Recently, Volkswagen announced that its charging station subsidiary Electrify America has completed its first round of financing, with Siemens leading the investment and Volkswagen following.
According to the analysis data of Rui Beast, a subsidiary of Entrepreneur State, EA’s round of financing amounted to 450 million US dollars, and the post-investment valuation was 2.45 billion US dollars, or about 16.4 billion yuan, making it a new energy unicorn.
EA, which was established less than 6 years ago, is actually the product of Volkswagen’s atonement for the “emission gate” incident.
In 2015, Volkswagen was accused of deliberately installing exhaust cheating software that only turned on in laboratory conditions, and its products produced 40 times the emissions under real driving conditions than laboratory conditions.
In order to seek a settlement, Volkswagen signed an agreement with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to invest $2 billion in 10 years from 2016 to promote the popularization of electric vehicles and “atone for the air pollution” caused by the incident.
One of the plans is to build a large network of public charging piles, so EA was established at the end of 2016, and the first charging stations were built in January 2017 and put into use in January 2018. As of March 2022, EA has built a total of 730 charging stations and more than 2,438 charging piles, making it the largest public charging station in the United States
In December last year, EA announced that it has equipped more than 140 charging stations with Tesla Powerpack energy storage tanks, which can be charged when the charging stations are idle and supply other charging stations with limited power to reduce electricity bills.
More charging piles, wider coverage
As a charging service company owned by an auto giant, EA’s current goal is to increase the number of charging piles and increase coverage.
Volkswagen originally formulated a ten-year “redemption” plan for EA, which is divided into four stages:
Phase 1: 2017.1 – 2019.6, invest in emission reduction infrastructure, education, prepare for technology popularization and route planning;
Phase 2: 2019.6 – 2021.12, promote the American people to discover the advantages of electric vehicle travel, establish a charging network covering communities and highways across the United States, and build about 800 public charging stations and 3,500 charging piles;
Phase 3: 2022.1 – 2024.7, expand the coverage of charging stations, increase the number of fast charging stations, and build two new charging routes across the United States;
Phase 4: 2024-2026, upgrade the data model and make adjustments according to policy changes.
It can be seen that EA is currently in the stage of expanding coverage and increasing the number.
EA has signed a network sharing agreement with US charging station companies EV Connect, Greenlots and SemaConnect, which will enable EA’s customers to use partner charging stations located in shopping malls, gas stations, convenience stores, workplaces and residences.
EA is also partnering with Walmart to install its fast-charging stations in more than 100 Walmart stores in 34 states. Charging stations will be installed at 484 sites in 17 metropolitan areas and along highways in 39 states.
