Coulomb Technologies is now ChargePoint and ChargePoint is poised to become the industry electric vehicle charging equipment leader. In just a few years, Coulomb Technologies has become a global leading player.
Coulomb Technologies is set to become a giant, much as GM, EG and others once started out as small entrepreneurial companies and have become global players. Coulomb Technologies started a few years ago in Silicon Valley has grown leaps and bound. I remember the little company I visited in 2008 in their small shop perfecting their iconic ChargePoint. Now Coulomb Technologies is ChargePoint and ChargePoint is all about the hardware. Can you guess where Coulomb Technologies is going?
It’s IBM All Over Again. IBM made the brilliant strategic move to let go of its hardware business and go back to what made them who they are, a consulting company. Hardware is a tricky business and margins can be thin. However, Pike Research predicts ChargePoint is set to also become a key global leader of the electric vehicle charging equipment market. Pike Research also predicts global sales of electric vehicle supply equipment will grow at an astonishing rate of 37% between 2012 and 2020. With less than 200,000 units sold last year, this number is predicted to rise to 2.4 million by 2020. Not bad for a new business model.
DBT, The Challenger. The only real competition ChargePoint has is DBT. Pike Research concludes it is too early to see which business model will prevail. It believes so far, electric vehicle charging equipment companies need to build more units in order to reduce their overall cost and compete.
Just How Disruptive The EV Model Is. As with almost anything we hear these days, you would think established companies have a sure place in the competition. It couldn’t be further from the truth. Pike Research found that the closest contenders; Eaton, General Electric, Efacec, Leviton, Schneider Electric and Siemens. These companies that have not yet achieved a significant market share yet. Who are the leaders followed by? Legrand and Better Place. This is particularly interesting because it shows once again that in this new field of electric vehicle, and particularly charging equipment, new players have a better chance of grabbing market shares than established companies. So who is Legrand exactly? The company is just starting to make a splash in the market and we’ve all heard of Better Place who has been around a long time, in terms of EV years.
One thing is for sure, the landscape moves, nothing is set in stone and big companies usually acquire smaller ones. We might all know of Eaton, Schneider Electrics and AeroVironment, and they could at some point go on a spending spree, consolidating their services and strengthening their market shares.
If the world of automobiles has got you yawning these past few decades, nowhere has it been more alive than in the last 6 to 7 years, save for the glory is of the beginning of last century. If the chicken or the egg debate is over, i.e. build cars first or charging stations, now comes the time for bettering equipment, refining services and see which player makes it to the finishing line.
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