President Joe Biden earlier this month proposed a national network of 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations to keep electrification moving forward in the auto industry, but Tracy Price, chief executive of EV charging and services provider Qmerit in Irvine, says the task is much more complicated than upping station count across the U.S.
He says 85% of overnight electric charging for vehicles takes place at home, and that means many private electrical systems at residences may also need to be reconfigured and upgraded to handle the extra load.
“The public charging infrastructure is for topping off, or if you want to take a trip. Those are all going to be the nice-to-haves,” Price told the Business Journal on March 4, in a comment on Biden’s State of the Union speech three days earlier.
Price added: “The projection is that there’s going to be 5.6 million chargers by 2025 in [the] public. There’s 1.5 million today. That is not going to be anywhere near what’s required once you start electrifying businesses, vehicles, work trucks, work vans, the kinds of things that are being contemplated.” He said the real story is going to be about home and Level 2 charging, an eight-hour process many people use overnight.
Price estimates that “as many as 48 million households” in the U.S. may require an upgrade to their electrical panel in order to electrify.
‘Charging Romance’
“The romance of charging in the wild is exactly that—it’s a romantic notion,” said Price, who is also the Qmerit founder. “It’s wholly impractical.”
“For EVs to become mainstream, consumer or professional drivers can’t have it in their mind that they may run out of charge,” making at-home charging essential, Price said.
“Charging capability has to become ubiquitous in order for EVs to cross the chasm.” That includes business and commercial installations.
Price also cites the need for employers and property owners to appeal to the changing expectations of workers and customers as society embraces a carbon-zero mentality.
Issues aside, he says the EV market is “booming.”
Qmerit has about 300 direct employees companywide, according to Price, whose company will be moving its headquarters designation later this year.
CEO Price said Qmerit “will be headquartered in Austin (Texas) during this year.” The company says that “fewer than 50” will stay in Irvine.
Partnerships
The company has been active in moving vehicles toward electrification, including through a variety of partnerships.
On March 8, Qmerit said it was teaming up with Chargeway, a software platform and mobile app company based in Portland, Ore. The goal of the arrangement is to provide better education and engagement for dealers, aiming for increased EV sales. The partnership will also help bring point-of-sale utility incentives to EV buyers to offset the investment of home charging.
A week earlier Qmerit had announced a partnership to install and service Fermata Energy products for “bidirectional charging” at commercial and multifamily buildings across the country. Bidirectional technology can enable excess energy to be routed back to the building or the electric grid, earning money for the consumer.
Last October, Qmerit said it was partnering with Ford Motor Co. for electric vehicle charger station installations in homes and multifamily residences for its currently available all-electric vehicles.
Qmerit is providing Ford’s Mustang Mach-E customers with its Charge@Home services for installing and supporting EV charger stations. n
