Electrify America

Electrify America confirmed that they completed the installation of their first 400 EV charging stations only 20 months after starting the deployment. Their rollout is about twice as fast as Tesla’s Supercharger network.
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On December 16, 2019, California’s Office of Administrative Law approved amendments to its Electric Vehicle Fueling Systems Specifications. These rules ban operators of electric vehicle charging stations from billing by the minute at new 240Vac stations in 2021 onwards, and new DCFC stations 2023 onwards.

This is a huge blow to Electrify America and EVgo. Both firms bill by the minute for EV charging, leaving drivers with sticker shock and feeling ripped off by the end of the session. Chargepoint will also be negatively affected, as many of their site-host partners choose to bill per minute. And while Tesla already bills by the kilowatt-hour, California will also be requiring charging stations to physically display “on their face” important information about electricity cost and delivery, a move that will put the most burden on Tesla’s Supercharger stations.

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Curse Electrify America (EA) if you want. Giovanni Palazzo, the CEO of the nationwide charging network, invites criticism if you have a terrible experience at an EA location. We spent a full hour last week with Palazzo, and COO Brendan Jones, discussing the challenges of creating an open nationwide network of ultra-fast EV chargers. Electrify America has made a lot of progress, but its leaders admit it has a long way to go to serve the next generation of EV drivers.

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Electrify America, VW’s company mainly known for building an electric car fast-charging network in the US, is expanding to home charging with the launch of a new $500 electric car home charger.
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North Carolina is now the 30th state to allow public EV charging companies to offer pricing by the kilowatt-hour (kWh), instead of charging per minute. The change was thanks to bipartisan legislation — House Bill 329, Renewable Energy Amendments — passed by the legislature and signed by Gov. Roy Cooper.

The vast majority of Americans now live and drive in places where private companies are free to set up EV charging stations and offer pricing for actual kWh delivered to the vehicle. Tesla calls billing by the kWh “the most fair and simple method.” Any EV driver would agree, as all sorts of factors including the weather affect the speed an EV will charge at, making per-minute pricing something of a crapshoot as opposed to how many kWh (like ‘gallons of gas’) was actually delivered.

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Electrify America announced that it is deploying what will likely be the first autonomous fast-charging station for electric vehicles and it has robot arms.
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Harley Davidson and Electrify America have announced a partnership to offer a fast-charging plan to the owners of HD’s upcoming LiveWire electric motorcycle.
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ChargePoint and Electrify America announced a roaming partnership today that will make it easier for EV owners to charge on both networks, using just one account.

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Electrify America has announced a new mobile app to manage EV charging sessions, in addition to two new membership plans, and a change to its pricing structure, based on three charging power levels.

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Electrify America, the electric vehicle charging network born out of the VW Dieselgate settlement, announced it has topped 100 charging sites with 465 chargers.

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Tesla and Electrify America, VW’s electric vehicle charging network, announced that they reached a deal for the former to deploy Powerpacks at over 100 charging stations operated by the latter.
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HUBER+SUHNER, a cable supplier, has prompted a shut down of virtually all high-powered EV charging stations in many networks, like Electrify America’s, Fastned’s, and Ionity.

Now, the company says it’s back to normal and those stations should be OK.
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Late Friday evening, Electrify America announced that it is shutting down “the majority of its high-powered chargers (150 kW – 350kW)” in due to “a potential safety issue with its liquid-cooled cables” supplied by ‘HUBER+SUHNERS’.
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Yesterday, Electrify America opened California’s first 350kW quick charge location. The bank of chargers includes nine CCS plugs and one CCS-CHAdeMO plug, and while most of them have an already-quick 150kW rate, two CCS plugs are capable of ultra-fast 350kW charging.

The charger is installed at the San Francisco Premium Outlets in Livermore, CA, which also happens to be a Tesla Supercharger location.  Tesla’s website states that the chargers there can charge at up to 120kW, though they’re the “urban” type supercharger and owners have clocked them maxing out at 72kW.

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As part of its settlement with the EPA and California’s Air Resource Board, VW’s Electrify America not only has to invest billions in electric vehicle infrastructure, it also has to make some other specific investments in electrification.

One of those investments was announced this week as a new fleet of electric vehicles to be used in a “on-demand” service in the city of Sacramento. 
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Electrify America is quickly ramping up deployment of its electric vehicle charging infrastructure ahead of the many new EVs rolling out next year.

The VW subsidiary already has 30 fast-charging stations online, and it has hundreds more to come.
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Fresh off its new $1 billion round of funding from Saudi Arabia, Lucid Motors is announcing today a new partnership with Electrify America “to provide Lucid customers a nationwide charging plan.”
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VW launched Electrify America as part of its $2 billion settlement with the EPA and CARB over the Dieselgate scandal. The company is spending most of the money on a nationwide electric vehicle charging network, but it also has to spend some on EV education.

It is now launching its national advertising campaign to promote EVs.
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Along with electric vehicle charging infrastructure, Volkswagen’s settlement with the EPA and CARB over the Dieselgate scandal also included investing in a ‘Green City’ initiative.

In Sacramento this week, VW’s Electrify America is now launching the project which includes electric car sharing programs, zero-emissions shuttle bus routes and electric vehicle charging infrastructure.
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