It’s more than decarbonisation: why electric vehicles will change the world.
And why we invested in Monta
Moving towards electric
OK, we know we need to decarbonise transport.
Transport accounts for one-fifth of our global greenhouse gas emissions, with nearly half of those coming from “road passenger vehicles” (like taxis, cars and buses).
The good news is that low emissions alternative - electric vehicles - are already available! So why haven’t we all made the transition?
It is starting to happen. Electric vehicles (EV’s) sales went up by 40% last year, to over 10m globally, and some have suggested that we’re just reaching the start of the famed ‘S curve’ of technology adoption.
There’s growing government support too. There are incentives encouraging EV sales, and many countries (India, and those in the EU to name a few) have pledged to completely phase out new internal combustion engine vehicles by 2030. Yet, despite all this, electric vehicles are still only 1% of the total number of vehicles sold.
There are a few reasons for this.
Legacy vehicles are yet to be replaced (people don’t replace their cars every year), production cost is still prohibitive (electric cars are more expensive than non-electric) and, perhaps most importantly, our spaces just aren’t set up for electric vehicles.
Electric vehicles require fundamentally different infrastructure from petrol stations: it takes longer to charge a car, and right now, we simply don’t have enough electric charge points. This matters as charging issues can put drivers off committing to electric vehicles in the first place, because of ‘range anxiety’ - the fear of not being able to access a charge point when you need it - or the clunkiness of the experience when you do find a charge point.
It’s easy to think of petrol stations as ‘part of life’, but petrol stations themselves have changed and evolved in the last one hundred years. They’ve changed from being places to fuel the car, to self service pumps, to places where you buy milk and cigarettes. We think electric charge points will mould our behaviour yet again, both with new locations and new charging habits and routines, and also with the new structures of ownership made possible by electricity.
We need to make sure everyone has access
For electric charge points to shape our society in new ways, we need to make sure that accessing charge points is convenient and accessible to everyone - not just those with at-home charging.
Unlike petrol, which has a few key players owning the majority of filling stations, electric charging presents the opportunity for many more owners of electric charge points. Electric charge points are cheaper and easier to set up than petrol stations, and as such there are already lots of electric charge point owners and market fragmentation.
Multiple charge points is generally a good thing, but for this to be helpful for customers there needs to be an aggregation layer. It is simply not scalable to have hundreds of different charge point types, and different ways of accessing them, without losing customer patience. We can’t build the world we want - independent from the major oil companies - without some level of aggregation.
Hello Monta
We invested in Monta in March of this year.
We love the Monta founders, Casper and Anders, because of their irrepressible passion for electric vehicles (every new employee gets taken out for a spin, to see first hand how electric vehicle charging works right now) and because of their dedication to the vision of a completely seamless electric future.
They are doing this by building the technical layer that is sorely needed for the future of electric vehicles. This requires software focused around the needs of the installers and operators, and a best-in-class consumer app. Monta is taking on both these challenges, all the while building around the needs of a brand new, and fast growing, set of people and needs.
But wait, what’s the point of electric vehicles if they’re powered by fossil fuels?
Electric vehicles might have the power to decarbonise transport, with the right price point and infrastructure, but how they are powered matters too. Firstly, it’s worth noting that a growth in EV’s will not - contrary to what some believe - lead to huge demand for power from the grid. McKinsey’s report argued EV’s will add just 1% increase in demand by 2030. EV’s can in fact help the grid: providing temporary storage for electricity grids.
As the grid builds its reliance on renewable energy sources - for example intermittent sources like wind and solar - EV’s could play a vital role in reducing the volatility of the grid. This is because of ‘Vehicle-to-Grid’: a system that allows EV owners to essentially ‘feed the power grid’, selling back the stored electricity to power companies during demand peaks.
This vehicle-to-grid system basically treats EV’s as spare batteries - and using this system could reduce the need for power generation from fossil fuels by 76% in the next 20 years - while also creating revenue for EV owners. Some have even estimated that in the next few years, EV chargers will have the same peak power as a nuclear reactor.
We firmly believe electric vehicles are the future, and that fixing charging will exponentially increase adoption. We are super excited to join Monta on their journey to create a transformative product to help make electric vehicles the de facto choice in how we move - and build a world no longer reliant on fossil fuels.