Two German auto giants and America’s leading electric vehicle charging network have joined forces to build fast-charging EV networks along the country’s East and West coasts.
BMW of North America, Volkswagen of America and ChargePoint will construct up to 100 charging stations in “express charging corridors” from San Diego to Portland, Ore., on the West Coast and Boston to Washington on the East Coast.
Construction has already started on the Western corridor, where a string of new charging stations will allow vehicles to travel the length of California and into Oregon. As many as 100 stations will be up and running by the end of 2015, said Pasquale Romano, ChargePoint’s president and chief executive.
♦ Each station will include one or two 50-kilowatt DC Fast chargers or 24-kilowatt DC Combo Fast chargers, developed by BMW in partnership with Bosch. Those chargers — typically used for BMW and VW vehicles, as well as the Chevy Spark EV — can bring a vehicle up to 80 percent power in less than 30 minutes.
♦ Each station will also include some Level 2 chargers, which require up to four hours to fully charge a car. The Level 2 chargers can power up vehicles including the Chevy Volt, Nissan Leaf and the plug-in version of a Toyota Prius.
♦ The goal is to serve all models of electric cars, even those made by Tesla Motors, which has its own supercharging network and its own proprietary charging ports.
♦ Plug-in vehicles make up fewer than 1 percent of total new-vehicle sales. Last year, sales jumped 23 percent, according to the online research firm Inside EVs. More than 119,000 electric vehicles were sold.
♦ By brand, Nissan’s Leaf led the segment in sales, with 30,200 units, with the Chevy Volt in second at 18,805 and Tesla’s Model S in third with 17,300.
Consumers will be able to access the new networks with a ChargePoint or ChargeNow credit card, the companies said, or with a ChargePoint mobile app. As is the case with the estimated 20,000 Chargepoint stations currently in operation, some stations on the new network will be independently owned and will charge consumers for electricity, while others will be owned by the consortium and dispense electricity for free.
EV segment leader Tesla has already built its own charging network and plans to increase its number of charging stations on both coasts and much of the territory in between. The company has 347 “Supercharger” stations nationwide — the highest concentration being along the same corridors where BMW and VW plan to build their ChargePoint stations.
Tesla and the BMW-VW-Chargepoint consortium will supply a slowly but steadily growing community of electric vehicles. About 280,000 are estimated by ChargePoint to be currently on the road in the U.S.
To see the original article, go to The San Jose Mercury News.
