General Motors to triple number of chargers for employees
General Motors has announced that it will install 3,500 new charging points for its employees’ electric cars at its sites in the USA and Canada. This is triple the current number.
The chargers will be Level 2 AC chargers set up in cooperation with charging infrastructure companies from the end of this year. Only green electricity is to be used for the operation of the charging points later on.
GM President Mark Reuss says: “Charging infrastructure is crucial to wider acceptance of EVs, and we’ll continue to do everything we can to improve it, both for our employees and for all our customers. We encourage other companies to do likewise.”.
General Motors refers to a survey by the US Department of Energy from 2017, according to which the probability of a car driver switching to an electric vehicle is six times higher if they are provided with a charging facility at their workplace.
GM currently has 918 charging points at its North American facilities and allows all employee to charge for free. According to statements made by a PR manager, this will remain so even after the announced expansion. At present, GM only offers one electric car in the USA, the Chevrolet Bolt. During the course of the electric offensive, BEVs from Cadillac, GMC and Hummer are also planned for market launches soon. These vehicles will then also be used in employee fleets.
When electrek journalists visited the charging stations in the parking lot at GM’s Detroit-Hamtramck site, not only were no EVs were charging, there was also a gas-powered SUV parking in an EV spot among otherwise empty spaces. Nevertheless, electrek said that at the Orion Assembly plant where the Bolt is made, there were more cars were charging.
For customers in North America wanting help with their charging facilities, GM currently only offers the possibility of establishing contact with a certified electrician through a partnership with Qmerit. This person will then provide advice and set up a private charging point. Another logical step has been adding an Energy Assist feature in the latest version of the Chevrolet app so that Bolt EV drivers can easily see charging locations and real-time location data.
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