Electric Switch: the electric vehicle offering
Today’s electric vehicles are still a long way from achieving full driving range autonomy. But their number is steadily increasing and city authorities and governments are promoting them for environmental reasons.
The potential number of electric vehicles in the Greater Paris area in 2050 has been estimated at 300,000. They would require a minimum of 220 suburban charging stations with 7 MW charging power and associated services such as robotised carwashes and small repairs.
How can we gain a foothold in this emerging market?
Since VINCI does not deliver vehicle services, it was difficult to conceptualise the transition to service provision for a fleet of 300,000 vehicles. The idea was therefore to think about providing a B2B fleet electrification service.
To address these issues, LEONARD set up a “Charging and Servicing Infrastructure” working group involving several VINCI Group entities.
Houda Matta, Smart Building coordinator at Building Solutions, took part in the working group in tandem with CITEOS IDF grands projets project manager Manuel Berthomieu. Their goal was to assess the potential for developing services focused on recharging within buildings. The work resulted in the creation of a range of solutions: “Electric Switch“.
“Electric Switch” in close-up
Electric Switch is based on the assumption that internal combustion vehicles will be phased out within the foreseeable future in France (at least in large cities). So how can we support the switchover from internal combustion to electric vehicles?
That is the purpose of the project – to offer an integrated model covering the vehicle, recharging infrastructure (installation and maintenance), administrative procedures and OPEX financing.
Electric Switch is designed for the fleets of medium-sized companies, such as large SMEs / mid-cap companies (in the Greater Paris area) with fleets comprising between 10 and 50 cars and limited capital investment capacity.
Why? Because these companies and administrations purchase half of all new vehicles sold in France and re-sell them on the used vehicle market after three years.
In doing this, they impede the spread of electric vehicles due to the complexity of the switchover (slow or rapid charging, fire safety in the car park, charging points per substation and power allocation, monitoring, authentication, invoicing, etc.) and the upfront investment cost.
The new range of solutions would overcome these two obstacles by delivering an integrated offer, with financing spread over three years, comprising
- A study covering fleet switchover to electric vehicles,
- Installation of recharging infrastructure
- Operation of recharging equipment
Based on the most recent report by CODA Stratégies, which reviews the current status of electric vehicle charging infrastructure in France, we expect the rollout of 225,000 company charging points by 2025 and 600,000 by 2030. If we aim to cover just 0.1% of this market, we could achieve a balanced business model within just two years.
What is now needed is an entity to support the offer, arrange partnerships, fine-tune financial structuring, prepare technical design and engineering documents, prepare industrialisation (sales and marketing materials, technical template, website, etc.) and model and implement the switchover of a first vehicle fleet. Anyone interested?
Did you like the article ?
