The take-up of electric vehicles (EVs) in the UAE will hinge on the swift installation of charging stations in residential areas and hotels.
Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, is in Dubai today, with the EV manufacturer expected to announce its launch in the country. Over the next month, Tesla is also expected to announce deals with major hotel operators in Dubai and Abu Dhabi to install charging stations on their properties.
Fully charging an EV can take more than four times longer than it takes to fuel up a regular car. While Tesla cars can charge in as little as 20 minutes with its supercharger technology, ideal charging locations will be at places where drivers are already spending time rather than at a filling station.
Tesla has been targeting hotels, restaurants, shopping centres and resorts in its markets to make charging at a destination “as simple as charging at home”.
Its website says: “Pull up and plug into a Tesla wall connector to charge Model S while you shop, dine, or even during an overnight stay”.
The Dubai-based international hotel chain Jumeirah Group is looking to grab a piece of the emerging EV market. Peter Stubbs, the director of compliance at Jumeirah, said earlier this month during the Emirates Electric Vehicle Road Trip (EVRT) that the hotelier was looking to instal 20 new EV charging stations by 2020 as well as introducing an EV fleet.
The French utility Engie, which is installing charging stations throughout Europe, has already set up nine in the UAE including at Abu Dhabi’s Sofitel Corniche Hotel as well as hotels in Fujairah and Ras Al Khaimah as part of the Emirates EVRT. It offers two types of charging stations with time to charge ranging from 30 minutes to an hour.
Mark Senten, Engie’s executive vice president of the Middle East, South and Central Asia and Turkey, said that while it would base its UAE business model on what it was doing in Europe, there are slight differences.
As Engie will not be supplying the electricity it will instead rely more on operations and maintenance services to be profitable.
Engie is the world’s largest private power producer with generation capacity at 115.3 gigawatts. It has supplied more than 5,000 charging points across Europe, manufacturing its stations in Brussels, Belgium. It will soon open a facility in Asia and Mr Senten said Dubai could be a hub for its products.
Tesla has not had a profitable year since going public in 2010, although the company’s US$41.4 billion market capitalisation now equals that of Nissan, which reported a profit of $4.7bn last year, according to Reuters.
At its California assembly plant, Tesla is preparing for production of its Model 3 sedan, as the company works to meet its target to start production in July.
More than 370,000 customers have put down deposits for a Model 3, according to Tesla.
lgraves@thenational.ae
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