Electrify America opens 1,000th charging station

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A few days ago, Electrify America announced the opening of its newest major charging station. While a new station with more than a few stalls is welcome and news in itself, this station was even more special because it was the company’s 1000th location!

In this article, I’ll talk about the station itself and look back at what it took to reach this milestone.

The Fashion Valley charging station

At least during the day, a shopping center is one of the best places to set up a charging station for suburban use. Not only do malls have a variety of amenities, but they are also close to many of the places EV drivers travel to and from. For a quick recharge the mall won’t be useful, but for deeper recharges it makes a lot of sense to have a toilet and groceries nearby or possibly shopping options.

“Simon currently has more than 85 Electrify America charging stations across our U.S. locations, providing our customers and the surrounding community with a high-quality amenity to charge their electric vehicles,” said Daniel Segal, vice president of business development at Simon Property Group. “Electrify America’s on-site Hyper-Fast chargers and Fashion Valley’s world-class shopping, dining and entertainment options in the San Diego market create a convenient, all-in-one shopping, working destination for our mutual customers , eating and playing.”

Another advantage of setting up a charging station in one of these shopping centers is security. The mall’s security guards monitor the stations and drivers 24 hours a day, which is important since the station is open 24 hours a day.

The station has 20 “Hyper-Fast” stands of up to 350 kW, using power sharing to provide the greatest possible performance for everyone. It is located on the P2 level of Parking Garage D. There are also three 350 kW chargers available at the northern end of the mall near Parking Garage E, making there a total of 23 stalls in the mall.

The steps (and missteps) that led to 1,000

Compared to some of the stations where Tesla is currently opening, which have dozens of charging stations, 20 charging stations may not seem like a lot. I know of a station in Quartzsite, Arizona that has 84 stalls, and it’s half the size of the largest! But if we look at where Electrify America started, the company has been gearing up for this kind of thing for a long time.

“Our 1,000th charging station represents a significant milestone for Electrify America and underscores our commitment to convenient electric vehicle charging,” said Robert Barrosa, CEO of Electrify America. “In just over six years, our team quickly built an open hyper-fast charging network in 47 states, the District of Columbia and seven Canadian provinces to increase confidence in electric vehicles as the preferred choice for personal transportation.”

To really see what’s been happening outside of Tesla, I’m going back to a trip I took in 2019 in a 2018 Nissan LEAF. At that time there were only a few CCS and CHAdeMO charging stations to cover 1200 miles in New Mexico and Arizona. There was a station open in Deming, New Mexico, and I didn’t see another one on I-10 until Tucson. To close the gap, I had to park at a run-down RV park in Lordsburg, New Mexico, then take a Hypermile to the nearest park in Willcox, Arizona. I tried not to stay there too long and was charging there just enough to make it to the first station in Tucson when “Turtle Mode” appeared on the screen.

This is when things got bad for the LEAF, with Rapidgate charging slowing down in Tucson and Casa Grande, resulting in abysmal 12kW charging rates, which was basically DCSC (DC Slow Charging). I had planned to drive to an RV park and spend the night in Cordes Junction, but by the time we got to the Phoenix Metro I was so behind schedule that we stayed there overnight and then drove to Cordes the next evening where we caught up a severely overheated battery.

The next stop after that was in Flagstaff, and our next stop at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon had no DC fast charging station, not even if you had a Tesla (the Tusayan Supercharger opened months later). We charged L2 there, spent the afternoon taking shuttles, and then headed back to Flagstaff.

There was not a single DC fast charger for our vehicle for the rest of the trip. We spent part of a night at a state park near Winslow, Arizona, then spent the night at a motel near Petrified Forest with an extension cord under the door to charge the LEAF. We were using Level 2 charging in the Petrified Forest and had trouble getting to Lyman Lake State Park, where there was an RV base in a cabin that we could use. From there, we charged at an RV park in Alpine, Arizona, then charged at a Level 2 charger in Silver City, New Mexico, before heading to another fast charger in Deming.

Since there was no fast charging option for large areas, we spent just over a week covering those 1200 miles!

Everyone is doing much better today. The Dieselgate agreement led to the construction of numerous charging stations, both by Electrify America and other select companies in the states. Today the journey would be much easier as there are fast charging stations in many cities along the route that did not exist before. The small 3 and 4 stall stations that Electrify America installed made a big difference in opening up new areas for non-Tesla electric vehicles.

Unfortunately, in many cases these small stations have not performed very well. As traffic increased, first in California and other places where electric vehicles are popular, and later everywhere else, the first-generation Electrify America stations ran into major problems. In places like Quartzsite, Arizona, just four stands on a busy highway between Phoenix and Los Angeles (and much of the rest of California) resulted in long lines.

Now the company is moving into new territory for low-volume transportation and now having to serve larger crowds, like Tesla does. Both companies need to open ever larger stations to serve people along the highway and in cities, and as the Tesla network opens up to more brands, competition is heating up!

Featured image by Electrify America.