Potential Buyers And Leading Many Experts

Electric vehicle charging stations are manufactured, installed and operated under varying business models. Neither the LinkedIn profiles nor sources said specifically that Apple was building charging stations for electric cars.Apple, which has never publicly acknowledged a car project, declined to comment for this story.The moves show Apple responding to a key shortcoming of electric vehicles: "filling up" the batteries. Charger shortfallThe electric car industry has faced a chicken-and-egg paradox with the installation of charging stations. Property owners have been reluctant to install the stations before EVs hit the road en masse, and drivers are wary of buying EVs until charging stations are widely available.

Quartz earlier this month reported that Apple had hired former Google charging expert Kurt Adelberger. One global engineering and construction firm already has reached out to Apple to offer its services, a person at the firm said. Tesla has led the way with a proprietary network for customers, who also can use public chargers. Tesla recently goosed electric vehicle demand, unveiling its more affordable Model 3 sedan, generating hundreds of thousands of reservations from potential buyers and leading many experts to calculate the number of EVs will soon outstrip the charging station supply. Players in the space China Electric Motor Suppliers include Car Charging Group Inc and privately held ChargePoint, SemaConnect and ClipperCreek, infrastructure companies such as Black & Veatch and AECOM as well as General Electric, Siemens and Delta Electronics Inc. Charging firms are treading carefully, the person added, wary of sharing too much with a company they view as a potential rival.

The three largest utilities in California also have plans to install charging stations. Tesla's more than 600 "Supercharger" stations juice up a car in about 30 minutes, more than twice as fast as the standard "fast charger," called Level 2. As recently as January Apple hired Nan Liu, an engineer who researched a form of wireless charging for electric vehicles, for instance." Apple has hired at least four electric vehicle charging specialists, including former BMW employee Rónán Ó Braonáin, who worked on integrating charging infrastructure into home energy systems as well as communication between EVs, BMW and utilities, according to a LinkedIn review.Apple's home state of California by 2020 will need about 13 to 25 times the roughly 8,000 work and public chargers it currently has, to support a projected 1 million zero-emission vehicles on the road, according to an estimate by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.