Electrify America Opens 1000th Charging Station – CleanTechnica

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A couple of days ago, Electrify America announced the opening of its latest large charging station. While a new station with more than a few stalls is welcome and news by itself, this station was even more special because it’s the company’s 1000th location!

In this article, I’m going to talk about the station itself and look back at what it took to get to this milestone.

The Fashion Valley Charging Station

At least during the day, a mall is one of the best places you can put a charging station for suburban use. Not only do malls have a variety of amenities, but they’re also located near many of the places EV drivers would be coming to and going from. For a quick charge, the mall isn’t going to be useful, but for deeper charges, having a bathroom and food nearby, or possibly shopping, makes a lot of sense.

“Simon currently has more than 85 Electrify America charging stations at our properties across the U.S., providing a high-value amenity for our shoppers and the surrounding community to charge their electric vehicles,” said Daniel Segal, VP of Business Development at Simon Property Group. “Having Electrify America’s Hyper-Fast chargers on-site, along with Fashion Valley’s premier shopping, dining, and entertainment options in the San Diego market creates a convenient all-in-one destination for our shared customers to shop, work, dine and play.”

Another advantage to siting a charging station at one of these malls is security. The mall has security personnel watching out for the stations and drivers 24/7, which is important because the station is open 24/7.

The station has 20 “Hyper-Fast” stalls up to 350 kW that use power sharing to give everyone the most power possible. It’s located in the P2 level of the parking structure D. There are also three 350 kW chargers available on the north end of the mall near parking structure E, making for a total of 23 stalls at the mall.

The Steps (& Missteps) That Led To 1,000

Compared to some of the stations we’re starting to see Tesla open, with dozens and dozens of charging stalls, 20 stalls might not seem like much. Heck, I know of one station in Quartzsite, Arizona, with 84 stalls, and it’s only half as big as the largest one! But, when we look at where Electrify America started, the company has been building up to things like this for a long time.

“Our 1000th charging station marks a significant milestone for Electrify America and reinforces our commitment to convenient EV charging,” said Robert Barrosa, CEO of Electrify America. “In just over six years, our team has rapidly built an open Hyper-Fast charging network across 47 states, the District of Columbia, and seven Canadian provinces to drive confidence in electric vehicles as the preferred choice for personal transportation.”

To really see what has happened outside of Tesla, I’ll go back to a trip I took in 2019 in a 2018 Nissan LEAF. At that time, driving 1200 miles in New Mexico and Arizona, CCS and CHAdeMO charging stations were sparse. There was one station open in Deming, New Mexico, and I didn’t see another one along I-10 until Tucson. To bridge the gap, I had to plug in at a sketchy RV park in Lordsburg, New Mexico, and then hypermiled my way to the next park in Willcox, Arizona. I tried to not spend too long there, charging up there just enough to make it to the first station in Tucson just as “turtle mode” appeared on the screen.

At this point, things got bad for the LEAF, with the Rapidgate charging slowdown happening in Tucson and in Casa Grande, giving me abysmal 12 kW charge rates that were basically DCSC (DC Slow Charging). I had planned to go to an RV park and stay the night in Cordes Junction, but was so behind schedule by the time we arrived in the Phoenix Metro that we ended up staying the night there and then going to Cordes the next evening, where we arrived with a badly overheated battery pack.

The next station after that was in Flagstaff, and our next stop at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon didn’t have any DC fast charging, not even if one had a Tesla (the Tusayan Supercharger opened up months later). We charged L2 there, spent the afternoon taking shuttles, and then back to Flagstaff.

For the rest of that trip, there wasn’t a single DC fast charger for our vehicle. We spent part of a night at a state park near Winslow, Arizona, then spent the night at a motel near the Petrified Forest with an extension cord running under the door to charge the LEAF up. We used Level 2 charging at the Petrified Forest and struggled to make it out to Lyman Lake State Park, where a cabin had an RV pedestal we could use. From there, we charged in Alpine, Arizona, at an RV park, then charged at a Level 2 charger in Silver City, New Mexico, before getting to another fast charger in Deming.

Because there was no fast charging for huge areas, we spent a little over a week driving that 1200 miles!

Today, things are a lot better for everyone. The Dieselgate settlement led to a lot of charging stations being built, both by Electrify America and through other companies states selected. Today, that trip would be a lot easier, as there are fast charging stations in many towns along the way that weren’t there before. The little 3- and 4-stall stations Electrify America put in made a big difference in opening up new territory to non-Tesla EVs.

Sadly, these small stations haven’t held up very well in many cases. As traffic increased, first in California and other EV-popular places, and then later everywhere else, the first-generation Electrify America stations started having big problems. In places like Quartzsite, Arizona, only having four stalls on a busy highway between Phoenix and Los Angeles (plus much of the rest of California) led to long lines.

Now, the company is moving from opening up new territory for low-volume traffic to having to serve larger crowds the way Tesla does. Both companies are having to open larger and larger stations to serve people along the highway and in cities, and with the Tesla network opening up to more brands, the competition is heating up!

Featured image by Electrify America.