The market for plug-in EVs will reach about 24.5 million vehicles in 2026, says Yole Developpement, and the market value of DC chargers will reach almost $18.5 billion by 2026 with a CAGR of 18.5%.
The total market value of power electronic devices for DC chargers will grow with a CAGR2020-2026 of 21.5%.
Technology trends are:
AC common bus architecture is gaining interest…
Monolithic vs Modular: modular charger will remain the most common charger approach.
Converter topology: Vienna rectifier (for AC-DC stage) combined with LLC DC converter (for DC-DC stage) will remain the mainstream.
ANPC converter (for AC-DC stage) is also gaining in interest as well.
“While low-power DC chargers, up to 20-30 kW, are commonly based on a monolithic design approach, the modular design is dominant in high-power chargers,” says Yole’s Milan Rosina. In the modular approach, a charger is built of several charger modules connected in parallel. The modular approach has advantages of high design flexibility, scalability, and availability.
Discrete devices are suitable for both low-power monolithic chargers and high-power chargers based on low-power charger modules, discrete devices dominate the DC EV market howeve, with increasing charger power, the number of related low-power charger modules is increasing beyond optimal levels.
For example, for a 350 kW charger about 12 30 kW charger modules will be needed. Charger module manufacturers are looking to improve their products’ power density, efficiency, and to increase their nominal power to 50 kW and beyond to make them more suitable for high-power chargers.
‘DC charger technology rapidly evolves, and many technology trends were identified and analyzed in this report. Two opposite trends exist regarding charger power,” says Rosina, “one is a power increase up to 350 kW and beyond in the future to accelerate charging and enable charging in heavy-mobility applications. The other is a power decrease from a historical base level of 50 kW as an alternative to AC charging solutions”.
Charger voltage follows the trends in EV battery packs. As battery voltage increases from 400 V to 800 V levels, driven by Porsche, Hyundai and other car makers, the charger voltage increases from 500 V to 1,000 V. This results in the chargers using power components rated at 1,200 V.
Other trends include increasing use of SiC mosfet devices, growing market share of power modules, bidirectional chargers for V2G and V2H applications, and battery energy storage to reduce peak loads on the electricity grid.
Regulations and technologies for EVs, EV batteries and chargers evolve rapidly. This brings new opportunities or threats to the charging infrastructure companies such as ABB, Tritium and Tesla, but also to the companies involved in Semiconductor and packaging materials, device packaging, industrial systems, EV/HEV and battery manufacturers, and utility companies.