Seven major automakers said on Wednesday they are forming a joint venture to build a large electric vehicle (EV) charging network in North America in an effort to make EVs more accessible to consumers.
The group includes General Motors, BMW, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes, and Stellantis.
The companies said they will install at least 30,000 high-powered charging stations in major cities and highway locations by 2030. The first stations will be ready by next summer in the United States and in Canada at a later stage, the companies announced.
The chargers will rely on renewable energy sources, the companies said. The move is intended to allay fears that chargers won’t be available for long-distance travel.
“GM’s commitment to an all-electric future is focused not only on delivering EVs our customers love but investing in charging and working across the industry to make it more accessible,” GM chief executive Mary Barra said in a statement. “The better experience people have, the faster EV adoption will grow.”
Vehicles made by other manufacturers, not just these seven, will also be able to charge at these stations. It will have connectors for both Tesla’s North American Charging Standard plugs as well as the Combined Charging System plugs used by other automakers.
The new joint venture will rely on funds from the automakers as well as using grants offered by the federal government to help pay for the network.
The automakers did not disclose financial details of the venture, but said they would be open to additional investment or participation from other companies, including outside the auto industry.
“The investment will be far less through this partnership than building individual charging networks,” Akshay Singh, a partner at consultancy PwC Strategy&, told Reuters. “They also get to control the customer experience and collect data.”
There are currently just under 8,700 direct-current fast-charging stations in the United States and Canada with nearly 36,000 charging plugs, according to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimates that 182,000 fast chargers will be needed by 2030.
Fast chargers can get a battery to 80 percent of its capacity in 20 minutes to one hour, making them optimal for travel corridors and in some cases comparable to the time it takes to fill a car with gasoline. They’re much quicker than 240-volt “Level 2” chargers that can take hours to get a battery to a full charge.
Tesla’s network, with the largest number of fast chargers in North America, has 2,050 stations and more than 22,000 plugs in the United States and Canada, the DOE says.
The current charging network, being built by a hodgepodge of companies, is growing but is often unreliable or in poor locations. This has prompted Ford, General Motors and others to sign agreements with Tesla to give their EVs access to its much larger network of fast chargers.
In the United States, electric vehicle sales continued to rise during the first half of the year to more than 557,000 vehicles, or 7.2 percent of all new vehicle sales. Industry analysts predict continued growth in EV sales for the next decade or more.
