Demand for EV chargers is outstripping supply, says ChargePoint report

ChargePoint 报告：电动汽车充电桩需求远超供应

There might not be the same degree of optimism regarding electric vehicle adoption as a few short years ago, but the transition toward battery-electric vehicles continues nevertheless. More than 1.8 million EVs had already been sold between the start of this year and the end of August, according to analysts. And in the US, there has been a large uptick in drivers considering EVs that they might have written off last year, due to escalating fuel prices with no clear end in sight. Despite this, charging infrastructure continues to lag, according to a new report from ChargePoint.

尽管人们对电动汽车普及的乐观程度可能不如几年前，但向电池电动汽车的转型仍在继续。据分析师统计，今年年初至 8 月底，电动汽车销量已超过 180 万辆。在美国，由于燃油价格不断上涨且短期内看不到尽头，许多去年曾放弃考虑电动汽车的驾驶员，如今又重新将其纳入了购车选择。然而，ChargePoint 的一份新报告显示，充电基础设施的建设依然滞后。

“All in all, things are moving forward. I think the North American market has been better shaped than a lot of the press reports,” said ChargePoint CEO Rick Wilmer. “Part of it is just the data we see in terms of the amount of RFPs that we receive for charging solutions. They haven’t slowed down. We reported quarter over quarter growth in the last quarter we reported. And you look at the data around used EVs going up in price because the demand is so high. I saw a recent report… EV retention rates are 96 percent. So those folks that are putting their leased cars on the used market, they’re not going back to gas, they’re going to another EV,” he said.

“总而言之，事情正在向前发展。我认为北美市场的实际情况比许多媒体报道的要好，” ChargePoint 首席执行官 Rick Wilmer 表示。“部分原因在于我们收到的充电解决方案招标书（RFP）数量，这些数据并未放缓。我们在上一季度报告中实现了环比增长。此外，二手电动汽车因需求旺盛而价格上涨。我最近看到一份报告显示，电动汽车的留存率高达 96%。这意味着那些将租赁车辆投入二手市场的用户，并不会换回燃油车，而是会选择另一辆电动汽车。”

Beyond that, cheap electric trucks from Slate and Ford indicate further future demand for charging. “When you look at how much interest there is in the used EVs that are at parity with an equivalent gas vehicle, that tells you the appetite is there for EVs if it’s the right vehicle at the right price point,” Wilmer said. “So I think the auto OEMs, maybe not homogeneously, but they’re figuring out what the market wants in North America, and they’re starting to introduce those vehicles, which I don’t think a lot of the forward-looking forecasts accommodate the fact that the product market fit is getting better coming out of the car companies.”

此外，来自 Slate 和福特的廉价电动卡车预示着未来对充电的需求将进一步增加。“当你看到那些与同类燃油车价格相当的二手电动汽车受到如此多关注时，这说明只要车型合适、价格合理，市场对电动汽车的需求是存在的，” Wilmer 说。“所以我认为汽车原始设备制造商（OEM）虽然步调不一，但他们正在摸清北美市场的需求，并开始推出相应车型。我认为许多前瞻性预测并没有考虑到汽车公司正在不断提升产品与市场的契合度这一事实。”

How many chargers are enough? ChargePoint says that for 2025, its data shows that there was a 34 percent increase in charging sessions, yet new charger installations only grew by 16 percent. I asked Wilmer what the ideal utilization rate ought to be. “So what we’ve determined, especially for—and we’ve got so much workplace charging, this is where most of our data comes from, but I think it’s relevant for other use cases as well—but on a five-day, eight-hour-a-day workplace scenario, if you’re above 30 percent utilization, you’re going to have drivers coming in that can’t find an open charger,” Wilmer said.

多少充电桩才够用？ChargePoint 的数据显示，2025 年充电次数增加了 34%，但新安装的充电桩仅增长了 16%。我询问 Wilmer 理想的利用率应该是多少。“我们得出的结论是——特别是在工作场所充电场景中，我们的大部分数据都来源于此，但我认为这同样适用于其他使用场景——在每周五天、每天八小时的工作环境下，如果利用率超过 30%，就会有驾驶员无法找到空闲的充电桩，” Wilmer 说。

“And it’s fascinating to watch this happen because you’ll see a workplace make the decision to put some chargers in the parking lot because their employees are demanding it… So they put some in, and then other employees now have charging at work, so they buy EVs, and all of a sudden you’re up above 30 percent. And the employees are now more upset than they were before they even had EV charging because they can’t find a charger. So again, in a workplace, eight-hour-day workweek, 30 percent is kind of the magic number,” he said.

“观察这一过程非常有趣：你会看到某个工作场所因为员工的需求而决定在停车场安装充电桩……于是他们安装了一些，接着其他员工发现可以在单位充电，于是也买了电动汽车，利用率突然就超过了 30%。结果，员工们反而比安装充电桩之前更沮丧了，因为他们现在找不到充电桩了。所以，在每周五天、每天八小时的工作场所，30% 是一个神奇的临界点，” 他说道。

V2G RSN? ChargePoint has developed a new range of cheaper and more powerful Level 2 (AC, 240 V) chargers for North America and has partnered with Eaton (for its smart breaker technology) to enable bidirectional charging. “We’re really pushing to get to a point where you can do a vehicle-to-home solution at a much, much lower price point than what’s available today to make it palatable for consumers that want basic use cases, just power my house when the power’s out,” Wilmer said. “You get into the more interesting use cases where I can sell my energy back or things like that, that’s all possible as well. But in the US, I mean, I had three power outages on Christmas Day; that was brutal.”

V2G（车网互动）指日可待？ChargePoint 已为北美市场开发了一系列更便宜、功率更大的二级（交流，240V）充电桩，并与伊顿（Eaton）合作（利用其智能断路器技术）以实现双向充电。“我们正努力推动实现车到家（V2H）解决方案，其价格要比目前市场上的产品低得多，从而让那些只需基本功能——即在停电时为房屋供电——的消费者能够接受，” Wilmer 说。“至于更高级的使用场景，比如将电能卖回电网等，这些也都是可能的。但在美国，圣诞节那天我就经历了三次停电，那真是太糟糕了。”

But Wilmer thinks a degree of standardization, both among the automotive industry and electrical utilities, is a necessary step before the widespread growth of V2G, where EVs might send spare power back to the grid, becomes commonplace. Additionally, “the first thing you need is cars that are AC bidirectional. Most of the vehicles in the market now only are DC bidirectional. And a DC bidirectional solution in the home is way expensive and physically very large. It just takes up way too much space. So we need the cars to get AC bidirectional-capable,” he said.

但 Wilmer 认为，在 V2G（电动汽车将多余电力回馈给电网）普及之前，汽车行业和电力公司之间必须实现一定程度的标准化。此外，“首要条件是车辆必须具备交流双向充电能力。目前市场上的大多数车辆仅支持直流双向充电。而家庭直流双向解决方案非常昂贵，且体积庞大，占用空间太多。因此，我们需要车辆具备交流双向充电功能，” 他说。