Greg Scheu, ABB’s President for the Americas Region, spoke at CERAWeek in Houston at the panel “Electrifying Transportation: How Far, How Fast?” on March 14, 2019:
“We're enabling this new electrified transportation with charging of automobiles, with charging of buses, the trains (electric trains). And electric propulsion of ships, now, with electric ships and the storage on board.
“So, it's the early days of what we think is going to be a rapid development going forward. Let me tell you a little bit specifically about what we're doing on fast-charging. Patti [Poppe, CMS Energy CEO] and I were talking about this as well.
“We have charging in the home that ABB can provide. That's typically the fallback position. People will charge just like they do with their phone overnight. Utilities may have something to say about when you actually turn that on and activate it.
“In densely-populated markets, we see a lot of demand response between the home and the utility. But on fast-charging with our technology – we’re the market leader around the world – enabling fast-charging of automobiles now in over fifty countries with more than ten thousand fast chargers that are built by ABB.
“We're doing it through all kinds of business models. Sometimes the utilities. Sometimes the operators coming in between the utility.
“There might even be a filling station. As you look at where [drivers] may have got their gas tank filled before, doing it at up to three hundred and fifty kilowatts.
“Electrical engineers still have to go into these terms. But what that basically means is that you can now, with a car that can handle that much charge at once, and the new models are certainly designed for that, you can charge your battery in the same amount of time that it would take to fill your gas tank.
“So, this idea of, first of all, cars with a greater range. Second, where do I go?
“Now, the infrastructure has got to continue to be built out. We're seeing that happen very fast in China, and starting to happen more and more in the U.S. Then you'll be able to approximate that same experience and still have a chance to go ahead, buy your snacks and your soda, come back and you'll have a charged car.”