EV Ownership and Luxury Malls: Using Demographics to Determine Placement of EV Charging Stations

(King of Prussia Mall offers SemaConnect's ChargePro Charging Stations to mall guests; img source)

The EV market is a small but growing area of the US economy. And as EV ownership continues to rise, new opportunities are emerging for businesses to provide the necessary amenities (i.e. charging stations) for the first EV drivers.

But where are the best places to locate these EV charging stations? Where will they be most utilized in these early days of the EV economy?

In order to best answer these questions, we must first look at the demographics of EV ownership to determine exactly where EVs will be most in demand in the near future. Although determining the best place to locate an EV charging station is not an exact science, some helpful insight can be gained by looking at key demographic information.

EV Demographics: The Social Profile of an EV Owner

It should come as little surprise that the first consumers of EV technology have been upper-middle class residents of the US.  As with most cutting edge technology in the past, those with higher wealth are often the early adopters. The same was true with the first automobiles 100 years ago, and the same is true with EVs today.

The Electric Vehicle Information Exchange (EVIX) conducted a survey in 2012 of 970 panelists that were either EV owners, prospective EV owners, or individuals not interested in EV. With this information they were able to determine several key characteristics of current EV owners.

In particular, they noticed that most EV owners are well educated white men in their 50s. Most of them had at least a four year degree, while a majority of them earned $100,000 per year or more. The primary reason given for purchasing an EV was “energy independence.”

Although the EVIX survey does not provide exhaustive details of the social characteristics of EV ownership, it does highlight one major point: the early adopters of EV technology have been well-off individuals.

Where to Locate EV Charging Stations First

As any EV owner will tell you, the biggest challenge they face is where to charge their car. Although home chargers are the logical first option, many EV owners do not yet have many places to charge their cars while on the go. This provides a unique opportunity for retailers to fill this void by providing a valuable EV amenity to their customers (or potential customers).

Since current demographics of EV ownership suggest a disproportionate share of upper-middle class individuals owning EVs, some of the best places to locate charging stations are at luxury shopping centres. Not only do luxury shopping centres attract more affluent customers, they often also have the necessary capital to invest in “luxury” amenities for the guests. EV charging stations fit squarely in this category of amenity.

Not only do they improve the image and desirability of the surrounding area, they are a valuable service for anyone who drives an EV. An EV owner who realizes a mall has a place to charge his/her car while shopping will be more inclined to shop at that mall in the future.

Furthermore, an article by Forbes suggests that people charging their car at a mall also spend more time at the mall.

Clearly the demand for places to juice up an EV can be met by luxury malls eager to capitalize on sustainability and the EV economy.

The Future of EV Charging: Demographic Shifts

Although this article has made a case for locating EV charging stations at luxury malls, it is important for businesses serious about establishing themselves within the EV market to follow demographic trends.

Currently, most EV owners are well-off individuals concerned about the environment and energy independence. But as EV technology improves and prices decrease, these demographics will change once again. And once again, business will have to look at where they can fulfill the demand of the next wave of EV drivers.

In the end, staying on top of the demographics of EV ownership can be helpful for businesses looking to break into the EV market and establish themselves as green innovators in the new economy.

Joseph Tohill is a freelance writer and online communications specialist for organizations in the sustainability sector. He has a B.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of British Columbia and spent most of his academic career studying sustainable urban development; namely the interdisciplinary relationship between built form and natural environment.

The Changing Face of Transportation: Implications and Opportunities

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Without a doubt, transportation and technology are inextricably linked. When Henry Ford revolutionized car manufacturing by mass producing his Model T, he made automobiles more affordable for the average person and opened up new possibilities in personal transportation. This is turn led many Americans to move to the suburbs as they were no longer restricted to public transit or walking to get places.

But the mass production of automobiles didn’t just affect peoples’ transportation choices. It opened up new business opportunities (e.g. gas stations) and irreversibly altered urban form with highways and sprawling suburbs. Many people began to value single family homes in residential communities far removed from the downtown core.

Today we are on the verge of yet another massive shift in transportation. Like Ford’s Model T, technological changes in transportation could bring about new business opportunities and alterations to the urban form – indeed many of these shifts are already taking place.

This article will look at how transportation is changing and where new business opportunities will likely arise in the future.

The Clean Revolution

The first major shift in transportation has been brought about by a need to protect the environment. Aggregate emissions from personal vehicles are at an all-time high and linked to rising greenhouse gas emissions worldwide and climate change. Already emission standards have been imposed on cars to lower their impacts on the environment, but many suggest that personal transportation needs a complete overhaul.

