The shift to EVs is forecast to accelerate due to improvements in battery technology, an expanding network of charging infrastructure, supportive government policies, increasing consumer awareness, advancements in technology, and rising customer demand. As a result, the Asia-Pacific (APAC) electrified vehicle market is estimated to reach 23.8 million units by 2026, registering a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 25.6% over 2021-26*, according to GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

According to GlobalData, the APAC region leads the global electrified vehicle market, accounting for 11.7 million units in 2022, dominated by China.

Lucy Tripathi, Senior Automotive Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “APAC countries need to expedite the construction of charging infrastructure to accommodate the market expansion and the emergence of e-mobility. Convenient and affordable publicly accessible chargers will become increasingly important as EVs scale up. To help address this, governments have provided support for EV charging infrastructure through measures such as direct investment to install publicly accessible chargers or incentives for EV owners to install charging points at home.”

The Indian government’s $3.2 billion incentive program, which has drawn $8.3 billion in investments, is helping the country’s EV and component manufacturing ramp up. To promote the adoption of EVs, Thailand, and Indonesia are also improving their policy assistance programs, which might be a great lesson for other emerging market economies.

Tripathi continues: “When it comes to directing business strategy towards electrification and facilitating consumer uptake, the policy has played a particularly important role. In today’s major EV markets, like China, early adoption was frequently accelerated by government programs to boost demand, like vehicle purchase incentives. In China, direct incentives for automakers were also applied. While striving to address other EV supply chain issues, some governments in important markets have raised their targets for EV adoption, including through legislative assistance to produce vehicles and batteries as well as crucial mineral supply chains.”

To enable the energy transition and, more broadly, to keep up with the rate of demand for clean energy technology, mining, and processing of the essential minerals will need to rise quickly, as has already been observed for lithium. Accelerating innovation can be beneficial, for example, by supporting the adoption of car models with optimized battery sizes and the growth of battery recycling. These new battery technologies also require less of certain essential minerals.

Tripathi concludes: “Given current price increases for battery materials, reducing the requirement for essential resources will be crucial for the supply chain’s sustainability, resilience, and security. There are increasingly more new lithium-ion substitutes available. The supply chain for EVs is growing, but manufacturing is still mostly regional, with China dominating the trade in batteries and EV parts. To increase resilience through diversification, EV supply chains should be at the forefront of EV-related regulation.”

* GlobalData Automotive Intelligence Canter ­– Global Sector Overview & Forecast – Electrified Vehicles, accessed in May 2023

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The draft Electrification of Transport in the City Strategy and Action Plan, passed unanimously for public exhibition by the City Council last night, outlines City plans to electrify transport fleets and lower the barriers to electric vehicle use in our local area.

Key actions arising from the new plan:

• Accelerating the transition of the City’s own light and heavy vehicle fleet
• Increasing capacity of our depots to handle more and bigger electric vehicles
• Encouraging public rapid charging facilities in car parks and service stations
• Increasing the capacity and number of electric chargers in City-controlled car parks
• Working with Ausgrid to trial low-impact on-street charging in locations without off-street options
• Updating planning controls to encourage and support charging capacity in new buildings
• Conducting a comprehensive research project to understand the challenges and opportunities of retrofitting existing apartment buildings with chargers

Lord Mayor Clover Moore said reducing private vehicle dependence while supporting the electrification of vehicles would help lower transport emissions and reach the City’s net zero targets.

“If we are to stop dangerous runaway climate change, we need to reach net zero emissions as soon as possible. Lowering transport emissions, which are currently around 20% of all our emissions, will be crucial to this task,” the Lord Mayor said.

“Reducing private vehicle dependence is the most effective way to cut emissions, so we remain focused on delivering our comprehensive bike network, supporting ambitious public transport projects and ensuring our city is a pleasant and accessible place to walk to, from and around.

“Not all trips can be completed on a bike or public transport so electrification of high-impact fleets such as delivery and service vehicles, as well as private vehicles, will help complete the journey to net zero transport.”

Under the new plan, the City will increase capacity in Goulburn Street and Kings Cross car parks to 18 chargers, with another two 22kWh chargers to be installed in Cope Street car park in Redfern and Wilson Street car park in Newtown.

On street chargers

The City of Sydney is also working with Ausgrid to test an unobtrusive on-street electric vehicle charger on an existing power pole in Glebe to explore ways to support on-street charging access without burdening the public domain.

Modelling and technical analysis that underpins the plan shows around 20% of emissions in our area come from transport, and the biggest barriers to using electric vehicles are affordability, availability and access to charging.

