Volkswagen Investing $10,000,000 In EV Infrastructure

Volkswagen is investing $10,000,000 of its own money to develop EV infrastructure for its electric and plug in cars. That includes its recent agreement with BMW and ChargePoint to provide a network of DC fast chargers along both coasts. But it says federal, state and local governments should be doing more to help.

Jörg Sommer, VW’s vice president for product marketing and strategy in America told the 2015 Electric Drive Congress in Washington D.C. on February 10, that Volkswagen believes continued legislative support is needed to reach the next level of electric vehicle adoption.

“Automakers have effectively delivered electric vehicles that can satisfy the needs of most American drivers,” said Sommer. “In addition to the investment we and other companies and industries are making, we would like to see Federal financing support for establishing fast charging networks in urban areas and interstate corridors. We’d like to see more state and federal organizations commit to cleaner fleets by purchasing EVs and PHEVs. This should be a U.S. Government priority, and federal purchasing guidelines should reflect that by giving fleet purchasers the flexibility they need,” Sommer said. “We need further congressional support with the mid-term review of the EPA’s greenhouse gas regulation to extend the multiplier credits for plug-in vehicles beyond MY21″.

Sommers’ comments raise the thorny political question of who should pay for the buildout of EV charger infrastructure. Tesla has taken on the entire burden of creating its SuperCharger network without government aid, and it’s been pretty much universally celebrated for being both fast AND free. As far as anyone knows, every manufacturer is losing money on the electric cars it builds. No one can expect the car makers to go on subsidizing the infrastructure push forever. You can’t buy apples for 50 cents a piece if you can only sell them three for a dollar and expect to make up the difference in volume.