GM Energy is offering its commercial customers faster availability of high-speed EV charging through a partnership with FreeWire Technologies, The General’s energy ecosystem subsidiary announced today as part of its push to accelerate electrification.
The planned collaboration between GM Energy and FreeWire will offer extra convenience to GM customers who are changing over their fleets from ICE vehicles to EVs, and will help them cut down on expenses in many cases as well.
Via FreeWire Technologies
The FreeWire alliance gives GM Energy and thus its fleet and commercial customers access to FreeWire’s ultrafast EV charging infrastructure. Clients served by FreeWire can get access to fast charging for their vehicles within a few days. The company’s charging system can also be deployed without major upgrades to the electrical systems at the customer location and without new construction.
This high-speed, easy deployment of EV charging stations stands in contrast to the usual process of setting up chargers for a commercial electric vehicle fleet. Rather than the few days to full electrification offered by FreeWire, the usual process to upgrade electrical supply to meet the greatly increased power demand of EV charging needs a year or more to complete, and is very expensive.
The arrangement also makes sense for customers leasing their business location, who may not want to pay for complex electrical upgrades at a site they do not own and may eventually leave.
Via FreeWire Technologies
The FreeWire system is based on the company’s Boost Charger, which is not just an ordinary charging station drawing all of its power from the grid but also includes a high-capacity battery pack. This pack charges from ordinary A/C electrical supply, then charges a plugged-in EV from its own internal power reserve. This enables recharging up to 600 miles’ worth of EV battery capacity per hour at each Boost Charger.
The Boost Charger also continues to work in the event of a blackout, drawing on its own internal stored electricity. This makes FreeWire’s chargers usable even in the event of a natural disaster or other occurrence that knocks out the main power grid, making charging infrastructure more robust and “anti-fragile.” Each Boost Charger has an output of up to 200 kW, a battery capacity of 160 kWh, and can charge two EVs simultaneously.
Via FreeWire Technologies
Together, the products offered by FreeWire and GM Energy in alliance create “a turnkey energy transition package that includes both vehicles and a charging solution that fits their specific needs,” per the announcement.
The combined GM Energy and FreeWire electrification service will be available to GM’s commercial and fleet EV customers in early 2024.
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Comments
This is a bit crazy. You are now cycling a second battery to charge the first. Batteries do not have infinite cycles. It is why EV manufacturers are hesitant about V2G and V2H. More charge/discharge cycles on a very expensive thing that has a limited number of cycles. I get they are trading capital cost of the wire to the grid for batteries. Just hard for me to believe the battery cost could be less expensive than the wires. I continue to see around $800/KWH of storage when I look at fixed battery installations. With a thousand cycles which I think is fairly typical of a battery, that is 80c/KWH for battery cost. Don’t know about everyone else, but I pay closer to 12c/kwh from the utility. And that 80c does not include the juice from the utility to charge the battery.
What apparently very few realize is the battery reduces the $15-$25 per kw demand charge per month. Also partial charges and discharges can triple the life of the battery.
Just because few pay demand fines at their homes doesn’t mean all electricity is sold that way.
Hmmm…..using a battery to charge a battery! Absolutely, positively brilliant. What rocket scientist thinks this is a good idea?
If anyone dislikes this idea, they are just showing how clueless they are…
The most efficient energy storage system is pumped storage. So yes a rocket scientist makes a pool of water high up drop down to cook your dinner or run your ac from 5 pm to 8 pm.
One utility nearby to me for decades had only Tiny generating plants. They could not run much air conditioning without the system collapsing. They used Time-of-daymetering and the customers’ own hot water heaters to provide extra electricity when needed, and it was a VERY good solution to an otherwise intractable problem.
Can you say “Solindra” ? BTW, let’s say my battery runs out of juice on the freeway, can I go to the nearest electricity store and get a bucket of electricity ?
Oh I know, AAA, in their diesel powered truck will come to the rescue. They won’t mind recharging my
battery for the next 3 hours. !!!
That’s only if I live in the sunbelt,
If this is supposed to make me change my mind and start liking EV’s guess what. It’s NOT working.
Whether this is a good idea for a business or not all depends on pricing.
Why would GMA come out with an article about a business deal and not have any specific facts about it at all other than the charger output rating?