In this episode of Fueling the future, we speak to Erik Berens about the EV market. From adoption rates to navigating the constant changes, join us as we take a deep dive into the EV market.
What we have seen in the last few years is that driving an EV has been something predominantly for the early adapters. And the main blockers that we have seen to make this achievable and affordable for the early majority have been blockers like the high price to purchase an EV, especially privately. But also blockers like, is the charging infrastructure good enough, does it bring me from A to Z?
And in the last year, especially in 2023, we have seen better infrastructure, people getting more comfortable with the product, getting more comfortable actually getting from A to Z. What's also helping and what we expect in the next 18 months is quite a long list of affordable EVs, which will come to the market, which will make this market ready for the early majority, which will change the buyer profile.
So in the past, we have seen the leasing companies, the business drivers, predominantly driving an EV. Where we now will start seeing, within 18 months, more of the private owners stepping into the segment.
As I just said, I have the buyer profiles changing more towards private and you see more competitive priced EVs coming to market. You will notice that people are financing their charging infrastructure privately, and no longer being funded by leasing companies, or businesses in general.
That means, and will mean, further price pressure in the value chain, pressure to come to market with more affordable solutions. This pressure will lead to margin compression at all players in the value chain. In the end, that compression will lead to certain parties will simply not be able to remain competitive in this market, forcing them to either vertically integrate or start more strategically cooperating together, and therefore you'll see a more condensed market.
Luckily we stand strong on the shoulders of giants and we are fully vertically integrated, allowing us to remain flexible with the startup mentality that we have and at the same time utilising the great manufacturing facilities, the engineers that we all have in-house.
Yeah, indeed on our market journey to become a more mature market, on a very regular basis, things are changing in regulation in different countries. Not just regulation, also customer demand and demand for different features are rapidly changing and evolving over time, as this market indeed matures.
It is our challenge to balance between operational excellence and flexibility. Because on the one hand you want operational excellence in order to remain affordable, but you also need to remain as flexible as possible to adapt and basically allow yourself to survive in a very dynamic market.
We as Peblar have everything in-house, meaning from injection molding to software engineers, the full assembly everything is done in-house. So not being dependent on a very long very complex value chain helps us to make changes on a daily basis very rapidly because we only rely on our internal colleagues.