Charging up: How Mexico's EV industry can address lack of transmission infra

Experts have proposed load sharing as one solution for Mexico’s young electric vehicle (EV) market due to the country's insufficient transmission infrastructure, but a company executive says it will only work if firms refrain from hoarding energy.

“If everyone hoards [the capacity] that is available now, the ability of the rest of us to use it diminishes,” Edgar Moreno, co-founder of charging infrastructure firm CE Neutral, told BNamericas on the sidelines of Mexico EV Day, hosted by local EV association AMIVE.

“The important thing for us is to know where the electricity is needed and make sure we can offer it in a shared way,” said Moreno, who is calling for a scheme where one load-sharing center provides service to a range of different companies.

The executive added that his proposal includes private funding, where firms specialized in charging infrastructure like CE Neutral could absorb part of the cost. 

“The infrastructure-focused companies could make a financial effort and reduce the initial amount invested by fleet owners. They would sign a medium-term contract committing themselves to use the infrastructure to charge their vehicles.” 

According to Moreno, lack of charging infrastructure should not be a reason for companies to rule out the introduction of EVs, and the focus should instead be on new financing schemes.

“I believe the solutions are there and so is the technology. The companies with the will to carry this out have made progress,” he said, “I believe that the next priority should be to see how we can make this easier, for instance by improving financial products so the banking sector can support firms with loans to fund their conversion to EVs.”

In a previous interview this week, AMIVE head Francisco Cabeza told BNamericas that the charging capacity for the load-sharing centers should be more than 500kW, in order to charge 5-10 vehicles with a single connector. 

“That makes sense because you're optimizing the available capacity at the site and you're giving the property the highest possible return on investment, giving new business to players who are established or those who want to participate in the electric vehicle market,” he said.

Another solution – which the industry is discussing with officials from the incoming administration of president-elect Claudia Sheinbaum – is distributed generation, increasing electrical capacity on site with the possibility of 1MW of energy storage, said Cabeza.

“I think that will be part of the solution, but we lack creativity to solve this challenge that we have, which is great energy demand, not only from electric vehicles but also from datacenters, which are very important for the world,” he said.