At this year's Los Angeles Auto Show, Hyundai introduced a new home charging option, part of the company's strategy to attract a different crowd of electric vehicle (EV) buyers.
Hyundai Home
Solar panels, energy storage, and electric vehicle charging are part of what Hyundai calls "Hyundai Home."
According to TechCrunch, Hyundai has teamed up with Electrum, an installer of solar panels, house batteries, and heat pumps, to better serve clients in 16 states looking to purchase EV charging infrastructure.
Arizona, California, and Colorado customers will benefit from the new alliance.
Electrum advisers are now available to residents of the following states: Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Maine, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, and Washington.
According to Hyundai's senior group manager of strategic environmental alliances, Ian Tupper, dealers were already assisting customers in contacting local installers and power providers to set up charging and storage for new Hyundai EVs like the Ioniq 5 before this week's announcement.
Tupper told TechCrunch in an interview that they want to make the EV adoption and charging infrastructure available to everyone through this initiative.
"We want to make it easy for customers to go solar to get energy storage and to eventually use all those systems together to reduce their energy bill," he added.
The Problem
States like California have outlawed the sale of new gasoline automobiles by 2035 as part of a broader effort to cut carbon emissions throughout the country, particularly from tailpipes or vehicles powered by fossil fuels.
This implies that more and more people in the US are considering buying electric vehicles, plug-in hybrids, or hybrids.
However, according to the US Census, about a third of American households are renters, and most rental properties are older.
Therefore, tenants will need landlords willing to invest in panel upgrades and provide charging access in multiunit garages to have access to at-home charging.
Costs might range from about $1,300 to $3,000 or more to alter the electrical panel of a single-family house so that it can be used to charge a car.
Many individuals, particularly those who live in multifamily complexes without access to home charging, will not be able to purchase or use battery-electric, hybrid, or plug-in electric cars due to their high cost.
Tupper claims that Hyundai is thinking about doing this, but he could not provide any specifics about their future intentions.
The Solution
"If we want to achieve mass adoption, we need to solve that problem for renters and so we're attacking it in a couple of different ways," said Tupper.
The company is pursuing a strategic collaboration to incentivize as many recharging stations as possible. It is also trying to identify more players to give solutions.
Tupper said that if they can assist a city build a charging center and incentivize low-power AC charging, they would.
Hyundai is working with partners like Electrum to deliver additional charging and power storage alternatives to consumers in states other than the 16 areas Electrum covers.
This article is owned by Tech Times
Written by Trisha Kae Andrada