The local area already has more than 100 publicly available charging points and research indicates most people will charge their vehicles in buildings, garages and depots.

The City of Sydney will work with providers to get more chargers where they’re needed, predominantly in off-street car parks, service stations and some street locations, balancing the need to protect footpaths and public spaces.

As part of the strategy, the City of Sydney will use its planning controls to make sure all new developments are electric vehicle ready.

Over the coming months, the City of Sydney will investigate the technical, governance and management challenges our strata communities face as they start to address increasing demand to retrofit apartment buildings with EV charging.

“In the city context, where over 75% of people live in apartments, strata charging presents a real opportunity to make a significant dent in our charging needs, but it’s complicated,” the Lord Mayor said.

“Many of these apartments have off-street parking spaces and we know that most of them will look to charge their electric vehicles in those spaces. The more who can, the less spillover there will be into other charging systems. But owners corporations need to juggle complex metering, demand management and efficiency, safety standards and insurance and of course, questions over who pays and how.

“We will be conducting a comprehensive research project in a range of different building styles and ages, to figure out how to overcome these challenges and outline best practice options for apartment buildings looking to retrofit.”

Electric vehicle uptake – towards Net Zero

The City of Sydney will also advocate and support the state and federal government to encourage a faster uptake of electric vehicles in the private and commercial sectors through federal fuel efficiency standards, accelerating roll-out of zero emission buses, and pricing mechanisms that favour electric vehicles over internal combustion engines and subsidies that favour e-bikes over vehicles.

The City was one of the first organisations in Australia to start converting its fleet, procuring its first electric vehicle in 2010. Today the City’s fleet features 19 vehicles and 1 truck that are fully electric, and 73 hybrid cars and trucks. The City acquired its first electric truck in 2021 as a trial, a diesel truck which was converted to electric.

Under the new plan, the City of Sydney will accelerate transition to electric in its fleet and favour contractors with green fleets in procurement processes.

Research shows more than one third of local residents don’t own a car. Based on current trends, the rates of ownership are predicted to rise by 8 per cent by 2035, despite a 44 per cent rise in the number of dwellings.

“We hope that by 2035 all vehicles in our area are electric. This is a sector that is evolving quickly, and we want to make sure that we remove any possible barrier to our residents getting an electric vehicle or better still, changing their commute for a bus or train, an e-bike or choosing to walk,” the Lord Mayor said.

“The state government has committed to installing 500 electric vehicle charging bays across NSW over the next two years, with a few in the first round being installed in our area. We will encourage and support this continued investment in the future.

“We don’t currently have a role in fuelling vehicles but to support the transition to electrification, we will step in. While the private sector ramps-up its charging initiatives, we will work with service providers to ensure that charging is available in areas with limited off-street charging opportunities. This includes the additional charging infrastructure we are installing in City of Sydney-owned car parks and the trial of low impact on-street charging.

“We are also conscious that when residents and fleet operators charge their electric vehicles, they do it using renewable electricity, or GreenPower, which is a great option for renters and helps promote more renewable energy generation.”

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• ZipCharge Go advances to prototype stage, on track to ship to customers in early 2023
• Portable electric vehicle charger – a power bank on wheels – enables EV drivers to charge wherever they park
• Engineering of the ZipCharge Go is following automotive industry standards and rigorous product development process
• Gateway milestone passed: design released to suppliers to procure components for validation prototype build
• Testing of key system components – battery cells, bespoke bi-directional AC-DC converter, communications systems – and user ergonomic evaluation

ZipCharge, the pioneer in portable everyday EV charging, today announces a major milestone of its game-changing portable Electric Vehicle (EV) charger, the Go. The revolutionary product is now advancing to validation prototype (VP) stage with designs released for manufacture and hardware testing well underway.

The Go removes a common barrier to EV ownership – by bringing the possibility of home charging to anyone who can’t currently plug-in at their house. In the UK alone, 8.5 million or 40% of car-owning households are without designated or off-street parking. Elsewhere, this figure reaches 60% for example in Italy, Spain, Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea and in major cities in the USA, China and India.

Automotive industry development process and standards

ZipCharge is developing the Go using the same rigorous engineering processes as major car manufacturers. It is building several iterations of prototypes from validation through to pre-production, all of which will undergo an extensive testing regime. The company’s engineers are currently at advanced stages of lab testing the portable EV charger’s key system components, including the NMC lithium-ion battery cells and the ZipCharge-designed bi-directional AC-DC converter. This is to evaluate thermal behaviour, charging performance, safety, durability and full functionality to ensure a seamless and safe ownership experience for everyday charging.

