ChargePoint network grows to 30,000 US charging stations
ChargePoint announced this week that it now has 30,000 charging stations in its network across America; an impressive number when you consider there are currently around 90,000 publicly-accessible petrol stations across the country. The cost of installing charging stations is dropping and is now between $3,000 - $7,500 per port. Charge time is typically about 30 minutes, giving drivers plenty of time to have a meal or go shopping while their vehicle charges. Pasquale Romano, ChargePoint’s CEO, now feels that charging stations will gradually take over from traditional petrol stations, meaning drivers of vehicles with conventional engines will start suffering from “gas anxiety” as opposed to the previous fear of EV drivers and their “range anxiety” caused by lack of charging infrastructure. 

One of the largest electric vehicle charging network companies in the world, ChargePoint, has hit a major new milestone, according to an email sent to CleanTechnica — the firm’s charging station network now includes more than 30,000 stations.

As noted in the recent email, that means that there are now nearly 3 times more ChargePoint charging stations than there are Starbucks retail locations in the US (that number is around 12,521 at the moment).

The “official” 30,000th ChargePoint station was installed by the Chattanooga Area Regional Transportation Authority (CARTA) with CBL Properties, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, at the Hamilton Place Mall. This milestone-breaking installation was “part of a broader initiative by CARTA to promote clean energy technologies and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, including the installation of 20 EV charging locations and an EV car-sharing program.”

The email provides more: “Part of the ChargePoint network, the 30,000th spot joins a platform that has powered 407 million gas-free miles for more than 450,000 EVs on the road in the US.”

“ChargePoint’s mission is to get everyone behind the wheel of an EV,” stated Pasquale Romano, ChargePoint’s CEO. “We’ve been busy building the network that’s necessary for EVs to become mainstream. As the demand for EV charging continues to surge, charging infrastructure expands and gas stations disappear, it won’t be long before drivers start suffering from ‘gas anxiety,’ not range anxiety. As the largest charging network, we are enabling the EV revolution and changing the experience of refueling.”

As a bit more background here, for those not familiar with the company, ChargePoint’s network is built on something similar to a franchise system — the company doesn’t actually own or operate the individual charging stations. What ChargePoint does is build the stations, provide inclusion in the network/app, and support operators through the provision of analytics and software.

As shared in yesterday’s article about the Tesla Model 3 relegating gasoline cars to history (like horses & buggies), Romano, with connections and insight most large automakers, has indicated that they have big plans in place to electrify their lineups. Here’s the exact quote from the Wall Street Journal: “Pasquale Romano, chief executive of ChargePoint Inc., the world’s largest maker of electric-car charging stations, says he works with, and talks to, most major car companies. ‘We have seen their internal plans to just electrify everything,’ he said.”

ChargePoint is in a prime place to take advantage of that.

Photo by Cynthia Shahan | CleanTechnica (CC BY-SA 4.0), via CleanTechnica.pics

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