The role of charging points in the electric vehicle market

This analysis of the case study was done to determine the primary elements that affect the operations of London Electric Vehicle Company. The report involved relating to other articles which provide information about the major factors that determined if the company whether or not the company should expand its operations to other European countries in addition to Amsterdam. After a thorough analysis of the case study, I was able to determine that, charging points, funding for the expansion, servicing electric cars, the range of a charged car among other factors were very critical for the company.

Introduction

London Electric Vehicle Company is an automobile company with its headquarters in Coventry. The company is Chinese owned, and it engineers automotive. One of its famous cars that they engineered is the London black taxicabs.

The company is planning to expand its operations in overseas markets, and it has already struck a deal with Amsterdam. Although the company is planning to expand, there are some issues, problems or concerns that they need to put into consideration before they take the bold step. I set to analyze a case study about them to determine the primary elements that they should put into an account.

Task 1

Analysis of the Case Study

I did a thorough analysis of the case study, and I was able to come up with the following issues, problems and concerns. These were the major factors that affected the black cabs operations in London (Weigand et al., 2014, p536). To expand efficiently and effectively, London Electric Vehicle Company (LEVC) must put into consideration these factors. They said factors are also very crucial to LEVC in their plans of going international.

1. Range of a charged electric car

According to the case study, a fully charged black cab gives its drivers a range of over seventy miles on pure electricity. Those drivers that want to have greater range are also allowed to combine electricity and fuel. When these two are combined, they form a range of more than 400 miles (Marks, 2014, P20). These are a great concern to LEVC. The company should use the magnificent range of the cabs to inform drivers how they will save a lot when they embrace the back cabs (Li and Ren, 2017, P2530). With this range, a driver can take a customer from London to Edinburgh without worrying of running out of energy. This is a concern to the company. A range of more than 70 miles is fair for any ordinary drivers, but what if by bad luck, there is a power blackout that affects large area in London, like the one that happened in the year 2003, drivers will lack energy to power their cars, LEVC should improve the range of black cabs to be more than that. Take an example of a recent introduction Chevrolet Bolt EV, the car had an electric range of more than 200 miles running on pure electricity. VW e- Golf sport, which is another up comer have a range of 124 miles on pure electricity (Weigand et al., 2014, p5360. Considering that an ordinary passenger travels an average distance of 12 miles, adding the range of the black cabs will give the driver a lot of wiggle room. This will make them have higher profit margins. Another problem of the electric cars is the longer you own the car, the shorter its range of travel will become. Like just a computer or phone, its battery loses its ability to hold charge.

2. Servicing electric cars

The cars have fewer moving parts; this limits the number of things that could break down so as to require servicing. This will save the drivers a lot of money and time in the long run (Marks, 2014, P22). The only thing that could need constant serving in electric cars would be the brakes, although the brakes will need to be serviced, they last longer compared to a gas powered vehicle. These cars don’t need an oil change, or neither do than ey have transmission failures, so drivers will no more have to rent cars while their electric cars are being serviced (Wolschendorf, Rzemien and Gian, 2010, P219). The biggest maintenance issue in the cabs would to change the battery, although is a big issue, the batteries can last more than 15 years in mild climate and on top of that, they have a warranty of more than 7 years. Although the cars require less servicing, how many local mechanics know how to service it? The main problem just in case the driver experiences a problem is finding a mechanic who knows how to handle the car. Most of the mechanics are used to servicing an internal combustion engines, so understanding how to fix an electric car may be a big challenge to them. This only leaves the drivers with an option of taking your car back to the dealers to fix it for them (Marks, 2014, P26). We all know that dealership servicing is much more expensive than just taking your car to a local friendly mechanic who will charge you less. To some extent, when your car is new, even the dealers may not find much to charge the drivers on. This is because of the simplicity of the cars.

3. Funding for the expansion

The taxi company is lucky in that it receives government funding for its operation in achieving zero emissions. An association led by the London electric vehicle company was awarded an advanced propulsion centre grant of more than seventeen million pounds in order to boost their research and development project that aimed at achieving a zero emissions (Revell, 2017, P14). On top of that, the industry invested an additional twenty nine million pounds for the project. The forty six million pounds funding will allow the LEVC to easily expand its project I the international markets. The CEO of the London Electric Vehicle Company confirmed that the government of UK has invested in the company’s APC R&d project and it will allow them to further develop the zero emission and hence expand to the international market. The resulting technology after the project will be almost perfect so that when they move to international market, they will be competitive (Marks, 2014, P20). LEVC has also partnered with tier one automotive supplier GKN, Resolve and research institutes. This ensures that the engineering costs and technologies are handled with the Resolve while research is handled with the independent research institute. These have greatly helped in funding the activities of the company.

