Thoughts on visit to the startup company of charging ports - EVOASIS

By Jeff Lee / Mike Song 2022-09-08

As the wave of BEVs begins, many consumers in Taiwan give up the idea of purchasing a BEV due to being unable to install home charging port, which is the inconvenience of charging that stumbles the popularization of BEVs. However, when the deployment of public charging ports is as convenient as gas stations (or with even higher level of deployment), the only obstacles of using BEVs are the range and the time needed for full-charging; The technological issues of battery capacity will be gradually improved in the coming years, which means the charging ports won’t be densely deployed. The young team of EVOASIS can move with the times to meet various demands of BEV owners to enter the world of BEVs smoothly by providing 120kW, 180kW, and even 360kW fast charging infrastructures and the operation of flexible and diversified cloud management platforms.

Charing ports play the key role in the process of the popularization in the world of BEVs. There are about 25,000 BEVs in use currently in Taiwan, but the deployment of public charging ports still needs to be improved, or the owners can only rely on home charging ports, which can’t meet the demand of car users. The editors of AutoFuture came to the leading charging port operation company in Taiwan – EVOASIS’s Taipei office in the morning of 6th September, to interview with the director - Calvin Cheng to discuss in multiple aspects about the operation status, technology progress, and the outlook of the future of the charging ports business.

Calvin Cheng (Right) had an interview with Jeff Lee (Middle), Seven Tseng (Left), the editors of AutoFuture.

 

EVOASIS, established in 2019, is devoted to the comprehensive charging solution for consumers to develop the platform software independently, and they are certified by TÜV and CNS in recent years; In addition to the 1st phase of the fundamental deployment of public charging infrastructures islandwide in the past 3 years, EVOASIS is currently entering the 2nd phase to focus on metropolitan areas in six special municipalities and Hsinchu to deploy Super Oasis fast-charging stations. It’s estimated that there will be 30 fast-charging stations completed before the end of this year, and will reach 60 stations next year. After this, EVOASIS will move to the 3rd phase to accelerate on increasing the density of charging stations by franchising, and even plan to fully deploy over the rural areas, so as to provide the charging convenience of BEV owners. As for 2025, there will be 300 fast-charging stations, plus 100,000 slow-charging ports, which will meet the assumption made by Calvin that real car-using demand is based on one fast-charging port for serving 60 BEVs (After 2025, there are expected to be more than 100,000 BEVs in use in Taiwan). As for the concern about that insufficient power supply in Taiwan in the future, it will have negative impact on the development of the BEV market, especially the operation of charging ports; In this regard, Calvin assumed that the team of EVOASIS who came from the solar power industry had always been diligent in green power including renewable energy; at the same time, the “BEV-dedicated charging electricity meter” for charging power operating companies and multi-unit residence proposed by TaiPower in June can significantly reduce the basic charge, and regards the time period excluding 4PM to 10PM as off-peak hours, when the electricity rate is just 1/4 of the peak. This isn’t just spreading out the peak value of electricity usage (lower the risk of power outage caused by overloaded usage), but also beneficial to a solar energy company like EVOASIS that had deployed 30% of charging stations with solar panels… the solar energy being received and stored during off-peak hours is more eco-friendly and steady for service than other competitors. Calvin hoped that all their fast-charging stations would be transformed to green energy type with zero emission by 2030. As for the reason of the difference of the electricity rates among fast-charging stations nationwide, it is caused by the operating cost of each station; and Calvin also hoped that all the cost saving of operation from green energy infrastructures in the future can be feedbacked to the charging fee of consumers.

When discussing about the business opportunities possibly derived from charging stations, Calvin mentioned about the possibilities including B2G (Battery to Grid), Carbon credit, unmanned stores (people can shop during charging), and being the advertisement panels, etc., and these are the diversified operation that charging companies should be thinking about during the transition period from ICE car market to the era of BEVs. The well-known charging companies in Taiwan nowadays are mostly invested by big enterprises, so a startup company like EVOASIS must be creative (take solar power technology as the foothold), diversified (cooperation with gas stations, the franchise of convenience stores next to main roads, cooperation with hypermarkets, the cooperation in APPs with other charging solutions such as Noodoe), plus being passionate with execution to stand out for consumers’ acceptance.

The MoTC proposed the target of completing 6,500 public charging ports (500 of them are fast-charger) by 2025 in June, in light of the insufficiency of the charging infrastructures by now. Calvin brings out two suggestions for the related administrations to help accelerating the pace of deployment from the experiences of planning charging stations in the past few years…

  • The current limitations and regulations of charging service for parking lot companies should be loosen.
  • There are battery swapping stations in the convenience stores next to main roads in many suburban or rural areas, but the lands are classified as agricultural lands so that they are qualified to apply for the contract capacity of electricity they need for charging stations setup. It will be against the popularization of BEVs in rural areas or recreational areas.