Interested in selling more plug-in vehicles and not waiting for governments to improve networks of charging station, Volkswagen is reaching into its pockets to help.
VW of America announced Tuesday it would commit $10 million towards electric vehicle charging infrastructure by next year, marketing VP Jörg Sommer said at the 2015 Electric Drive Congress in Washington, D.C.
“Automakers have effectively delivered electric vehicles that can satisfy the needs of most American drivers,” Sommer said in the release from VW. “In addition to the investment we and other companies and industries are making, we would like to see Federal financing support for establishing fast charging networks in urban areas and interstate corridors.”
Earlier this year, VW partnered with BMW and Chargepoint to add 100 fast-charging stations along popular U.S. corridors on the west and east coasts.
Sommer also urged governments to purchase more EVs in fleets and make more of a committment to adopt plug-ins.
But is $10 million really enough to drastically improve the network of charging stations in this country? That’s not really enough to make chargers go across the country as Tesla has done with its Superchargers. Still, if VW can make owning an electric car a viable proposition to more people in at least parts of the U.S., it could stand to shift more than the 181 e-Golfs it did in January.
And it’s going to take investments such as these if local and state governments aren’t going to improve the infrastructure on their own.
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