On December 16, 2019, California’s Office of Administrative Law approved amendments to its Electric Vehicle Fueling Systems Specifications. These rules ban operators of electric vehicle charging stations from billing by the minute at new 240Vac stations in 2021 onwards, and new DCFC stations 2023 onwards.

This is a huge blow to Electrify America and EVgo. Both firms bill by the minute for EV charging, leaving drivers with sticker shock and feeling ripped off by the end of the session. Chargepoint will also be negatively affected, as many of their site-host partners choose to bill per minute. And while Tesla already bills by the kilowatt-hour, California will also be requiring charging stations to physically display “on their face” important information about electricity cost and delivery, a move that will put the most burden on Tesla’s Supercharger stations.

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North Carolina is now the 30th state to allow public EV charging companies to offer pricing by the kilowatt-hour (kWh), instead of charging per minute. The change was thanks to bipartisan legislation — House Bill 329, Renewable Energy Amendments — passed by the legislature and signed by Gov. Roy Cooper.

The vast majority of Americans now live and drive in places where private companies are free to set up EV charging stations and offer pricing for actual kWh delivered to the vehicle. Tesla calls billing by the kWh “the most fair and simple method.” Any EV driver would agree, as all sorts of factors including the weather affect the speed an EV will charge at, making per-minute pricing something of a crapshoot as opposed to how many kWh (like ‘gallons of gas’) was actually delivered.

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Yesterday the Maryland Public Service Commission approved a proposal from three Excelon-owned utilities in Maryland to deploy 850 charging stations on public-use land. The percentage of those that will be DC Fast Charge stations has not yet been determined.

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Charging network EVgo announced today that it has reached roaming agreements with ChargePoint and EV Connect, making it easier for EVgo users to charge on those networks.

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ChargePoint and Electrify America announced a roaming partnership today that will make it easier for EV owners to charge on both networks, using just one account.

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Two weeks before Christmas 2017, US Charging network Chargepoint filed a patent infringement suit against its competitor SemaConnect. In its request for a restraining order against SemaConnect, Chargepoint claimed that its patents gave it the exclusive right to sell and operate networked EV charging stations in the US. Obviously this has large implications for the Electric vehicle market… expand full story

Tesla warned in a filing this week with the DC Public Service Commission that its customers could be excluded from reduced cost charging in the District of Columbia. This is because Pepco, an Exelon company and the electric utility in DC, proposed to the Commission on May 13 that “any public electric vehicle charging station for which Pepco provides make-ready infrastructure must permit readily accessible charging by a broad range of EVs”. This would mean Tesla Superchargers would be ineligible for the wholesale electric rate that would be available to other private operators like Chargepoint & EVgo.

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Electric vehicle charging infrastructure is becoming big business and ChargePoint is a big part of that as it raises $240 million from Daimler, BMW and others to accelerate their charging station deployment. expand full story

A week after announcing a similar deal in Europe, ChargePoint has unveiled a new “roaming partnership” with FLO to allow electric vehicle drivers to use both charging networks across North America with “a seamless charging experience.” expand full story

Chargepoint and EVBox, two of the world’s largest manufacturers and operators of electric vehicle charging networks, have launched a partnership to offer roaming services between their electric car charging networks in Europe and North America. expand full story