The speed at which automotive industry is growing, electric vehicles no longer seem like a dream of the future. According to a UBS global auto survey, it is estimated that one in six new cars in the world will be electric by the year 2025. The emergence of electric vehicle has revolutionized the way people commute.
This disruptive trend of electric vehicles is expected to continue, especially with the billions of dollars that auto manufacturers are investing in these vehicles. Traditional automakers including General Motors, Volkswagen, Daimler AG, and others are all investing heavily in electric vehicles.
With the influx of electric vehicles into the market comes an essential need for charging infrastructure. Being an EV charging solution pioneer, Hong Kong EV Power Limited is leading the market with the best charging solutions and standards.
In an interview with Hong Kong EV Power, the CEO and Founder, Laurence Chan, and, the General Manager, Cliff Wu, shared their insights on EV Charging Infrastructure and how Hong Kong EV Power is contributing in it.
Give a brief overview of the company and its vision.
Laurence and Cliff: Hong Kong EV Power, a member of EV Power Group and a spinoff company from AMOS Enterprises Limited, is a fastest-growing Hong Kong company with two of its brands, EV Power and E-Charge. We aim to widen the adoption of EVs in Hong Kong. We provide comprehensive and professional EV charging solutions including the EV station, which is suitable for different types of EV cars to use, to all kinds of customers like individuals, corporates, power utilities and governments, as well as operating EV charging stations.
Initially, our financing history was smooth, compared to other startups in Hong Kong. The seed funding came largely from personal savings and earnings from projects undertaken by us. In August 2011, after a fundraising exercise period of some five months, we succeeded in raising HK$3 million through three angels from the HKBAN. In this way, we went on raising further investments. Focus Media, a Chinese company which operates the largest out-of-home advertising network in that country, is one of the largest investor of our company.
The Group’s business has been expanded to Mainland China since 2014 and currently covers 30 cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hong Kong and Macau. We are promoting the use of electric vehicles in Hong Kong and China by providing a convenient, safe and cost-effective charging solution for all EV drivers and various companies. We hope to turn the city to be greener and more environmental friendly.
What are the cutting-edge products/services offered by Hong Kong EV Power Limited?
Laurence and Cliff: We provide our clients with a variety of services including installation for private charging, consultancy and design for public charging, training for charging system, management, operation and maintenance of charging stations, as well as the internet connection for the charging stations. Our products cover car park charging network system, car park management system, medium charger and quick charger. The chargers are connected by E-Charge, which is a platform that drivers can look up the real-time status of all charging stations and can inspect the charging progress. With the increasing charging infrastructure, EV drivers can enjoy a safe and user-friendly charging experience.
Over 200 car parks in Hong Kong have installed our charging stations and more than 50 of them allow public access. We have served many residential and corporate clients. Currently, we are the public charging partners of Porsche, BMW, Hyundai, Mercedes Benz, Jaguar Land Rover and DFSK. In addition to this, we are the leading residential charging service provider in the market.
How does Hong Kong EV Power offer more value than its competitors?
Laurence and Cliff: When people cheer heartily for convenience and pollution-free features brought by the new energy vehicles, they have to face a problem of promoting them. The problem is how to install and use the charging piles after the community residents buying new energy vehicles. In the market, we have a strong property relationship to offer users the ultimate solution to the problem of home charging, as well as their concerns before buying the vehicles and their funds pressure to install the charger. In terms of the mall, we mainly construct the fast charging stations as supply for some users who do not have the charger at home to use electric vehicles in the first place, and then try to solve the problem of home charging.
Additionally, we consist of a group of hard-working and dedicated people that not only want to help better the environment but also to ensure the users’ safety and convenience when using any of our products. We have installed EV charging stations throughout malls, public parking lots, corporates as well as private housings to allow the use of our EV Chargers.
What are the challenges faced by electric vehicles industry and how is Hong Kong EV Power serving to tackle them?
Laurence and Cliff: As the pioneer of the EV charging service provider, we always strive to improve the services and make breakthrough to existing hurdles in the market. We believe that home charging is the only solution to promote the wider use of electric vehicles in private sector in Hong Kong.
However, it is more difficult for an individual user to set up home charging facilities in the residential apartments due to many issues such as limited electricity power source, high initial cost of construction, rejection of property managers and incorporated owners for the application, etc.
In order to serve our vision that states, Make Everywhere EV Ready, Lead EV Ready Everywhere, we have launched a Private EV Charging Service named Residential Apartment Scheme (RAS) in late 2014. We take care of the initial capital investments and the subsequent operations of the charging infrastructure in the whole residential car parks with obtaining the approval of property managers and incorporated owners, while individual EV users can simply apply and pay a monthly fee for the EV charging services at their own parking spaces. Therefore, RAS highly eases the setup of home charging facilities and relieve most of the concerns of property managers and incorporated owners in order to provide the win-win situations for the sustainable growth of the use of EV in Hong Kong.
Where does Hong Kong EV Power see itself in the long run and what are its future goals?
Laurence and Cliff: As the anticipated widespread use of EV is reaching an inflexion point in the coming years, we are striving to position ourselves to capture an exploding market. We are aiming for all the drivers to rely on our EV charging services and making sure that there is no concern in our charging solutions. However, we are in the process to build 5000 more charging stations by the end of 2018.
About the Leaders
Hong Kong EV Power has been ripened under the leadership of Laurence Chan, CEO and Founder, and Cliff Wu, General Manager. Laurence Chan steers the overall business development and the operations of EV Power Group in mainland China. He has completed his masters in electronic engineering from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. During his studies, Laurence founded AMOS Technology Company, which was then providing designer and consultancy service for electronic and electric power automation systems. He subsequently founded EV Power Limited in 2010. Under his leadership, EV Power has become today’s fastest growing EV Charging Service Provider in Hong Kong, Macau and mainland China.
Cliff Wu has over 9 years of extensive experience in engineering project management of electrical systems, telecommunication and broadcasting network infrastructure in a territory-wide scale. Prior to joining EV Power, he held managerial roles in Hong Kong Television Network Limited and Hong Kong Broadband Network Limited. After joining EV Power, he has been responsible for formulating and developing integrated EV charging solutions as well as the one-stop EV charging network platform ‘E-Charge’, and currently oversees Hong Kong and Macau business of the Group. Under his leadership, his team has completed numerous remarkable EV charging projects in the past few years, working closely with the HKSAR Government, HK International Airport, power utilities, land developers and international EV manufacturers. He also graduated from the Chinese University of Hong Kong with a Bachelor of Engineering Honors degree and a Master of Philosophy degree in Electronic Engineering. Apart from this, he is a credential holder of Project Management Professional (PMP) ®.
Source: The 10 Fastest Growing EVs Solution Providers, 2018
