Within the next five years, public charging stations will proliferate – “filling” our plug-in cars, and filling their cash registers, too. 

A new study by ABI Research forecasts that, by 2016, there will be nearly three million vehicle charging stations worldwide, with annual revenues associated with the purchase and installation of those stations growing to nearly $13 billion that year.

Practice Director Larry Fisher said that governments around the world are investing in projects to install public charging stations for plug-in electric vehicles. Countries such as China, Israel and Denmark are even investing in automated battery switch stations, which trade depleted batteries in electric vehicles for fully charged batteries in a matter of minutes.

Fisher observed that business models are only now being developed for public charging of electric cars. “Ultimately, public charging may require contracts similar to today’s cell phone contracts, which provide ‘all-you-can-eat’ charging for a single price, or which offer a specific amount of charging and then hike the price for additional electrical usage.”

The ABI Research (News - Alert) report, Electric Vehicle Infrastructures: Charging Stations for Electric and Hybrid-Electric Vehicles, examined the state of the electric vehicle charging market, with forecasts of the number of stations to be installed worldwide, by major region and country, from 2011 through 2016.

The report offers insights into the types of charging stations that will be most prevalent, the countries and regions in which most charging station installations will take place, and the outlook for charging station components. It also includes discussion and forecasts for automated battery switch stations.

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