Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1350598
34 PCB007 MAGAZINE I MARCH 2021 the director laughed. He said, "We don't know where we are going. Nobody knows where we are going. We need to push, but we don't know if we need to go to the right or we need to go to the le." His conclusion was very simple and what it told me was, ultimately, the elec- tric vehicle is not an ideal solution. e world, the big cities, are not prepared to support this massive number of electric vehicles. ere is not enough power to support this among many other logistic problems. It was an informal conversation between us, but he gave me a very simple example that most people don't think about: "We deliver around 100 to 200 cars to our customers—the automo- tive shops—every week, so we can sell them to the customers." But the constant discussion was, "Are we going to deliver the electric cars loaded or with empty batteries?" If you send the cars with empty batteries, you have no capacity to charge them. If I have no capacity to charge 200 cars a week, how will my customers take the cars home? ey will get stuck on the way home because the batteries aren't charged. e magnitude of using or implementing thousands of cars in the cities is just not something people think about. We are simply not prepared for this at the moment. So, we really don't know where we are going, but we know that there will be a change and we're looking for the ideal solution. Johnson: It does seem as if everyone pays attention to the on-board vehicle applica- tions, but the infrastructure is every bit as challenging and has many of the same environ- mental resilience issues. e infrastructure needs to carry a lot of current, and will require a complex, complicated roll- out. Is Aismalibar looking to get involved on the infrastruc- ture side? Benmayor: No. Infrastructure is a thing that belongs to the big electric power companies. Of course, we are already involved in several projects related to the charging modules that will be installed in gas stations. Several of our customers are using our Aismalibar Cobrith- erm IMS materials for AC/DC chargers in the gas stations. ey are talking about huge vol- umes in the following years, but we still need the power companies to support all these char- gers; we are talking about 10 to 12 kilowatts per charger, so where are we going to grab the energy from in the cities? I really don't see how the electric compa- nies will be able to supply two or three times the required power into the big cities. Don't forget that when we have a peak of hot tem- perature in the summertime, the electricity in the cities is overloaded, which already creates issues. In several big cities, there is not enough capacity. Let's assume that we need to double this capacity because we need to charge the cars every day. It's not an easy thing to solve. Johnson: at concern gets the least amount of attention in the conversation, that's for sure. And yet, the car we're talking about isn't going to be functional at all if you cannot get it charged. Power and charging challenges influence EV adoptions.