Electrify America Expands In New Jersey, Partners With Harley-Davidson To Charge Livewires
More Stations in New Jersey
The first time I visited Manhattan, a cab driver asked me a very interesting question. “Do you know why New Yorkers are so depressed?” When I told him I didn’t know, he said, “It’s because the light at the end of the tunnel — it’s New Jersey!” It’s a funny joke, and whether based in truth or not, New Jersey is about to get a little less depressing, at least for EV drivers. Electrify America recently built its first station there, and it has plans or work started on 10 more.
The new station, located at a Target store in Bridgewater, New Jersey, has 4 fast charging spaces and one level 2 charger. The remaining 10 stations will have a total of 59 spaces for charging.
“Providing the necessary infrastructure to support electric vehicles is critical to meeting our goal of registering 330,000 electric vehicles in New Jersey by 2025,” said New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy. “Electrify America’s investments dovetail well with the work our Partnership to Plug-In is undertaking, and today’s announcement is a major step forward in making renewable energy solutions more accessible for all New Jerseyans.”
Five of the remaining ten stations planned have a definite address. They are:
- Target store located at: 2137 Route 38 (Cherry Hill)
- Walmart stores located at: 290 State Route 18 (East Brunswick), 400 Park Plaza Drive (Secaucus) and 150 Harrison Avenue (Kearny)
- Plaza 23, a Phillips Edison & Company center: 500 Route 23 North (Pompton Plains)
Additional sites will be built in Clifton, Elizabeth, Fairfield, Jersey City, and Somerdale.
Partnership with Harley-Davidson
In other news, Electrify America partnered with Harley-Davidson to charge its new Livewire motorcycle. While I’ll refer you to our previous coverage of the motorcycle, I’ll mention the basics here. The motorcycle, on sale soon, will be all electric. It will have a city range of around 145 miles, can jump from 0–60 MPH in 3 seconds, and will have an MSRP of just under $30,000.
Perhaps most importantly for this story, the motorcycle will come with DC fast charging capability, with its built-in CCS port.
We reached out to Harley-Davidson, and they told us the bike comes with a 15.5 kWh battery pack, and that it can be recharged by a DC fast charge to 80% capacity in 40 minutes or to full capacity in an hour. Charge tapering begins at 80%, and based on their numbers, we estimate the bike can take about 18 kW maximum from a CCS station, such as those offered by Electrify America.
Livewire buyers will receive the per-minute equivalent of 500 kWh of charging with the motorcycles. If depleted to 20% and charged to 80%, this would mean the customer will get around 50 charge sessions. After that, they’ll pay normal Electrify America rates at the lowest charging speed tier (under 50 kW). To find stations, Harley-Davidson worked with Electrify America to include their charging station locations in the Harley-Davidson app.
“With an average of 70 miles between each of our charging stations, we are creating a network that is premium, ubiquitous and powerful, so it makes sense that we would expand that offering to electric motorcycle owners,” said Giovanni Palazzo, president and CEO of Electrify America. “We are excited to work with an iconic brand like Harley-Davidson, as part of a shared commitment to advancing the electric transportation industry.”
In our past coverage of Electrify America, we’ve pointed out that the new charging network not only has the fastest available charging, but is also being built along a number of coast-to-coast highway corridors. For electric vehicles other than Teslas, Electrify America has been linking together what was once a patchwork of charging sites, mostly based in urban areas. With all of these new stations, people with non-Tesla EVs will now be able to travel much greater distances without the unrealistic delays of relying on level 2 charging.
Electrify America is a subsidiary of Volkswagen. As part of the diesel emissions scandal, or #Dieselgate, settlement, Volkswagen was required to invest billions of dollars building a coherent nationwide charging network for electric vehicles. While it could have done the bare minimum to satisfy the settlement’s requirements, it has built a good network and has been very responsive to customer needs as they’ve grown and evolved.
We hope to keep bringing good news about Electrify America’s continued rollout nationwide. Subscribe today to get more updates as we get them!
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