Although the widespread adoption of electric vehicles (EV) was relegated to the minds of science fiction writers 20 years, EV technology has vastly improved and most major automakers now have an EV on the market. Although EVs are still a small percentage of all vehicles on the road, their numbers have been growing every year.

Flexible Transportation

Linked to concerns over the environment is the idea of “flexible transportation”. Whereas 30 years ago middle class Americans would prefer go places by car, nowadays many people value having a variety of transportation options at their disposal.

Increasing numbers of people are choosing to live in “new urban” communities that promote walking, biking, and alternative transit forms. These communities are designed to link people to various forms of transportation, so that they do not need to rely solely on their personal vehicle.

Common features of these communities are higher densities, mixed uses, and closer proximity to the city core.

Additionally, many of these communities are tapping into the emerging EV market by installing EV charging stations.

Decentralization of EV Charging Infrastructure

Finally, new forms of transportation, particularly in the EV economy, have opened up new market opportunities due to the decentralization of charging infrastructure. Unlike gas stations which require large amounts of capital for construction, the necessary infrastructure for charging up EVs is relatively inexpensive. Most areas can tap into the electricity grid easily, and installing a charging station requires a comparatively small investment of capital, time, and space.

As a result, the deployment of EV charging infrastructure has become decentralized, wherein any business or retailer can become involved. In fact, many charging stations have already popped up in such places as sports stadiums, office buildings, parkades, airports, and residential communities. Big companies such as Ikea and Walgreens have even started installing EV charging stations at many of their stores.

Clearly these shifts in transportation are presenting new economic opportunities for businesses looking to capitalize on the emerging EV market and sustainability.

Conclusions

Changes in transportation have wide-reaching implications for personal choices, individual values, environmental sustainability, and urban form. And although environmentalists would claim that transportation needs to change to promote sustainability, in the end, it will be the economics that will make the most sense.

As EVs become cheaper and increasingly common, more people will embrace them instead of the gas guzzling automobiles of the 20^th century. In turn, new business opportunities will emerge to tap into this new economy, thus heralding the dawn of a new transportation era.

Joseph Tohill is a freelance writer and online communications specialist for organizations in the sustainability sector. He has a B.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of British Columbia and spent most of his academic career studying sustainable urban development; namely the interdisciplinary relationship between built form and natural environment.

Tesla and Fisker: EV's redefining luxury

Can conspicuous luxury ever be a force for good, in a world dogged by economic austerity and worries over pollution and climate change?

That's the question being vigorously tackled, head-on, by a pair of upstarts to the luxury automobile scene. The twin-stroke assault by Tesla and Fisker, on the primacy of high-octane gas-guzzling in the luxury automobile sector, aims to flip its accepted notions on their head. Whereas low mileage, fuel-hungry engines have been a badge of honor for top-of-the-range car owners, electric drive-trains hold out the prospect of a different aspirational grail – fusing the yin of exhilarating road performance to the yang of down-to-earth (and planet-saving) fuel economics.

The notion that the switch to electric vehicles (EV's) can be driven from the top, down, may just be the saving grace for the sector. While solid mid-range EV models – such as Nissan's Leaf, Ford's Focus Electric and GM's Volt – have been slowly and steadily (perhaps a little too steadily) chipping away at the mainstream market, top-shelf products from Tesla and Fisker have entered the public consciousness in an entirely different manner. To put it bluntly, the Tesla Model S and Fisker Karma are sex-on-wheels. And in the world of automobiles, luxury or otherwise, sex sells.

Luxury EV's - the designer's white board

The starting point of that visceral appeal is the raw power that electric motors can channel from battery to wheel. Tesla's Model S hooks 416 of horsepower to the accelerator pedal, whereas the Karma puts twin 201-hp motors at its drivers disposal. Even fatter electric-hp numbers are on their way to the road, too, courtesy of established players like Porsche and Ferrari. But it's not just those loud numbers that are doing the talking for luxury EV's; it's the suppleness of the power delivery that has had auto-journalists panting. And electric drive-trains are opening up the automobile chassis to a flexibility of form that combustion-engined designers envy.

So the potential for a re-shaping of the luxury car sector – maybe even the changing of its game – is there. And given the aspirational nature of the consumer market that car sales flourish in, the setting a new green standard for status-symbol cars could well light the touch-paper for EV's – and perhaps see them exploding into the mainstream. In the meantime, if you happened to have the $60,000 to $100,000 entry fee needed to slip into one of these shiny new lux-EV's, what kind of electric-driving experience can you expect?

