VW vows to build massive electric car charging network across US

Volkswagen wants to sell more electric cars in the US, but to do that, it needs to spend millions of dollars on building out the country’s underdeveloped charging infrastructure. Toward that end, the auto giant’s subsidiary, Electrify America, announced today that it plans to install EV charging stations at more than 100 Walmarts in 34 states by mid-2019. The announcement came a few days after Porsche, which is owned by VW Group, hinted at plans to build 500 of its own EV charging stations in the US.

The Walmart charging stations are part of a broader Electrify America project to install 2,000 chargers at nearly 500 charging stations across the country by June 2019. “EV owners need a convenient, reliable and fast turnaround in recharging their vehicles,” said Mark McNabb, president and CEO of Electrify America, in a statement. “Walmart is the perfect partner for Electrify America to bring electric charging services to EV owners who value their time.”

Meanwhile, Klaus Zellmer, CEO of Porsche Cars North America, told Automotive News that the performance brand would install at least 500 fast chargers at dealerships and highway locations across the US by the end of 2019. “If you want to buy that car, you want to know what happens if I go skiing and go further than 300 miles,” Zellmer said. “What do I do? So we need to have answers for that.”

Taken together, it represents a multimillion-dollar commitment by the German auto giant to blanket the US in charging stations, in the hopes of luring more American consumers to by its zero-emission vehicles. Another way of looking at it is that VW is taking a page from the playbook of Tesla, which has installed 1,210 of its Supercharger stations across the globe since 2012. It realizes that to persuade more American car buyers to consider going electric, it must first commit to a fully built charging network to help reduce range anxiety.

Both VW and Porsche plan to spend billions of dollars on rolling out new electric cars in the years to come. Earlier this year, Porsche said it would double its investment in plug-in hybrids and pure EVs by 2022 to more than 6 billion euros ($7.43 billion). The brand’s first EV, the Mission E, is seen as one of the first real competitors to the Tesla Model S. The automaker has said the Mission E would be able to charge in as little as 15 minutes. A second EV, based on the Mission E Cross Turismo concept, is planned for deliveries in 2020.

VW is also making a very big bet on electric cars over the next decade or so, and the I.D. Vizzion — much like its I.D. siblings — looks like it will be a centerpiece of that push. VW claims a production Vizzion will be able to reach over 400 miles on a single charge, thanks to a battery pack that, at 111kWh, is bigger than anything Tesla currently offers.

The Mission E and Vizzion I.D. are sorely needed if VW is going to compete with Tesla. The automaker currently only has one EV on the market: the 125-mile range e-Golf. Certainly more affordable than the Model S, the e-Golf has been selling briskly in Europe, recently dethroning the Renault Zoe as the continent’s best-selling battery-electric vehicle. Meanwhile, only 178 e-Golfs sold in the US in January 2018.

Recently, VW said it would tweak its iconic logo in preparation for the electric car era. The company is trying to burnish its brand in the aftermath of the diesel emissions cheating scandal that has cost it billions of dollars in fines and settlements and sent several former executives to prison.