4. Charging points for the cars

This is the major problem for LEVC and it may hinder its plans of going into the international market. According to Mayor Sadiq Khan, the city of London has only 29 charging points. There were plans put in place to add 75 more points and it was still lagging behind schedule (Li and Ren, 2017, P2530). Charging infrastructure is major problem for LEVC, this is because even when used the whole day, a single facility will charge only 48 cars. This does not match the number of taxis in London. It will slow operations down.

My view is that the London black cabs next destination is France.

France is set to ban vehicles polluting the environment by the end of the year 2018, and this is a great chance that London Electronic Vehicle Company can use to introduce its electric cars in Paris. Another reason why they might move to France is that, according to Elisabeth Young, a former rover executive who plans on importing the black cabs to France, they are being approached by many taxi drivers who are more than willing to adapt and drive the black cabs. These taxi drivers say that the car is an exceptional and a unique model of taxi with no equivalent in the whole of France. With this great interest of the taxi drivers and also the plans of the government to ban vehicles polluting the environments, the black cabs management might find this as an opportunity to enter the French market. The company showed a plug-in prototype in Paris (Revell, 2017, P14). This is an indication that they are thinking of expanding in Paris.

After analyzing the case study and coming up with the above issues, problems and concerns, my next task was to find articles to justify that charging points for the electric cars was the major problem that LEVC management should seek to address as it plans international expansion.

Task 2

Evidence to Address the Problem of Charging Points

In selecting these articles, I used the necessary words strategy. I identified the keyword which is charging points for electric cars. I opened the EBSCOHost search engine and typed these keywords. I also used the search interfaces in searching for the articles. Although EBSCO has many similar features, every vendor of materials has his or her unique aspects.

An article written by Di Wu et el captures and tries to explain the optimal location of public charging points. The article talks about the availability of public charging points, prices of electricity and the best destination, routes and interval to locate a station (Revell, 2017, P14). Having said so, this article will help solve the problem of choosing the best location of finding a charging point in a metropolitan region.

A study done with the Financial Times came up with the five best ways to solve the charging point problems. The article anticipated that more than nine million electric cars would be charging away from home at some point in future (Weigand et al., 2014, p536). This article will help come up with the solution of congestion in a single charging point. Rapid charging points can only charge can only handle charging forty-eight cars in twenty-four hours. London has more than 100,000 taxis on the road when private hires and vans are not included.

Article written by Gao et al. tries to come with a model planning for the charging points of plug-in electric vehicles. With the aim of reducing total cost, including the stations costs such as installation cost and maintenance cost, and the driver’s access cost such as the cost they pay for charging, the article proposes the use of user’s travel model (Wolschendorf, Rzemien & Gian, 2010, P218). This confirms that this article will give information on how to cover the problem of charging stations shortage in London and the best strategy on how to locate others. According to Mayor Sadiq Khan, the plans to lay out new station were underway, and this article will be very useful in determining the cost and location of the new stations.

A study done by the Economist and authored by Dyson says that new battery for electric cars should be ready by the year 2020. This battery will be solid state lithium. Although this is unrelated to this assignment, this informs us that the LEVC should develop such kind of battery that holds more amounts of voltage (Li and Ren, 2017, P2530). This will solve persistent charging problems in that a vehicle can travel many miles without being recharged. The article says that continued developments in the battery will significantly reduce its cost will improved performance.

Critical Analysis and Evaluation of Research Articles

The study done with Financial Times suggests five best way of solving the charging stations problem. The report indicates that solving this problem will be one of the critical challenges that will face policymakers as nations work towards achieving emissions-free cars. It is estimated that by the year 2040 all cars in London will be fully electric and without solving the charging stations problem by then, a significant shortage of stations will be experienced (Revell, 2017, P14). The following are the suggestions of the Times. The study was named Five Ways to Solve UK.s electric car charging conundrum.

The authors of this article used qualitative research methods with their focus being to make electric cars drivers to understand the importance of developing better and cost-effective ways of charging their cars.

Lampposts should be installed with plug in chargers. Public chargers installed in the pavements have been increasing in the United Kingdom. This has created a shortage of in-pavement infrastructure to establish extra charging points. To overcome this problem, Ubitricity is converting lampposts to double up as charging points for the electric cars (Marks, 2014, P21). This process is very straightforward the only problem is that it can cause power shortage when a lot of drivers charge their cars at the same time.

Induction pads should be considered. According to the German company, an electric car can power up its battery from a pad which is located beneath it. The said pad will be connected to the electricity network which is potentially found in the street. Renault did the testing of its induction pads in France. When it is under the road charging, a car is detected by the pressure points in the road, electricity then passes upwards into the vehicle charging it while it moves.

