At the Proptech Innovation Now conference held on May 16, 2024, not only representatives of the traditional construction and real estate industries were present, but also the increasingly influential e-mobility sector, which demands advanced infrastructure and an immediate change of perspective.
“The urban citizen will die from the cars of those commuting into the city while moving out of it,” said automotive journalist and co-host of the event, Gábor Bazsó, alias Karotta, at the beginning of his keynote speech, thus setting the tone for the entire e-mobility section. Although the topic may seem alien to construction and real estate at first glance, in reality, it is closely connected: the spread of e-mobility (in plain words, electric cars) requires the development of new infrastructure, which does not only mean installing charging stations along public roads but also adapting modern office buildings and parking lots.
“It’s worth noting that with electric cars, we are charging less and less at public places,” said Zsolt Somogyi, CEO of Parkl, a company specializing in smart parking solutions, during his presentation. Once a business focused on urban parking, the company has now entered the field of upgrading office building parking lots with smart systems, and the presentation was based on the insights gained from this. “More and more, the mindset is that wherever my car spends a lot of time, whether at home or in front of an office building, that’s where I want to charge my vehicle,” Somogyi explained about the general attitude of e-car owners. Along with Karotta, he also emphasized that large corporations will eventually replace their fleets, and as the years go by, the chances of partially or even fully electric fleets will increase.
“When only the boss or some ultra-green person at the company had an electric car, we put one charger there, they plugged it in, turned it on, and that was the end of it,” said Somogyi. “In the past one or two years, especially with new developments or retrofits, we’ve encountered numbers like 10–20 chargers.” Of course, chargers need electricity, appropriate devices, software, and so on – a significant development that eventually every major office building must implement. And the numbers don’t lie: according to Parkl, among companies that already have electric cars, 74 percent would expand their fleet this year, and 42 percent of employees have already indicated that they would like to charge their car at work.
This means major changes, which not everyone welcomes. “Everyone has heard that those stupid Germans, in the green hysteria, shut down their nuclear power plants and reopened their coal plants, and accordingly, oh my God, how expensive electricity is there, and oh my God, how dirty,” thundered Karotta. “Except that this is nonsense.” According to the chart he presented, Germany is decarbonizing rapidly. “There isn’t such a dirty power grid anywhere that an electric car wouldn’t be much cleaner across its entire lifetime, even when we count in the battery and the raw materials needed for it.” Karotta explained that the potential for building electric infrastructure exists everywhere, because electricity can be generated anywhere, unlike fossil fuels, which must be transported. However, at the roundtable discussion following his presentation, Karotta also emphasized that the infrastructure is still “not ready,” which slows down the transition.
Bazsó Gábor on the domestic car market (Photo: Balázs Glódi)
“Half of charging takes place at home, 30 percent at the office, and 20 percent on the go,” explained Balázs Hajós, sales director at Schneider Electric, a company dealing with smart electric grid solutions, during the e-mobility roundtable about current charging habits. The company also collaborates with Parkl, because when chargers are installed in corporate parking lots, questions arise: will there be enough parking spaces, exactly how many chargers are needed, and will employees use them properly? Right now, the ideal number is around 30, but soon we will reach 100 chargers, which brings new challenges, as the increasing number of electric cars requires rules about how long one may park at a charging spot. Although the human side of the issue still needs to be developed, the background for expansion is often already in place.
“The technical side is no longer a challenge – energy management is available, parking management is available, and thanks to faulty design practices, buildings often have significant extra contingents available beyond operational needs,” said Ferenc Gergely, senior project manager at property developer CPI Hungary. So, there is plenty of electricity – the problem is reforming car and parking use: many want permanent parking spots for themselves, but in a parking lot equipped with chargers, cars will need to move around. “I see the greatest resistance at the individual user level,” said Gergely, referring to the fact that car owners, or even companies, are reluctant to give up old habits. This was also mentioned in Karotta’s keynote: according to the journalist, we are living in the age of the “culture of ass-covering,” meaning that many cling to known formats out of fear of replacing existing business models with innovations – usually, according to experts, mistakenly.
At the roundtable, Karotta also pointed out that misconceptions still surround electric cars, such as that they quickly run out of charge. In reality, the models now popular as company cars cover at least 300–400 kilometers, but usually closer to 400–500 kilometers on a single charge. “There are very few people for whom this doesn’t cover the daily commute,” he said sharply. “If you want to commute from Paris to Budapest for work, then indeed, an electric car is not the ideal choice.”
So e-mobility is not only coming – it is already here, and the real estate market is responding. However, the development of office buildings and parking lots is only the first step: in the smart cities of the future, supporting electric cars will be a fundamental requirement, and preparations can already be made for predominantly electric decades. Among those speaking about this was Tamás Farkas, Vice President of Asura, who began his presentation with data collection. He showed a full parking lot, then highlighted the importance of optimizing digital recognition and data acquisition. “We can equip every parking space with an individual sensor, we can put cameras on every electric charger, thereby generating further investment, operational, and maintenance costs, or we can use the existing camera feed in the parking lot, which essentially costs nothing.” Once we know how people use their cars, placing chargers and guiding driver behavior becomes much easier. This could also end the culture of ass-covering.