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BMW continues to make news with regards to electric vehicle infrastructure and customer charging programs. Coming off yesterday’s Nissan partnership news, today BMW has announced the expansion of their ChargeNow by EVgo program. The ChargeNow by EVgo program was initiated by BMW in November of 2015, and was active in 25 ChargeNow DC Fast EVgo metro markets. The expansion now includes the entire national network of DC Fast charging station in 33 states covering more than 50 metro areas. BMW claims that the now-expanded network will be accessible for over 92% of new i3 owners. There are a number of different options and aspects of the ChargeNow EVgo program, including two years of unlimited, free DC Fast charge access to BMW i3 owners that purchased or leased a new i3 from November 1st, 2015 onward.   From the press release: ChargeNow by EVgo no-cost and specially priced public charging programs - exclusively for BMW i and iPerformance drivers - now available in more than 50 metro ...

On a recent trip to Vermont I stopped at Prestige BMW in New Jersey on both legs of the journey. They recently installed two 24 kW DC Fast Charge stations that are accessible 24/7 and free to use. A robust DC Fast charge infrastructure is crucial for mass EV adoption. This is the second half of a two part post on BMW's infrastructure plans, current and future. Having spent time with BMW's EV infrastructure team at the LA Auto Show, (Robert Healey, Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Manager, Idine Ghoreishian, Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Specialist, and Cliff Fietzek, Manager of Connected eMobility) I posted the first half of this report last week. In that post, we discussed the East and West Coast Express Charging Corridors, and the just-announced ChargeNow DC Fast program. ChargeNow DC Fast: I reached out to Jeremy Desel, Director of Communications for EVgo, to discuss the deployment rate of the 500 ChargeNow DC Fast stations . What Desel told me was pretty impressive:  ...

An i3 sits next to a 24kW DC Fast Charge unit during the announcement of the BMW, VW & ChargePoint joint venture earlier this year.  It's been seven months since BMW, along with Volkswagen and ChargePoint announced a joint venture which would install roughly 100 DC fast charge units on the East and West coasts. While there's been a lot of work identifying potential locations and negotiating with site managers, there hasn't really been any tangible progress that electric vehicle owners could see.   The plan is to create "Express Charging Corridors" on both coasts, with DC Fast Charge stations placed no more than 50 miles apart. The East Coast Corridor will connect Washington DC to Boston, Massachusetts and the West Coast Corridor would extend from San Diego, California to Portland, Oregon.  There would be two kinds of DC Fast Charge stations utilized. The stations placed directly on the highway locations of the corridors would be 50kW units, most of which will...

Kris charging up at an NRG Fast Charge station One of the many things that Tesla Motors understands as well as anybody is how a robust Fast Charge network will liberate their customers from being on an "Electric Leash." Ubiquitous DC fast charging stations are, in my opinion, just as important as longer range electric vehicles. In fact, they may even be more important. BMW apparently shares that opinion and has recently announced  that they are getting into the DC fast charge game with a partnership that includes Volkswagen and ChargePoint, and will be installing fast chargers at 50 mile intervals on the East and West coasts to create "Express Charging Corridors." However it won't end with there. BMW is going to continue to invest in DC fast charge infrastructure here in the US, as they realize that they need to participate in creating the foundation for BMW i to succeed. As with most things EV-related, California is ahead of most of the US when it comes to DC f...

A BMW i3 and a Volkswagen e-Golf charge on DC fast chargers side by side at BMW Headquarters in Woodcliff Lake NJ. I wrote this article for Green Car Reports , where it was published a few days ago. The proliferation of a robust DC fast charge network is vital to electric vehicle adoption, and I wanted to give this story as wide an audience as possible, which is way I let GCR publish it first. Now that they had it for a while, I'd like to share it with the readers here. I was invited up to BMW NA headquarters by BMW product manager Jose Guerrero to try out the new DC fast chargers installed there. There are three of them, along with four Level 2 EVSEs, all of which are open to the public 24/7. A couple weeks ago at the DC Auto Show, BMW, Volkswagen, and ChargePoint jointly announced they would install about 100 DC fast chargers for electric cars. Their goal is to create “Express Charging Corridors,” on both the East and West coasts, by the end of this year. The most intriguing...

It seems BMW has been busy developing new ways to charge your i3 or i8 lately. A few months ago I posted information on BMWs new low cost DC Fast charger and I just got word from an i3 owner in California that the first one is already up and will soon be ready for use at Crevier BMW in Santa Ana, California. A member of the i3 Facebook group posted this picture from Crevier BMW. BMW's new DC fast charge station has just recently been installed there. The latest news out of Munich is BMW's "Light the Charge" program. BMW has developed LED streetlights that also have built in charging stations. They already have a couple of them in place outside their Munich headquarters, and will soon begin installing them around the city of Munich for a pilot program. The units will be networked and allow the customer to pay with a credit card or by swiping an RFID card from a partner charging network provider. In the US, BMW's charging partner for ChargeNow is ChargePoint. The E...