BloombergNEF recently released its updated Zero-Emission Vehicles Factbook, which estimates cumulative investment in EV charging hardware and installation will reach US$62 billion at the end of this year, with US$28.6 billion having been invested just in 2022, up 228 per cent from the year before. Of the total investment in 2022, 61 per cent is attributed to more than 600,000 public chargers built in China.
That stage ended and the second phase began around 2019, when the industry hit new scale. The public charging network, while still relatively sparse, came into meaningful existence and charging speeds were boosted. Tesla was more or less a lone performer up to this point, with around 12,000 superchargers globally and 120 kilowatt max charging speeds.
Public charging companies are reaching new scale, delivering delivering hundreds to thousands of gigawatt-hours of electricity, ranking them among the top-consuming electricity companies in the world. TGood, the biggest charging operator in China, distributed 4 terawatt-hours last year, compared to 15 TWh for Alphabet and 24 TWh for Amazon.