the video.
Electric Vehicle Investment Opportunities - Video Transcript
In this video, I'll discuss the investment opportunities for electric vehicles.
Very large investments will be needed to make the change to electric vehicles possible. Opportunities come with significant risk because the development is likely to create setbacks.
No plans have been made for the change so few are prepared for the scale and 4 entire industries or sectors of society will have to change.
The automotive industry will need to develop entirely new model ranges.
Automotive supply chains will have to change from mechanical engineering to electric technologies.
The power industry will need to expand power generation and grid capacity enormously
Transportation and logistics will need to change to electric vehicles.
Very large investments will be needed but too few customers are there today. Investment opportunities are abundant but the development is at an early stage and there are still few customers who are prepared to pay for services and this makes investment something of a gamble.
In most countries the share of electric cars now stand below 3% and the EU has decided to ban the sales of new petrol and diesel cars from 2,035 and rapidly phase out diesel trucks starting in 2,030 but there is not enough electricity or grid capacity to make this rapid change possible and it will not be possible to expand the power generation or grid capacity quickly enough to facilitate the change.
Very large investments will be needed in power infrastructure.
Apart from automotive companies several types of companies will face great opportunities.
Suppliers of power plants and equipment for power grids will enjoy great market opportunities, service providers that offer planning, project management, installation services will do very well and business consultants with an understanding of the dynamics of this new market will also do very well.
There are huge opportunities but there are shortage of competent personnel to hire and not enough customers are prepared to invest at present. There is uncertainty about the speed of the change and the rate of adoption of electric cars and trucks.
In addition to this very large investments will be needed in charging infrastructure.
The sales of electric vehicles is growing very rapidly in most countries from a very low level and demand for charging is also growing rapidly this includes both the installation of home chargers and for charging in public and semi public charging infrastructure.
One public charger will be needed for every 100 electric cars and there will probably be a need for more chargers for trucks and buses but the installation of charging infrastructure is lagging behind.
McKinsey estimated in 2022 that 10,000 public chargers will have to be installed every week until 2035 and at the time 1600 were installed per week. There is a big need for chargers and the rate of installation has to increase dramatically with an increasing share of electric vehicles.
Professor Mats Alakula (Professor at Industrial Electrical Engineering and Automation) at Lund University has estimated that one football pitch of chargers will be needed every 60 kilometers of motorway in Germany, and this is for car charging only. In addition to this, a large share of trucks will be electric by 2035.
45% of all trucks sold in 2035 will have to be electric for the EU regulations to hold. Almost 1,000,000 trucks in Germany are in operation at present and many are passing through that will also need charging.
There are also professors saying that electric roads will be necessary and the installation of electric roads will take 15 or 20 years.
But this will be needed to reduce the need for large batteries, also for regional transportation and to reduce the cost of batteries and make electric truck transportation more competitive smaller batteries will be needed. This will make it possible to take more cargo and it will reduce the cost of vehicles.
Electric roads represent a big business opportunity.
There are several different technologies available.
One is to use overhead cables with pantographs on top of trucks and buses but they can only be used by large vehicles.
There will be a need for cars using electric roads to speed up the payback of investments but this will require tracks in the road surface so that cars can reach them but to make these investments possible in small countries like Sweden technologies with tracks in the road surface will be necessary.
Electric roads will take a long time to build and it will take a long time to pay back the investments. So for this to be possible creative public private investment solutions will be needed and creative new business models will be needed to get as many vehicles as possible to charge via the electric roads.
There will always be a competition between public charging infrastructure and charging at home, and this will be especially significant in the case of electric roads.
Why would people pay more to charge via electric roads? This question has to be answered in order for large systems of electric roads to be built.
Are you familiar with these topics the ones I discuss here? Though I suppose not because not very many people are.
This means that a lot of competence development will be needed. Many people need to learn about these things to make relevant decisions and to lead projects.
Very few business experts at present understand these things.
Very complex systems of infrastructure will have to be developed where different parts have to expand at a relevant pace but very few people know how to do this.
There is also very little research into how this can be done.
There are at present very few electromobility strategists and electromobility architects available, 1000s need to fill these roles over the next few years. The first step needs to be to train the trainers. There will be a big need for courses and training programs at all levels of the training and education system.
Where are the customers that see a need to invest in training and competence development?
Very large investments would be needed but there are few investors and few customers active at this point.
Electromobility however is growing at a very high pace but from a very low level. Still, there are few who understand the scale of the systems that will be needed, and few have a strategic understanding of the opportunities and risks. The speed of change that is planned by the EU will not be possible.
But how rapidly can electromobility expand?
What is a realistic rate of expansion?
How to set reasonable expectations for the change?
And what will the consequences be of the very high speed that is now planned by the EU?
I will continue to help investors, politicians, companies and people in general to navigate the dire straits of the change to electromobility.
My recent book, “The Severe Economic and Social Consequences of the Change to Electric Vehicles”, explains the consequences of the transition. (View on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3UQCf0t )
I am sharing my knowledge about the transformations electric vehicles through this YouTube channel, if you found this video interesting press like and subscribe to the channel.