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As we have seen recently with some Chinese EV chargers reaching and exceeding 1,000 kW of charging power and BYD planning to install about 3,000 such chargers, some of these Chinese companies are moving at a different speed. They seem to be dissatisfied with doing what is average and are easily surpassing it.
Recently, there was news about $500 million being invested to grow Mexican EV charging infrastructure. Now there has been a new development of a much larger scale. ZapCharge plans to install 300,000 new EV chargers in Latin America by 2030. Not 3,000, not 30,000, but 300,000. “The company plans to expand deployment to 50,000 charging stations by 2027 and targets more than 300,000 units installed across Latin America by 2030, helping build an interconnected EV charging network serving both urban and rural areas.”
ZapCharge is the international brand of Shaanxi Fast Charger New Energy Co., Ltd., a Xi’an, China-based company. It’s hard to know exactly if planning 300,000 public EV chargers is a true, feasible goal or if it is part hyperbole for a press release to generate news media interest.
Latin America Mobility summarized the EV charging market in Latin America: “To meet the upcoming demand, experts in the sector assert that between 400,000 and 800,000 charging points need to be installed across Latin America. Each electric vehicle owner creates the need for 1.5 charging points to keep their car’s battery charged wherever they go, such as supermarkets, malls, workplaces, schools, and other daily routine locations.”
Currently, some Latin American countries only have thousands of public EV chargers. If one company could quickly install tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands, it might establish itself as the dominant player in an emerging market.
If a Chinese company can quickly dominate public EV charging in a foreign market, does that mean such domination would become leverage to help Chinese EV manufacturers bring more of their unusually affordable EVs to the same market?
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