Will VW lead the charge in growing EV infrastructure?
10/18/2016
US District Judge Charles Breyer is expected to make a decision regarding the approval of the $15 billion Volkswagen settlement as soon as this afternoon. The deal is designed to mitigate the environmental damage from the half a million dirty diesel vehicles the company sold between 2009 and 2015. If approved, it would dedicate $2 billion to finance EV education programs and charging infrastructure, $800 million of this in California alone. This is over 10x the amount the current leading company in charging infrastructure, Chargepoint, has raised to date for its own infrastructure development.
The EV industry is deeply divided as to whether this new player forced into the game with deeper pockets than anyone before will have a positive or negative impact on the electric vehicle service equipment (EVSE) market as a whole. Many companies including Chargepoint, argue the new agreement would demand VW dominate the market for charging infrastructure and handpick “winners” and “losers”, selecting only a handful of technologies and pouring money into them. Twenty-eight companies and organizations recently submitted a letter to the Department of Justice in opposition of the settlement.
Others such as EVgo, explain that VW’s large expansion of the EVSE market will benefit everyone, including the industry, by spurring but not completing the transformation in infrastructure needed to support the coming number of EVs on the road in the next decade.
Overall, the settlement would certainly benefit the environment, by exponentially growing the infrastructure that supports EVs, thereby inducing the purchase of these cleaner vehicles and mitigating harmful air pollution from the transportation sector. However, within the EVSE industry, the game would change as a new king steps onto the court and essentially selects his winning team mates. Ideally, the settlement will contain regulations on how many companies receive VW’s funding, and that number would be large enough to grow, not destroy the existing competitive forces within the EVSE market.
