Volkswagen to spend $2-bn on electric car charging stations in US

Volkswagen will start paying back for the massive diesel-emissions cheating scandal in 2015, as the carmaker agreed to spend $2 billion on electric car charging stations across the US. It will spend $800 million of the money in California.

Yesterday, Volkswagen unit, Electrify America, the company created to build out the charging network, announced plans to install 2,800 chargers in big cities by June 2019, most of them at workplaces and multi-unit dwellings, apartment and condo buildings.

Seventeen cities across the US, including Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, Sacramento and Fresno will get the chargers, but the number installed in each city is yet to be decided. However, California will get chargers at 217 workplaces and 60 multi-unit dwellings.

According to Electrify America, contracts have been awarded to three charger companies -Greenlots in Los Angeles, EV Connect in El Segundo and SemaConnect in Bowie, Maryland.

''This is an unprecedented opportunity to jump-start electric vehicle adoption,'' said Scott Fisher, vice president for market development at Greenlots, Los Angeles Times reported. He added, ''The workplace part has an especially strong correlation to EV adoption.''

The charging stations would be located at around 500 sites, with around 75 per cent of them at workplaces and the rest at multifamily dwellings such as apartment buildings.

"One of the biggest barriers to the mass-market adoption of electric vehicles is access to chargers," Mark McNabb, chief executive officer of Electrify America, said in a statement.

"There hasn't been a significant catalyst yet for ramping up the number of charging stations," Scott Fisher, Greenlots' vice president of market development, told Reuters. "This is an unprecedented opportunity to help create the electric vehicle infrastructure we need across the US."

The cost to Volkswagen of the diesel emissions scandal is estimated at $30 billion so far.