Battery swapping method should be a new trend. Another idea the article came up with was to swap the battery with another one that is full. The low battery can then be charged at free time of the driver. Better still, charging stations can charge extra batteries in advance and replace them for drivers who come to charge their cars (Weigand et al., 2014, p536). The only limitation is creating a network of the swap stations due to its high cost of purchasing the batteries.

Petrol stations strategy. The article suggests that petrol stations should install rapid chargers for the electric cars. This will speed up charging for electric vehicles. For example, shell fitted chargers at 10 of its petrol stations in the United Kingdom. This equipment can power up a battery to almost seventy percent of its capacity within 30 minutes.

Work stations. The government should encourage employers to install rapid chargers in office premises. According to Juliet, chief executive of Good Energy, planning to charge cars on a routine basis can sometimes lead to delays (Li and Ren, 2017, P2530). In offices, people park vehicles for more than eight hours, and they can use that time to charge their cars. This will allow the public charging points to be free for use by the cab drivers.

By reviewing this article, I think that it was designed to help solve the problems of congestions charging points, although it came up with ways to curb the problem, those methods involve high costs of operation and initial installation.

The article of “Charging Station for Plug-in Electric vehicles” written by Gao et al. tries to explain on how to cut down on the cost of installing the charging stations and in the best way possible. The articles acknowledge that many cities have started building electric charging stations, but still, they have not yet formed a complete and quality planning system for their projects (Wolschendorf, Rzemien and Gian, 2010, P215). The article formulated a strategy on a maximum coverage of charging stations driven by the demand of the drivers. The plan was also to maximize the need covered within a certain distance. Using the concept of maximum coverage, the article advised the formulation of multiple recharging station location (Li and Ren, 2017, P2534). The report also recommended the use of a mixed integer model in programming; it based its argument on cars fueling logic. To adopt matching and planning requirements of the station, the article advised that stations should be installed according to the electricity consumption along the roads. Furthermore, the article presented a mixed integer optimization method of optimally replacing and sizing the charging stations (Revell, 2017, P14). Details in this research are vital to this assignment, by laying down the strategies put in place by the article, the charging point’s problem will be solved, and this will aid the LEVC in expansion to the international market.

Task 3

Strengths of the EBSCOHost database

Completeness of database's content. Each vendor continually makes sure that the information in the database is updated and complete, It is time saving for researchers to find all the information they need in one database. This guarantees accurate information for learners.

Persistence of the materials in the database is also strength of it. Information in the database is persistent and reliable. The database deletes information from vendors who are not reliable, and this ensures reliability from the vendors of the data.

To add on that, the database is easy to use in that it gives an option of searching for articles by the use of keywords. The database gives the researchers an option of using necessary critical words in researching for information. This makes it easy for data to be easily accessed.

Links options. The database gives the researcher’s additional links that they can use to get more relevant information.

Limitations of the EBSCOHost database

The percentage of limited information is high. Many articles in the database do not open up to 100%. This limits the access to information.

Although the database has more than 2000 articles, most of the headlines given do not translate to the content needed when the headline is opened.

The database has a lot of limitations which are very similar, and they appear on the home search engine. Constraints limit the amount of information available for researchers.

Limitations That LEVC Might Face While Trying To Enter the French Market

The first limitation is the lack of necessary infrastructure in Paris, there are no adequate charging points in Paris, and this will result in high expansion cost. This is because they will have to start by ensuring that there are enough charging facilities.

Another challenge is that there are no people with the knowledge of how to repair these cars in Paris. This means that the company will be forced to incur a huge cost in jetting in experts from London to repair the cars in Paris.

Conclusions

Although LEVC is planning to expand to the international market, there is a number of factors that they need to consider first before they develop. One of these factors is the cost of their cabs. In the case study, I determined that the black cabs cost 10,000 pounds more than a regular cab. This will put off many drivers.

Furthermore, LEVC should train more mechanics that will service the cabs just in case they break down. Currently, drivers can only get maintaining help from the dealer, which some of them may consider expensive than going to a local friendly mechanic.

To add on that, LEVC needs to ensure that before they expand their operations to a particular city, the necessary infrastructure required to support the activities of the black cabs should be available in that specific city.

Recommendations

For LEVC to have smooth operations in the city, they first need to put pressure on the government to increase the number of charging stations; this will reduce unnecessary delays that will make the company lose a lot of revenue.

I would also recommend that the company consider moving to countries that have many of these infrastructures in place. Why move to a state that will increase the operating costs of the company its charge in trying to get the necessary infrastructure.

Furthermore, I would recommend that the company should try and improve the range of a charged car to about 200 miles of pure electricity. This will reduce the intervals at which a single vehicle is charged hence enhanced operations

References

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Revell, T. (2017). Black cabs beat Uber on speed in taxi races. New Scientist, 233(3109), p.14.

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