Walmart plans to achieve full coverage of electric vehicle fast charging stations in stores across the United States by 2030, the retail giant announced Thursday.
The announcement comes on the heels of Walmart joining Volkswagen’s Electrify America program, which is currently one of the largest open public electric vehicle charging networks in the United States. To date, Walmart has deployed nearly 1,300 fast-charging stations across the United States.
Walmart has more than 5,000 branded stores and Sam’s Clubs across the United States. According to statistics, about 90 percent of Americans live within 10 miles (about 16 kilometers) of one of these stores.
Vishal Kapadia, Walmart’s recently appointed senior vice president of energy transformation, said in an interview, “We have the ability to solve the electric vehicle range and charging anxiety problem like no other company in the U.S.”
The U.S. electric vehicle charging infrastructure is currently growing rapidly, but there are widespread concerns about the lack of uptime, performance, convenience and high set-up costs of charging posts.
Walmart’s choice to build its own charging stations, rather than partner with other operators, will help address reliability and cost issues, Kapadia said.
Kapadia expects that the new charging stations will be fitted with DC fast charging posts, with an average of about four posts deployed per store.
Walmart declined to comment on the financial details and said it was looking for a supplier.
There are currently about 30,000 fast chargers across the U.S. that can fully charge an electric car in an hour or less. Some of these high-powered fast-charging piles cost more than $100,000.
While there are still not many electric cars on the road in the U.S., that’s changing as gas prices remain high, subsidies for electric cars increase and new, less expensive electric cars are coming to market.
Market consulting firm AutoForecast Solutions predicts that electric vehicles will account for about one-third of the North American market by 2029.
The U.S. president has previously pledged to build a network of 500,000 public charging stations by 2030. In February, the White House announced new federal subsidies totaling $7.5 billion (currently about 51.6 billion yuan) to promote the development of the electric vehicle industry and infrastructure, including the construction of charging stations along U.S. highways.
Walmart will soon start the charging station project and will consider applying for federal subsidies at a later date, Kapadia said.
According to statistics, about 240 million consumers visit Wal-Mart stores every week. These new charging stations will also provide Wal-Mart with more data on how shoppers pay or how long they stay at a particular store.
