S. Korea has best EV infrastructure per unit in world: report

South Korea has the most established electric vehicle charging infrastructure per unit in the world, a report by an autonomous intergovernmental organization said Tuesday.

The latest findings released in the Global EV Outlook 2022 by the Paris-based International Energy Agency showed that South Korea had 2.6 EVs per charging point last year.

A charging point refers to the number of sockets that can charge vehicles at the same time.

Among the 20 countries included in the report, South Korea had the best EV per charging point ratio last year as the world average in 2021 was 9.5 EVs per charging point.

Europe showed 15.5 EVs per charging point and China 7.2 EVs per charging point.

South Korea also showed the highest average kW per EV ratio with 6.5kW per EV while the worldwide average stood at 2.4kW per EV.

The Chinese and European markets are pulling the global averages downwards with 3.8 kW per EV and 1.0kW per EV respectively.

But slow chargers with an output of less than 22kW still account for a large portion of the options available in South Korea.

Last year, the country had 105 thousand chargers available among which 86 percent of them were slow chargers and only 14 percent were fast chargers.

Slow charger installations were on the upswing last year as compared to 2020.

In 2021, the number of slow chargers increased by 67 percent on-year while fast chargers increased by 53 percent on-year.

Globally, on the other hand, slow chargers account for 68 percent of EV chargers while fast chargers account for 32 percent.

The auto industry says there must be much more fast chargers available to have more EVs fully charged in a short amount of time as stocks of EVs are augmenting.

In response, Hyundai Motor Group established 20 E-pit fast charging stations with a total of 120 charging points each with up to 350Kw charging capacity last year.

The E-pit chargers can charge an EV twice as fast as other fast chargers.

Hyundai Motor Group also recently announced a partnership with Lotte Group and KB Asset Management to expand ultra-fast charging infrastructure in the country with the addition of 5,000 units by 2025.

By Hong Yoo (yoohong@heraldcorp.com)