Model S – electric from the ground up

Well, let's start with the Tesla Model S. This all-electric affair has won awards and plaudits by the boot-full over the last year. And glance along its low liquid lines suggests part of the reason. Thanks to being engineered from the ground up as an electric car, the designers had total latitude with the form. They took that freedom to summon up the world's lowest drag factor for any car on the market.

That efficiency, combined with the top model's 85 kWh lithium-ion battery pack, give the Model S a mileage rating of 95 MPGe (gasoline-equivalent, though it doesn't touch a drop of the stuff). That means it can do 100 miles on just $4 electric fuel. And it pushes its range to 265 miles, and dead-battery worries to the edge of the horizon.

The electric road-trip

But Tesla have a strategy to completely blow all-electric range anxiety out of the water –  and have paired the Model S to a custom network of fast chargers. The company has strung these proprietary 90 kW 440V Tesla Supercharger units along the major routes of both east and west coasts. They can 'super-charge' the Model S up to half-power (about 130 miles) in just 30 minutes, making the all-electric road trip a reality. Best of all, these chargers are being upgraded to source electricity from solar power.

Such luxury-levels of on-road performance are carried through to the interactive driving experience Tesla have furnished the Model S with. The hub of that is the 17” infotainment touch-pad reclining down the center of the dash. This pad integrates a host of driving functions, including charging and range information, navigational maps, status displays and media information. This can all be controlled through buttons on the driving wheel, and with a recent upgrade, voice activated controls.

Karma Fisker – the James Bond hybrid

The Fisker Karma takes a very different stance to Tesla on how electric-drives will play out on the roads, in the near-term at least. In essence the Karma is a plug-in hybrid – just an exceptionally powerful one, that looks like it's driven off the 007 movie set, and which can hit 60mph in 6.3 seconds. The drive is, however, 100% electric, with it being entirely battery-driven for the first 50 miles; after that a gasoline-generator kicks in, to produce the electrical power to zip this sporty-looking car along.

No range anxiety here, then. But that does mean that the Karma is less impressive on the mileage side of the equation, being rated only 52MPGe by the EPA (for combined city/highway driving). That is still a league away from the sub-15 MPG experienced by gas cars in its class, like the Maserati Quattroportes, however. While its gas-powered switch over offers total reassurance when traveling at distances, drivers are likely to rely on the 20 kWh lithium-ion battery most of the time for more typical short spurts. That battery, however, charges up at a somewhat turgid 6 hours, even through a Level 2 240V connector.

The ultimate sun-roof

An interesting twist on battery charging is provided by the Karma's integrated solar PV roof. While this only supplies a tiny fraction of the energy consumed by nipping around town, it keeps the 12 V battery, which drives the air-conditioning and interior devices, nicely topped up, putting less strain on the main battery. And it does add a cool blue sheen to the car's immense and powerful good looks. Another notch upon the cool-o-meter comes courtesy of the buzzing spaceship noises the car makes when moving at less than 30mph – possibly a request from Fisker's marketing department, as it apparently is a real head-turner.

So will there be a place in the hearts of the capaciously wallet-ed classes for electric cars like the Model S or Karma? Conventional marketing analysts seem doubtful that there's room for two more entrants, into an already crowded luxury car market. But possibly they're missing out on couple of factors that may help break the mold – and earn success – for these top-end EV's.

The China Factor

First, the buyers of cars in this class are seduced not just by racy-stylings, but by the potential for racy rides. Electric-motors are already proving themselves capable of outperforming gasoline engines – and they are only at the start of their technical learning curve. Add that to the superior handling of better-balanced EV frames, and the possibility for EV's to blow their gas-powered brethren off the road looks likely to ramp up. That will matter to a significant part of the luxury market.

The other factor is China. China is an increasingly important market for all classes of automobiles, but especially for those at the luxury-end of the scale. So far China's better off citizens have shown little inclination for going electric. But China's dirty coal and gasoline-fueled cities are not going to stay smog-clogged for much longer. After the terrible fug of pollution that has choked Beijing this winter, the political pressure for action to clean the air is rising.

It seems entirely plausible, in this new climate, that zero-emission lux-EV's, such as the Tesla Model S and the Fisker Karma, will do very well riding the coat-tails of China's elite –  newly keen to be seen to be clean and green.

Martin is a freelance writer from the UK, who specializes in writing on the strategic impact of environmental issues. After a 10-year sojourn as an analyst at Brady plc –  a Cambridge-based provider of services to commodity investment banking professionals – Martin set himself up as self-employed writer at the beginning of 2010. Since then he has written for a number of environmental websites and companies, and has been one of the principle journalists for green news website, The Earth Times.