Companies pile in to build EV charging posts in China

March 9, 2014 Leave a comment

Companies pile in to build EV charging posts in China

Staff Reporter

2014-03-05

Large electric-car charging pile constructors, operators and equipment suppliers are tapping into opportunities offered by numerous local governments in China, unveiling plans to construct electric car charging facilities in their localities, although small companies are still hesitant to venture into the sector, Shanghai’s China Business News reports.

Beijing has announced plans to complete the construction of 1,000 public fast-charging electric car stands by the end of this year, covering the downtown area and nearby suburbs. Locations for 100 public fast-charging points have already been confirmed.

Shanghai and Tianjin also announced plans to construct some 6,000 piles each in the cities.

An electric car industry insider told the paper that China Putian, a leading technology company that makes telecommunications products, including switching systems and other networking products, had been holding talks with the Beijing government. “Both governments and enterprises have started talking to us,” a source from Putian said.

Commissioned by state enterprises, Putian China is responsible for the construction and operations of the electric vehicle charging services network in various local regions served by these companies.

The company dominates the electric-vehicle charging equipment market along with a few other enterprises, the report pointed out, adding that the State Grid Corporation of China and China Southern Power Grid Company had undertaken large construction projects of charging stations, with the former vying for the construction of electric vehicle (EV) charging service networks in Beijing and Tianjin in 2011, while China Southern Power Grid Company was engaged in electric vehicle charging and battery rental services.

China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation (Sinopec) and China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) have constructed EV fast-charging systems near the many gas stations they have already opened in various regions.

In comparison to state-run enterprises, however, private enterprises in the charging equipment industry are hesitant to invest considerably in the sector, mainly because they think the market is not mature enough.

Sizeable capital needs to be invested in the sector, even though it provides only low returns on investment, the paper stated.

A major problem for the industry is the minimal development of the number of electric vehicles in China, mainly because local enterprises’ electric vehicle and battery production standards are still not on par, an expert said, adding that the government should step in to promote EV-related industry by pooling the efforts of various government agencies.

 

Filed under Macro Trends

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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