Automakers’ charging JV to improve experience, not challenge Tesla scope

The joint venture is similar to Ionity, a charging network joint venture in Europe by BMW, Ford Motor Co., Hyundai, Mercedes and Volkswagen Group. Ionity’s scale is much smaller than the North American joint venture’s target. Ionity has about 2,600 chargers across 24 countries.

The goal to install 30,000 chargers across North America is a first step, analysts said, and it shows that automakers learned they need to collaborate.

Automaker CEOs emphasized the value of collaboration in their announcements. A strong charging network should be available for all, Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares said. And it should be “built together with a win-win spirit,” he said.

Still, it will make up only a sliver of the more than 180,000 fast chargers that the National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimates the U.S. will need by 2030.

“Now the hard part is reaching off the highways into the rest of North America,” said Conrad Layson, senior alternative propulsion analyst at AutoForecast Solutions. “Thirty thousand helps us build out the essential charging network along highly traveled routes like the turnpikes, like the interstates. It doesn’t cover what the British call the B roads.”

For the joint venture to be successful, it must apply lessons learned from early entrants in the charging space to improve the locations and number of charge ports, along with reliability, said Sam Fiorani, AutoForecast Solutions vice president for global vehicle forecasting.

J.D. Power said more than 1 in 5 charge attempts failed in the first quarter. Most of those fails were at non-Tesla stations.

“Making sure the new consortium works in the best interest of all will be the toughest obstacle, but it will be beneficial to all players in the long run,” Fiorani said.

The joint venture said it expects to meet requirements to receive funding under the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure formula. The chargers will have both Tesla’s North American Charging Standard and the rival Combined Charging System plugs and will focus on customer experience.

So far, the plan seems to address many charging issues, Stephanie Brinley, associate director of AutoIntelligence for S&P Global Mobility, said in a statement.

The joint venture “has the benefit of hindsight, of seeing what isn’t working well in today’s charging infrastructure,” she said, “and is taking steps to address those issues.”