It’s hard to miss the sheer number of booths focused on electric-powered vehicles at the consumer electronics show in Las Vegas this year.
From bikes to skates to cars, it’s all here.
“We see this market just starting, so it's just starting to grow and there is so much demand,” said Julia Hansen, the business development director at Holon.
Sales of electric vehicles increased 88 percent from 2020 to 2021, according to AAA. But it’s not just electric cars gaining traction.
“We’re developing out E3, this is the concept vehicle here, it's an all electric auto cycle,” said Duane Hughes, the CEO of GreenStreet EV Inc..
The three-wheel vehicle holds two passengers. The 600-pound battery sits in the back, which creates a well-distributed weight balance across the machine. It has a 250 mile range on a single charge and can go 0 to 60 in six seconds, with a top speed of 80 mph.
“It drives like a car, even though it's considered a motorcycle,” said Hughes.
Just across the hall, mobility company Holon had an autonomous people mover up for display. Yes, that means no driver.
“This vehicle is a fully electric vehicle and it’s driving fully autonomous,” Hansen said. “This mover is designed to fit 15 people in total. So 10 seated and five standing.”
Holon plans on launching first series production at the end of 2025. The first prototypes will be available in 2024. Hansen said their main customers will be municipalities.
“There is a need for such reliable vehicles, and this is why we say we start now and not later,” she said.
Sony and Honda also announced their new electric card brand named Afeela at CES 2023, joining a constantly expanding industry. The Ram truck brand also released an electric truck concept.
According to a study by the U.S. Department of Energy and the Idaho National Laboratory, EV owners can save as much as $24,500 on fuel costs by having an electric vehicle for 15 years.
“Between now and the next 15, 20 years, we’re going to do as a society what we did 100 years ago as we moved from horses and buggies to combustion engine cars. We’re going to repeat the same story as we move into electric cars,” said Nadim Maluf, the CEO of Qnovo.
“We make the software layer that's the intelligence that sits above the battery,” he said of the company. They have partnered with Vanderhall to bring their battery management software to Vanderhall’s electric off-road vehicles this year.
Maluf said Qnovo is doing to electric batteries what phone cameras did to photography. Their battery management software claims to reduce charging time to nearly 20 minutes and improve EV range by up to 10%.
“We recognize that the battery is never ideal. Making batteries is hard, it’s expensive, and scaling that…is really a massive undertaking,” he said.
The EV industry has run into some challenges as the industry expands. Some of these issues include creating a power grid strong enough to power all of these vehicles, the accessibility of plug-ins for charging, and overall cost of battery technology.
Research by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory found that today’s batteries may last 12 to 15 years in moderate climates, and 8 to 12 years in extreme climates, as cited by the U.S. Department of Energy.
“Everything in the world is going toward electric, not just the automotive space,” Hughes said.