2014 BMW i3 REx fast-charging at Chargepoint site, June 2016 [photo: Tom Moloughney]
At the Global Climate Action Summit this week in San Francisco, several companies made commitments to reducing climate change.
ChargePoint, one of the oldest electric-car charging networks in the U.S., said Wednesday that it aims to complete enough charging stations globally by 2025 to cover 2.5 million parking spots. The commitment does not include thousands of home chargers that ChargePoint also sells. Each station could cover one or two parking spots, a ChargePoint spokeswoman said.
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According to the company's website, it currently has 45,000 charging locations across the U.S. and has begun expanding in Europe.
Setting such a goal by 2025 represents a huge challenge for the company.
ChargePoint Express Plus modular DC fast-charging system for electric cars, launched at 2017 CES
“Our commitment to deploy 2.5 million charging spots by 2025 comes as the company embarks on the most significant period of growth in our history and in the midst of a revolution in transportation,” said Pasquale Romano, president and CEO, ChargePoint. “The time for transformative change is now, and broadly distributed, substantial and immediate investments in charging infrastructure are necessary to usher in the future of e-mobility.
“We're at a huge tipping point here,” he said, “where this thing begins to accelerate very, very quickly.”
Even as the Trump Administration in Washington, D.C., begins dismantling the legal framework that incentivized electric cars, Roman said, it's a “train that has already left the station.”
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Romano said that he expects the electric-car business to grow from almost $78 billion last year to almost $128 billion by 2022.
The additional chargers from ChargePoint will help expand public charging at businesses, workplaces, apartment buildings, as well as charging for commercial vehicles such as trucks and buses.
ChargePoint recently acquired Kisensum, a data analytics firm focused on helping utilities manage power loads.
Facing increased competition, especially from Electrify America, operating under a court mandate to spend $2 billion expanding public charging in the same time frame, Romano says there is room for multiple charging networks in the industry, but he expects some consolidation.
