Norman Deschamps is a veteran SBI Energy analyst. His reports for SBI include the recently released SBI Energy market research study, EVSE Electric Vehicle Service Equipment Market Worldwide. In reviewing his report for publication I became intrigued with electric vehicle fleets.

Shelley: Norman, I want to know more about the fleet market. Its numbers are being captured in two segments--residential/home charging and commercial fleet charging sponsored by public or private enterprises. Do I understand this correctly? I want to know what portion of home/residential chargers is sold for private fleet operations.

This seems a lucrative opportunity, as residential chargers don’t require complicated wiring (it is similar to wiring a house to use a generator; not usually done, but not technically difficult). More importantly, vehicle to home (V2H) applications typically do not require a special permit from local authorities or utilities to implement (again, same as what is required by state for generator installation). For fleet applications, "home" is the depot where the vehicles are stored when off-shift. For the vehicle to grid (V2G) market, SBI Energy sees fleet operators being some of the first to make use of bi-directional chargers, providing power back to the grid for a profit. Fleets will have hundreds of vehicles charging over night, providing a potentially considerable source of revenue.

Norman: Shelley, unfortunately that is not distinguishable. The home market is based on the number of EVs sold, but, data on what percentage of those sales are to private citizens and what percentage are sold to businesses is only available for a few regions like the U.S. So there is certainly some percentage of the global home/residential EVSE market that is fleet but I do not know what that would be.

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