Home / General Motors News and Reviews
Chevy Bolt Charging
John Goreham's picture
By John Goreham Mar 3 2020 - 11:01am

GM Triples Its EV Charging Locations With Focus On Employee Vehicles - Will Management Be Plugging In?

General Motors says it will triple the charger locations it provides to about 3,500. Much of the focus is on its own employee parking.
Advertisement

GM has been pushing its "All-electric future" program hard as of late. Despite not introducing a single a new batter-electric vehicle to its lineup while introducing multiple new generations of huge gas guzzlers with standard V8 engines. One easy way GM can greenwash its present situation is to add new charging locations for its employees.

Related Story: GM Commits Large Mfg. Plant To All-EV Production - Here Are the EVs It Will Build And When

GM Adding Chargers At Work
The newest announcement is that GM will triple the amount of charging locations that GM currently provides. These will mainly be located at GM facilities and are primarily intended to be used as chargers for employees who are driving EVs to and from jobs at GM. “This is another step down the path to making EV ownership easier for everyone, especially for our own employees,” said Mark Reuss, GM president. “Charging infrastructure is crucial to the wider acceptance of EVs, and we’ll continue to do everything we can to improve it, both for our employees and for all our customers. We encourage other companies to do likewise.”

GM EV charging infographic

EV Owners Have A Hard Tine Charging At Work
GM says that workplace charging is a primary charging source for many EV drivers, but points out that 900,000 out of 1 million EV drivers are not able to charge their vehicles at work. GM feels that the availability of workplace chargers will encourage EV adoption, and says that drivers are six times more likely to drive an EV when charging capabilities are provided at their workplace. “Over 90 percent of EV owners charge either at home, at work or a combination of both,” said Rick Spina, vice president of EV/AV commercialization and infrastructure. “We have new EVs from GMC for the 2022 model year and from Cadillac planned for the 2023 model year, and we want to make it as convenient as possible for our employees to enjoy the rewards of EV ownership.”

GM said in a press release today that the company hopes to show other companies the value of investing in workplace charging, as it is an affordable employee benefit, supports talent attraction and retention, and showcases the company’s commitment to sustainability. GM's plan is to prioritize charging installation sites based on employee needs and will work with charging infrastructure companies to begin installing the charging locations starting in late 2020. The plan is for employees to have access to Level 2 charging. A Level 2 charger can charge the current Chevrolet Bolt EV model at a rate of as high as 25 miles of added range for every hour it is plugged in. GM did not add any details regarding whether employees will be allowed to leave their workspace and rotate their vehicles out of the charging spot after it is fully charged.

Related Story: GM and LG Partner To Build 30 Gigawatt Capacity Battery Plant For EVs In Ohio

What Do Top GM Managers Drive?
Torque News reached out to Jordana Strosberg,GM's EV, AV and Sustainability Communications manager and asked what vehicles company CEO Mary Barra and Mark Reuss presently drive to and from work. Both are provided a company vehicle as a part of their compensation package.The last time we had information on what CEO Barra drove it was one of GM's largest and most thirsty vehicles. The V8-powered Cadillac Escalade. We will update this story if we obtain the requested information.

John Goreham is a life-long car nut and recovering engineer. John's focus areas are technology, safety, and green vehicles. In the 1990s, he was part of a team that built a solar-electric vehicle from scratch. His was the role of battery thermal control designer. For 20 years he applied his engineering and sales talents in the high tech world and published numerous articles in technical journals such as Chemical Processing Magazine. In 2008 he retired from that career and dedicated himself to chasing his dream of being an auto writer. In addition to Torque News, John's work has appeared in print in dozens of American newspapers and he provides reviews to many vehicle shopping sites. You can follow John on Twitter, and connect with him at Linkedin.

Electric Vehicle News, Reviews and Analysis
Automotive News
General Motors News and Reviews
Chevy Bolt News, Reviews and Pricing

Subscribe to Torque News on YouTube.
Follow Torque News on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.

Comments

DeanMcManis wrote on March 3, 2020 - 10:28pm
It is definitely a good move for GM to expand their available EV charging network (hopefully they are all going to be fast chargers) but they are probably mostly Level 2 chargers. This is still a good move as employees can charge while they work, so they have the time to fill up even at the slower speed. Unfortunately GM only offers the Bolt, so they have a limited variety of EV so far for their employees. I used to charge up my Volt at work and it was truly a great perk. Having chargers at work will make owning an EV far more compelling for their employees that cannot charge at home, especially if it's free. This cost savings was what originally got me to lease my first Volt. It ended up costing about the same for the new Volt lease as I was paying for gasoline monthly. So in the end, it just cost me about $100 a month extra to drive around in a brand new EV. I do think that GM should allocate some portion of these chargers as public chargers, or at least both public and employee chargers. I find their ad kinda funny. They say that 90% of EV owners charge at home or work, but it is more like 88% of EV owners charge at home and 2% charge at work. The fact that they say that workers can charge at 22.5 miles and hour means that the new chargers will be level 2 (240V). Again, that is fine for at work charging, but they really should have DC fast charging as well, which could refill those 22.5 EV miles in under 10 minutes.
John Goreham wrote on March 4, 2020 - 9:22am
Dean, you have the most experience at TN regarding EVs. In your opinion, should GM's top managers all drive company EVs (they all get company cars already)? To prove their commitment to the "All-electric future" they are so heavily promoting?
DeanMcManis wrote on March 5, 2020 - 3:43am
I do not see that ever happening. I would be surprised if the majority of GM's current management owns any GM built vehicles today, and GM currently has a huge variety of available vehicles from Silverados, to Cadillacs, to Corvettes. Since GM only offers the Bolt as their sole EV today there is little chance that they could entice their top managers to drive a Bolt to work instead of whatever high status vehicle that they are leasing today. Certainly there will be a few managers who will drive the Bolt simply because they like it, and it is free. Now if you offered a free Bolt to lower level employees, I'd say that most of them would jump at the chance.