Newsletter
As Electric Vehicles start to take over more and more, we’re seeing more and more partnerships between car makers and charge point operators (or CPOs). Recently, GM announced that it was partnering with EVGo to make a “coast-to-coast” charging network for EVs. And now, Mercedes-Benz is announcing a partnership with ChargePoint to do something similar. What’s important to distinguish here is that these partnerships aren’t only building chargers for just their vehicles. But they will be open to all EVs.
ChargePoint and Mercedes plans to open 400 new charging hubs throughout the US and Canada. Including 2,500 new DC fast chargers in all. The two companies stated that these will be “in key cities and urban population centers, along major highway corridors and close to convenient retail and service destinations.”
That’s basically how ChargePoint has been building out its network already. So that’s not a big surprise. ChargePoint is already one of the bigger operators of Level 2 chargers in the US.
These will include 500V chargers
For ChargePoint, “DC fast chargers” don’t always mean the fastest. In most areas, you won’t find anything faster than 62.5kWh chargers from ChargePoint. They say that they are 125W, but that’s shared between two chargers.
These new chargers from ChargePoint in its partnership with Mercedes is going to use 500V chargers. That’s going to mean that vehicles like the Rivian R1T will be able to use all the power. However, newer vehicles on the 800V architecture like the Porsche Taycan, Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Kia EV6, won’t be able to take full advantage of charging speeds. But should see higher charging speeds than on some older DC fast chargers.
This is big news for both companies, especially as Mercedes is preparing to launch a whole line of EVs in the coming year. And after seeing how many issues people had charging over the holidays, more chargers is always a good thing.