ChargePOint

There are a ton of low-end and mid-tier home EV chargers on the market and frankly most will do the job of getting your EV charged without burning your house down. But on the high end, there are really only two I would consider buying today: The Enel X JuiceBox($599) and ChargePoint Home Flex($699).

Both of these products come from established EV charging product makers and have Wifi connectivity for updates and monitoring your charge. Spoiler alert, I can easily recommend either but they do have some significant differences so prepare for a deep dive. And if you are a Tesla owner, a Tesla wall adapter might make more sense but these can save you money…

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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…
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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.

Is that fair?
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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ChargePoint, already one of the biggest makers and operators of charging stations, announced a new pledge to accelerate the deployment of electric vehicle charging infrastructure by having 2.5 million charge points in operation by 2025.
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There’s currently a lot of talk about charge rate for electric vehicles as Porsche is preparing to bring its 350 kW charging technology to market and Tesla is throwing some cold water on their plans.

Now ChargePoint unveils a new 2 MW charging technology, but it will be for electric aircraft and semi-trucks – not passenger cars.
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Only a week after Walmart announced that it is partnering with Electrify America to deploy hundreds of electric car charging stations, competitor Target announced its own plans with Electrify America, as well as with Tesla and ChargePoint, to deploy “more than 600 chargers” at “over 100 stores.”
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Electric vehicle charging is turning into big business. ChargePoint, one of the leading electric vehicle companies, says that it is now delivering 8 GWh of electricity in over 1 million electric car charges per month.
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US-based electric vehicle charging network operator ChargePoint is in the midst of a European expansion and it is apparently having no problem finding financial support.

After having raised $82 million led by Daimler just a few months ago, they confirmed today having raised another $43 million for the European expansion. 
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ChargePoint, one of the largest electric car charging station makers and network suppliers, announced today a deal with GE to take over the management of their charging network.

It results in the quick addition of more than 1,800 commercial and about 8,000 residential charging spots to its network.
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We were excitted when ChargePoint unveiled its latest charging station technology earlier this year. It’s a modular system called Express Plus and it can enable a record-breaking charge rate of up to 400 kW.

The only problem is that ChargePoint doesn’t operate its own charging stations. Therefore, in order for those to get deployed, other companies need to buy them and operate them.

Well, the company announced today the first major deployment of those stations as InstaVolt in the UK announced that they signed a contract to purchase “more than 200 ChargePoint rapid charge systems.”
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While Daimler has been pushing its brands Mercedes and Smart into an aggressive transition in electrification, the German automaker had so far no great involvement in EV infrastructure. That’s about to change.

The company announced today that it is leading a $82 million round of investment in the major electric vehicle charging network ChargePoint.
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The Consumer Electronic Show, now only known as CES, is becoming a popular trade show for the automotive industry. The auto section was a significant part of the show this year and while it was light on new products, we decided to give ‘Electrek awards’ to the best of CES 2017 for electric vehicle products.
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Earlier today, Chargepoint announced that they would have a new liquid-cooled 400kW charging station available this summer. In a subsequent video, Chargepoint also showed a Tesla charging handle in one of their stations which was quite a surprise, to us, anyway.

We went straight to the source and got an interview at CES with CEO Pasquale Romano to get all of the details…
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