EV Charging as the Bottleneck for EV adoption: Evaluating the current state of EV charging at Bangkok condominiums

In a recent ABeam Consulting survey, 72% of Thai consumers said that poor public charging infrastructure is the reason they are not considering buying a fully electric vehicle (link to the survey). The need to build a widespread, fast, and reliable public EV charging infrastructure in Thailand is well-understood, however the challenges related to home charging, the most common way for private owners to charge their battery electric vehicles (BEV), are less known. 

In June 2022, ABeam Consulting evaluated the state of EV charging at condominiums and other multi-story buildings in the Bangkok Metropolitan Region (BMR), the center of Thailand’s economy and the adoption of BEV. In BMR, multi-story residential buildings account for more than a third of all registered units and for more than half of all newly registered units every year.

Our research indicates that the lack of EV charging facilities at multi-story buildings will be a limiting factor for future BEV adoption. While we identified over 130 condominium projects that provide EV charging access, they account for only 3% of all multi-story projects. In addition, the residents of these projects must often pay high prices for EV charging making the use of fully electric vehicles less cost-effective.

ABeam Consulting was the knowledge partner at the Future Mobility Asia 2022, an event held from July 20th to 22nd, 2022 at BITEC in Bangkok. The findings of our research were first presented at the event and can be accessed through the link below.