$500 Million To Be Invested In Mexican EV Chargers & EVs

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It was just a little while ago that Canada announced 8,000 new EV chargers will be installed in the nation to the north of the US. Well, maybe it could be called an EV charger sandwich, because Mexico will be getting many new EV chargers too, courtesy of a $500 million investment.

In the middle of the sandwich is the US where EV sales have declined after the removal of federal buying incentives. EV charger installations have expanded in the same time period. Perhaps there are not so many of us who expected there would be many new EV chargers either installed or announced for installation during the lull in EV sales.

In this particular case, the new Mexican investment includes support for new electric buses, per Financial Post: “Invisible Urban Charging Inc. and ATX Smart Mobility, LLC will oversee the $500 million investment, starting with plans to deploy 38 chargers and 140 electric buses in the country’s so-called Bajío region, located in the center of Mexico, over the coming months.”

Investment from private companies is an encouraging sign because they often are better at evaluating growth potential than governments, according to FP: “We’re looking at a ratio of 280 cars per charger and the ratio should be 40 cars per charger. So there is a huge opportunity to deploy chargers, not only in Mexico but Latin America globally,” said Eduardo Kuri, executive officer of ATX Smart Mobility.

The initial focus will be more on the fleet vehicle side. I was wondering about this potential because some EV-resistant or hesitant people might feel more open to electric vehicles after test driving one or riding in electric shuttles or buses. I just wrote a related article about how the European city bus market has rapidly expanded because of electric buses mostly. 

An executive involved in the Mexican investment seemed to concur somewhat when he said, “If we do what we need to do on the fleet side, it will provide an environment where the everyday public user will have the infrastructure to make an easy decision to transition to electric.” 

Mexico City has some of the most harmful air pollution in the world, per Resources for the Future: “Levels of major air pollutants in Mexico City routinely exceed the maximum exposure limits established by the World Health Organization (WHO). For example, the WHO has warned that eight-hour average ozone levels exceeding 100 micrograms per cubic meter threaten human health, causing respiratory infections, chronic respiratory illness and aggravation of existing cardiovascular disease. Evidence from monitoring stations in Mexico City indicates that during the period 1986–2005, this guideline was exceeded 92 percent of the time. Extrapolations from U.S. studies suggest that these pollution levels lead to thousands of premature deaths a year in Mexico City.”

Replacing gas and diesel vehicles with fully electric ones helps clean up air in urban centers. The replacement requires fully electric vehicles, meaning no hybrids or EREVs which seem to fool people into believing they are a solution, but continuing to use fossil fuels is the harm not the help.