The bespoke compact and lightweight bi-directional AC-DC converter utilises the latest high efficiency Silicon Carbide (SiC) semiconductors found in modern electric vehicles. When coupled with ZipCharge’s innovative software it will enable the Go to be charged at home, using a standard single phase supply in just over one hour. It can then be connected to an EV wherever it is parked and deliver 20 to 40 miles of range in around 30-60 minutes**, depending on the capacity of the Go charger.

The Go is the first element of a planned global portable EV charging platform that combines hardware, software, and innovative ownership models to bring affordable, practical EV charging to more people in more places. In the near future ZipCharge’s portable EV powerbanks will create an intelligent energy management platform that provides flexibility and resilience for the national power grid.

Realising that widespread EV adoption would be hampered by the inability to charge near or at home, ZipCharge co-founders Richie Sibal and Jonathan Carrier identified and developed a solution. Using their decades of experience in automotive electronics systems engineering and product development gained at cutting-edge businesses including McLaren Automotive, Jaguar Land Rover, Lotus, Gordon Murray Group and LEVC – their answer is the Go. Now well into the development phase ZipCharge is on track to deliver the first models to customers early in 2023.

ZipCharge Co-founder Richie Sibal comments: “Achieving this key milestone in the development of the portable EV charger is a major achievement by our small and dedicated team of expert automotive engineers. Drawing on the team’s 170 years of experience in designing automotive electronic systems, including EV control systems, battery modules, power electronics, electrical architectures, functional safety and wiring systems, combined with significant expertise in CAD modelling and design has enabled us to progress from the drawing board to design release in under nine months”.

A digital ecosystem for portable EV charging

In tandem with hardware testing, the ZipCharge engineering team is also developing bespoke control software and a dedicated mobile application that will allow users to optimise the operation of the portable EV powerbank. This incorporates a suite of security features, including user authentication and the ability to remotely monitor, track and disable the Go charger from their mobile phone, anywhere, thanks to built in 2G/4G connectivity.

Huge attention is being paid paid to the user experience (UX) design and user interface (UI) between the hardware and software, with the aim of making charging with the Go as simple and intuitive as possible. The diverse needs of personal customers and fleet users are considered, to schedule charging, track usage and cost to charge, regardless if they have access to one Go charger or several hundred, the power pack is always ready when required.

This amount of control will generate significant operational and cost benefits for fleet managers who will be able to equip their fleets of electric cars and light commercial vehicles (LCVs) with portable chargers, enabling them to charge wherever they park. For fleets, charging with the Go adds range and means drivers don’t have to deviate their route to find the nearest charger. Back at the depot, fleet vehicles will no longer have to be repositioned use the fixed chargers. With the ZipCharge Go, the charger comes to them.

The mobile app is just the first component of a broader digital eco-system for the ZipCharge Go.  The company is developing software tools that provide the user with intelligent control of charging and energy management, efficiently and at the lowest cost. This includes dedicated data dashboards for fleets to manage a suite of Go chargers, optimise deployment, monitor charging history while using the power of data to make intelligent recommendations that reduce operating costs and improve the total cost of ownership equation.

ZipCharge is also building in machine learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI) into its software stack, to learn user charging patterns, to make schedule recommendations and optimise charging to save money and reduce the load on the grid.

ZipCharge Co-founder Jonathan Carrier comments: “Since our launch at COP26 in November last year, ZipCharge has received an unprecedented level of interest from potential customers around the world. They immediately see the benefit of the Go portable charger to deliver low cost, convenient charging anywhere they park.

“We’re already in advanced discussions with a number of large corporate fleets and listening to their requirements, along with product suggestions from our enthusiastic prospective customer base. This feedback is invaluable as part of ongoing development of our hardware and software, such as novel operating controls, safety features, and auxiliary power generation. We are committed to launching a truly ground-breaking product in the Go, one that meets the needs of a range of customer groups, and how they would like to use the Go. This includes private individuals, fleets and end-destinations, such as hotels, retail complexes, supermarkets and leisure activities – all locations where the ZipCharge Go can provide flexible, convenient and low-cost charging for everyone, anywhere they park.

“We expect to confirm final pricing later this year in Q4 2022 as part of the pre-order process. Our mission is to democratise EV charging, which means the  ZipCharge Go will be competitively priced and comparable to the purchase and full installation cost of a fixed home charger.”

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