Challenges and Opportunities for Car Retail Business in Electric Vehicle Charging Ecosystem

Mainstream electric vehicle adoption (EV) is essential to decarbonise the transportation sector. Car retail business needs to be transformed in many countries to meet legislative requirements that ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars. To that end, this paper surveys the opportunities and challenges for car dealerships who could become key players in transport electrification. The challenges are identified as deploying charging infrastructure at business sites, keeping EV batteries healthy until they are sold, and lack of standards and protocols for chargers and communication systems. On the other hand, right investments could make car dealers main players in the energy markets. A number of opportunities, including providing ancillary services and public charging access, as well as reuse of old EV batteries, are discussed in detail. Such considerations are critical in this early stage of designing charging stations for the future of net-zero economies.