For Apple Car, a Chargepoint buy makes more sense than Peloton

Apple’s biggest challenge putting a vehicle on the road may not be the design, probably isn’t the artificial intelligence, and might not be the software and manufacturing – but almost certainly is the most mundane challenge of all: the lack of charging points.

Apple Cars need chargepoints, too

In the US, Apple’s home turf and still its most important market, the US Department of Energy tells us there are just 111,000 public charging stations for electronic vehicles (EV), which is what the Apple Car is expected to be.

That’s going to increase; the US Infrastructure Bill aims to fund a national network of 500,000 chargers. While this is a large number, it’s not enough, and deployment will take time. Given these power-up places need to be evenly distributed across the country to prevent people in EVs from running out of juice as they travel, the lack of infrastructure will be a stumbling block to anyone in the EV space — including the current No. 2 US EV manufacturer, Ford.

Hybrid vehicles will not be around forever, as the transition from fossil fuels seems inevitable over time.

But the problem is that cars move — and while domestic EV charging points may form part of the solution, they are of no use at all when you’ve jumped into your Apple Car and asked Siri to drive you through Dakota.

Given most economies have now put EV deployment on the fast track toward 2030, the rate of infrastructure deployment needs to accelerate. It must. The World Economic Forum estimates we’ll need an enormous 290 million charging points to support all the EVs it expects to be in use worldwide by 2040.