The five-year rollout begins in 2021.
On Friday, General Motors and the electric vehicle charging company EVgo announced they are partnering to beef up the nation’s DC fast charging infrastructure. The plan is to deploy more than 2,700 DC fast chargers, capable of charging at 100-350kW, with at least four chargers per station. The rollout will begin in 2021 and should be complete by 2025.
GM is about to put into production a new battery EV architecture called BEV3 and a new battery pack design called Ultium. The company also has plans for multiple new BEVs built on these flexible underpinnings.
The first of these will be an SUV, the Cadillac Lyriq, which is being officially unveiled on August 7; next after that should be an electric GMC Hummer, which may well pack a 200kWh battery and an 800V architecture (which would therefore benefit from a 350kW charger).
“We know how important the charging ecosystem is for drivers, one that includes access to convenient and reliable public fast charging. Our relationship with EVgo will bolster the public fast charging network available to EV customers ahead of increased market demand and reinforce our commitment to an all-electric, zero-emissions future,” said GM chairperson and CEO Mary Barra in a statement.
According to Green Car Reports, EVgo is looking at 40 major metropolitan areas for the new chargers. For now, the two companies are merely saying that the charging stations “will be located in highly visible areas.” EVgo currently operates 800 fast charging stations, almost twice that of Electrify America (which currently has 452 active sites with another 104 currently in the works).
Neither GM nor EVgo is talking about how much it will cost to build out these new chargers; in the case of Electrify America, Volkswagen was required to spend $2 billion on charging infrastructure as a result of the diesel-emissions cheating scandal.
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JONATHAN M. GITLIN
