GM Partners With EVgo To Emulate Tesla And Build 400 Fast EV Chargers

GM and EVgo are collaborating to create gas-station like charging stations that should appeal to both existing electric car owners and potential owners considering switching from gas cars. If this becomes the new standard, sales should improve a lot.

The biggest reason that Tesla has outperformed other EV sellers is that they installed their charging network. Much like gas cars wouldn’t have been successful if you had to buy gas at a store still rather than a gas station, electric cars without a charging network have been comparatively hard to sell. Tesla addressed this initially by creating the most robust charging network in the US, but only recently did they open that network up to other brands. GM is one of those brands that will benefit from this.

However, with all of these cars increasingly using the relatively low number of existing fast chargers and now the Tesla chargers, there will be accessibility problems even for those Tesla chargers, which is driving GM to partner with EVgo to create 400 more ultra-fast chargers.

What is even more interesting is that these fast-charging stations look more like gas stations than your typical charging station, and I think this will be a ton better.

The Problems With Public Charging

I've driven an EV, and public charging is a pain. Not only aren’t there enough chargers, but they tend to be out in the weather, not covered, and often broken. If they are at a mall, people tend to leave their cars at the charger for extended periods, beyond fully charging them, while they shop or grab a meal.

When I first got to test a Tesla S for a few days, I had to drive to an outlet mall where the charging was free, but not only did I have to wait for a spot, my wife then proceeded to spend around $800 on stuff we didn’t need to kill the time while the car was charging. Free became extremely expensive.

The chargers placed near malls have also often been taken over by gas cars that need somewhere to park, which is even more annoying since they can use gas stations to refill, while those of us in electric cars cannot.

A lot of gas car drivers are jerks.

The GM EVgo Stations Are Much Better

These new charging stations are covered but appear to be situated remotely enough from shopping or eating, making you more likely to stay with your car while charging. These are 350-kilowatt chargers, which will charge your car up to 80% in under 15 minutes for current generation car like I drive (above 80%, the charging rate slows sharply to preserve the battery; another way to look at this is a 350-kilowatt charger will typically add 100 miles of range every 10 minutes until 80%. And if you keep the charge below 80%, your battery, according to the old Toyota trials, should last far longer when using fast Level 3 chargers.

This is interesting because instead of copying Telsa, GM, and EVgo appear to be blending the gas station concept into the electric car charging experience, making the result far more attractive to car buyers in general and electric car buyers in particular. What I mean is that these stations should reduce the charging concerns of gas car owners who might otherwise consider an electric car, effectively lowering the risk of switching to an electric car.

Wrapping Up:

Charging and batteries are among the biggest impediments to buying an electric car. We are increasing the speed of the chargers and are about to roll out new battery formulations that provide more range, longer life, and faster charging. Now, GM and EVgo are rolling out charging stations that are closer to gas stations and will be more attractive to EV car owners than Tesla stations (which have led the market so far).

Even though EV car sales continue to increase, we'd be much farther along today if they’d just done this out of the gate. Now if we can get wireless charging to work at scale, charging EVs will become even more attractive than gassing up ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) cars.

Rob Enderle is a technology analyst at Torque News who covers automotive technology and battery development. You can learn more about Rob on Wikipedia and follow his articles on Forbes, X, and LinkedIn.