The German carmaker plans to add thousands of chargers in the US, with a goal to offer a premium experience.
(Bloomberg) — Mercedes-Benz is about to apply the old dictum that there are three keys to determining the value of a property — location, location, location — to electric-vehicle charging.
The luxury-car maker has joined an intensifying race to turn charging into a viable business, announcing plans to build thousands of chargers in the US. To convince drivers to choose one of its battery-powered models over alternatives, it’s scoping out sites near key transport arteries, will offer cafes and other amenities, and build grid connections that allow for ultra-fast charging.
“It will be a safe location, not in the backyard of a shopping center next to a dumpster,” Mercedes Chief Technology Officer Markus Schäfer told reporters last week. “We know that sometimes today, you find chargers in very weird and sometimes unsafe locations, especially at night.”
This year will be pivotal for EV charging globally. Investment in hardware and installation likely will cross the $100 billion mark, according to BloombergNEF, a threshold that the industry is counting on opening up access to more of the low-cost capital it requires. Mercedes may tap aid in the US, where a bipartisan bill that President Joe Biden signed into law in late 2021 set aside $7.5 billion of funding for some 500,000 chargers. Countries in Europe also are pushing to add such infrastructure to aid the shift away from the combustion engine. Even oil majors like Shell and TotalEnergies are investing in the space.
Mercedes will team with ChargePoint and solar-energy firm MN8 to add its first sites in the US this year and later expand to Europe and China, for a total of 10,000 charge points. The units will have as much as 350 kilowatts of power, enough to add 20 miles of range per minute. The foray ties into Mercedes’s push to spend more than €40 billion ($43 billion) to electrify its lineup and catch up to Tesla, which is off to a considerable head start in EV sales and infrastructure. Tesla operates more than 40,000 Superchargers, with its V3 stations usually having as much as 250 kilowatts of power. The company added its first sites more than a decade ago.
Mercedes is entering a competitive field. The charging market is significantly more concentrated in the US than in China or Europe, with Tesla and ChargePoint behind two-thirds of stations. In Europe, conversely, no single operator has a market share in excess of 6%, according to BNEF.
“It will become a fight for the key locations,” said Ryan Fisher, an electric-vehicle charging analyst at BNEF.
While the US is hardly constrained when it comes to land, there aren’t all that many locations that are perfect for chargers. Gas station operators have spent decades picking strategic spots along highways, but those places might not have the grid connections needed to enable super-fast charging for dozens of vehicles at a time.
Safety is another concern for many drivers. Women are twice as likely as men to say the insecurity of a dimly lit charging station puts them off purchasing an EV at all, a Consumer Reports survey found last year.
Some of the best places for chargers are near spots like grocery stores, retail centers and local landmarks — and there’s a race to partner with those sites to get preferential access.
Sweden’s Volvo Car and Starbucks last year announced a partnership to place EV charging stations at coffee shops along the Snoqualmie Pass in Washington, the Snake River in Idaho, and Arches National Park in Utah. It’s a route that the companies said exemplifies the great American road trip.
The challenge for EV charging players will be finding ideal spots for more day-to-day use, particularly in big cities.
“Even in the US, in urban, dense locations, space is a problem,” BNEF’s Fisher said. “You might find a space that looks great, has lots of amenities, but the grid connection could be awful and it might take ages to bring a charging station on line.”
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