EVgo & GM’s Road To 2000 Stations – CleanTechnica

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In 2022, EVgo and GM partnered with Pilot/Flying J truck stops to expand charging opportunities greatly in North America. Since then, not only have high quality stations actually been happening, but the partnership has expanded to include many other locations around the United States. Now, there are 2,000 stalls at almost 400 locations.

In this article, I want to not only cover the announcement, but talk a bit about the journey along the way. There have been successes, but also challenges that the entire industry can learn from.

The Partnership

As I explained in another article about iONNA, automotive manufacturers were hesitant for quite some time to get too involved in charging. After all, the market has always had companies that built and sold the cars and an entirely separate industry that fueled them. There are no Ford, GM, or Toyota-branded gas stations. So, the hope was that charging would emerge alongside the emergence of EVs and everyone could continue business as usual.

Sadly, that didn’t really work out. Tesla invested heavily in building a private charging network to ensure that the vehicles would have a place to charge away from home, eventually building the most widely available and reliable EV charging network in North America. To Tesla, it was obvious that nobody else was going to solve the problem, so the company had to take both sides on (along with sales, too). This left non-Tesla EVs in a lurch. There simply weren’t enough stations in enough places that worked well enough.

Ford CEO Jim Farley found this out the hard way taking his own EV road trips, and saw what a bind the company was in for EVs in the United States. So, he swallowed his pride, worked to get in touch with Elon Musk, and did what it took to hammer out a deal to get access to Tesla’s Supercharger network for Ford’s vehicles. GM followed up soon after, and over the following year, basically everyone selling EVs in North America jumped on the bandwagon.

I know the Tesla megafans would like to think that this was the panacea. Just let Tesla handle the charging, let the other companies wither on the vine, and everyone will get great charging, right? But, that’s not how the real world works. Not only did the manufacturers not want to be permanently dependent on a monopoly controlled by a competitor, but the cold, hard fact is that even Tesla can’t build enough stations to handle the sheer number of EVs that need to hit the road in the coming years. An all-hands-on-deck approach was obviously needed. Plus, antitrust laws could eventually become an issue.

So, in addition to funding Tesla’s stations to get access, other manufacturers started working on other efforts. Seven manufacturers started a joint effort to build their own charging network under the working title of We Charge North America, which has since become iONNA. Many other deals and manufacturer network plans have emerged (too many to discuss in this article).

Among these deals, GM also worked with established player EVgo to start getting better hardware from Delta into the ground at truck stops along major highways. Then, the deal expanded to include other retail locations around the United States, mostly at retail locations with limited amenities (at least compared to truck stops).

These efforts haven’t been without any problems. Watching these stations, hundreds have come online and have been pretty reliable. But, Tesla is clearly a lot better at coordinating with utilities to make sure there’s a transformer available to actually power newly-built stations. I know of several GM/EVgo stations that have sat for months idle after construction waiting for a transformer.

The Importance Of These Private Investments

Before I talk about EVgo’s announcement, I do want to quickly discuss why these stations matter now more than ever. With NEVI funding in peril, the federal government could be pulling out of EV charging or at least scaling back funding for state departments of transportation to cover the highways with charging stations.

For those unfamiliar, NEVI is the section of the Infrastructure Bill that funded highway charging across the United States. The program is supposed to cover every interstate highway with EV charging stations no further than 50 miles apart (with some exceptions). Each station is supposed to have at least four stalls, with at least 150 kW of power available at each stall. States have added their own requirements, such as pull-through stalls for vehicles pulling trailers and inclusion of the NACS connector. After covering the interstates, states are next supposed to start covering other highways.

Some states are way ahead of others, and time may be limited. In some areas, interstates are largely covered with stations that are already funded and under planning or construction. It would be almost impossible for the federal government to claw those funds back and halt construction. But, for other highways and interstates in the states that are slower at implementing the program, construction might be halted or defunded.

While there is certainly overlap between this GM/EVgo partnership and government funding (some are NEVI stations or take advantage of other grants), there’s still a great deal of private investment that’s yieldingta

The GM/EVgo Partnership Is Yielding Real Results

While progress has been slow at times, there are now 390 locations online with 2,000 stalls. There are now stations in 45 metro markets in 32 states, with the 2000th stall at an important location along I-215 in Murrieta, California. Out of the 2,000 stalls, 400 of them are at “flagship” locations that have greater amenities (like trucks stops), pull-through stalls, and a canopy over them. But, most of them are more basic installations in urban and suburban parking lots that don’t cater as much to travelers who need all of that.

Perhaps more importantly, there’s another 850 stalls planned for the partnership, so the number of stations will increase by about 50% in the coming months.

Between this partnership, iONNA, and the others that manufacturers like Mercedes-Benz and ChargePoint are building, there’s going to be a lot more stalls in a lot more places built by a variety of companies. A truly resilient and diverse charging market with real competition is starting to emerge.

Featured image provided by EVgo.