TomTom recently announced a new product that allows the owner of an electric vehicle (EV) to plan the route with the consideration of EV charger station availability, promising the user “extra peace of mind along the way”.
The route plans like this were commonly used by motorists some 70-80 years ago, as the chance of running out of gas and getting stranded somewhere in the middle of the road was quite real back then.
But at this day and age this idea is unlikely to be seriously entertained by the majority of the US drivers – which demonstrates what a long way the EV industry still has to go to assure the expected level of comfort to its customers and get rid of the range anxiety.
The EV charging infrastructure is more expensive than the equivalent gasoline station infrastructure components, and its return on investment (ROI) is lagging behind the respective numbers for the gas pumps. Thus, the selection of an optimal location for EV charging stations becomes even more important than for traditional gas stations or convenience stores.
Since EV charging station may be added not to just the existing gas stations, but also installed at a variety of facilities, e.g. restaurants, hotels, supermarkets, etc., obviously the range of potential locations that are capable of maximizing the ROI increases substantially.
The most obvious way EV charging can boost profits is the revenue earned from the stations themselves. The number of EV visits is the key indicator of your charging station’s success. This parameter is in direct correlation with traffic volume on nearby streets and the travel intends of the drivers.
Once EV drivers stop to charge, there is an obvious cross-selling opportunity for add-on products and services. Whether it’s a rideshare driver recharging during a lunch break or a little league coach topping off his battery while getting snacks for the team, if you install charging stations, EV drivers will spend more time at your location.
At Ticon, our job is to produce reliable, verified analysis of traffic data that you can safely rely on for your decisions on optimal site selection: traffic volumes estimation, driver behavior / intends of travel indicator, and congestion patterns drawn from long term observation that supports forecasting. In the new green world, we adapted our AI analytics to EV charging stations, creating a new product we called ChargEV.
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Figure 1. Speed and volume distribution for driver’s behavior analysis
ChargEV™ traffic analytics report, geared specifically for the EV charging station metrics, considers traffic indicators together with statistical analysis for EV density, EV charger density, and demographics in the area surrounding the site of interest. The latter includes not only the population density but also household income levels and zoning specifics.
As an expert in your business, you know better than anybody else how to optimize the service process at your location of interest (LOI). The goal of ChargeEV is to supply you with complete traffic, demographic and environmental pictures in a format ready for decision-making. If you need to choose optimal locations from the network, we will create a ranking table on top of a set of the full analysis of each of the LOI, which allows quick selection of the required number of the best LOIs and easy development of the optimal expansion schedule.
