What Volvo’s Announcement Means to Us

Recently, Volvo made a stunning announcement: it has committed to selling only battery-powered EVs by 2030. Not just in Europe, mind you. Everywhere. The news comes on the heels of recent automaker reports showing a surge in worldwide EV sales and the official unveiling of Volvo’s second BEV this past Tuesday – the C40 Recharge crossover coupe. (The XC40 introduced in 2018 was the first.) See more details in the article here: https://www.newsmax.com/Finance/streettalk/volvo-electric-vehicles-ev-online/2021/03/02/id/1012158/

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2018 Volvo XC40
Photo Courtesy of Vauxford

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Why are we so excited by this? After all, Volvo’s just one manufacturer, right? Well, for several reasons. First, Volvo has been an innovator in the automotive space since it introduced the three-point seatbelt in 1959, and more recently blind spot warning, pedestrian detection and rollover protection systems that have been appropriated by rivals. It’s therefore likely that other manufacturers of ICE vehicles will follow suit as EV demand continues to drive supply. (And profits.) Of course, this means more charging installations will be required, particularly in places like schools, parks, restaurants, daycares and other family-centered locations that play to Volvo’s customer base.

In addition, Volvo notes that the C40 Recharge will sell only online, while the company’s head of commercial operations said he expects half of all vehicle sales to be online by 2025 in furtherance of their progressive agenda. This affords other forward-thinking companies the opportunity to create complementary web-based services to help Volvo in its pursuits. For instance, the new EVCS subscription plan could be coupled with online vehicle sales as a discounted add-on.

All of this signals a larger trend in the growing embrace of EVs by the general public – one that Volvo executives are confident enough to get behind with large sums of investment dollars. In fact, the company recently announced it would sink approximately 5% of annual revenues into EV R&D, an amount equaled to about $1.5 billion USD. One can imagine that the amounts spent on marketing and advertising will likewise be ambitious. As both awareness and vehicle options grow, so will sales.

Such marketplace expansion reminds us of Wright’s Law, which essentially states that the cumulative doubling of a technological innovation will result in increased production volume that reduces costs. (For those not familiar with this axiom, read more about it here: https://ark-invest.com/articles/analyst-research/wrights-law-2/) EV technology is no exception. And the fact that new EV sales topped 2.2 million in 2019, according to the IEA, as EV manufacturing costs saw a 28% drop is no coincidence.

Riffing off the Volvo announcement then, a potential 20-fold increase in the number of Volvo EVs on the road is going to significantly reduce the overall cost of subsequent models, making them even more accessible to lower income drivers and thereby further increasing overall EV adoption. Preparedness will be key. A big new wave of EVs will require far more charging sites and will increase the appetite for government incentives. As we see the sector scale, the lower price of EVs themselves will be coupled with other cost reductions resulting from more abundant charging stations, V2G technology and various dynamic charging innovations.

Volvo competitors eager to “keep up with the Joneses” have already started introducing new EV models, from the Hyundai Kona EV and Mustang Mach-E to the Audi Q4 e-Tron and BMW iX3, demonstrating that the “EV-olution” is already underway. The question is who will create the necessary support structure. EVCS is already taking the lead on generating modernized charging infrastructure throughout California, with other states soon to follow; our goal is to make sure the country is ready for the anticipated deluge of BEVs that will be hitting the road in the next decade and beyond.

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2020: A Year in Review

Two thousand twenty has been a year of undeniable adversity, but also one of remarkable achievement. A year of firsts and hopefully a few lasts. A time of toil and tribulation, but also of triumph. For genuine success is partly defined by our ability to hurdle those implacable obstacles that make the result so noteworthy in the first place. Now, as the EVCS team looks back on this unusual year, we take stock of our unique achievements that made 2020 one for the books.

Electrification Progress in the Age of COVID

It’s pretty clear that vaccine or no, COVID will be here for a while, and with it the new normal of face masks, social distancing, telecommuting and (consequently) less road travel. While some might view this with trepidation, we see it as an opportunity. Since the earliest weeks of the pandemic, major metro areas like Los Angeles, Seattle and Chicago – those with large reductions in automobile traffic – immediately began seeing improvements in air quality, according to articles in the New York Times and Washington Post. More recent, an NPR story noted ozone pollution has decreased as much as 15% in many of these places. It seems an unintended consequence of the lockdown has been to accelerate the transition to responsible mobility by demonstrating its positive effects on the environment.

Commentary on Geotab’s 2020 EV Fleet Trends Article – Part II

Two weeks ago, we published part one of our commentary on Geotab’s in-depth article, “Electric Vehicle Trends 2020: Top 6 Factors Impacting Fleet Electrification” (https://www.geotab.com/white-paper/electric-vehicle-trends/). Again, the idea was to assess whether each of the trends were evolving as Geotab predicted and, if so, how EVCS was responding to them in the marketplace. Below are the final three trends referenced and our thoughts on each.

Commentary on Geotab’s 2020 EV Fleet Trends Article – Part I

At the beginning of this year, Geotab published a very interesting white paper titled “Electric Vehicle Trends 2020: Top 6 Factors Impacting Fleet Electrification.” (The piece can be found in its entirety here: https://www.geotab.com/white-paper/electric-vehicle-trends/) Now that we’re approaching the end of 2020, we thought it might be useful to go back through the assertions made in the paper to determine (1) whether the trends are evolving as Geotab predicted, and (2) if so, how EVCS is able to address those trends, including the targeting of customer pain points. Below are the first three trends referenced out of the six and our thoughts on each.

How a Biden Administration Helps EVCS

For EV enthusiasts generally and EVCS specifically, the election results are cause for great optimism. Joe Biden has shown himself to be a true friend to the electric mobility industry, so we thought we’d outline a few ways a Biden presidency will likely benefit our company, our mission and our customers.