Finding a fast charger in the U.S. just got a lot easier for a lot of electric-car drivers. Two of America's largest fast-charging networks announced an agreement Thursday to allow each other's users to charge at their charging sites without signing up for new memberships or payment plans. Electrify America and EVgo agreed to a roaming partnership... EVgo and Electrify America team up to make chargers more accessible
Finding a fast charger in the U.S. just got a lot easier for a lot of electric-car drivers. Two of America's largest fast-charging networks announced an agreement Thursday to allow each other's users to charge at their charging sites without signing up for new memberships or payment plans. Electrify America and EVgo agreed to a roaming partnership... 
Nissan is expanding its partnership with charging network EVgo to install 200 more DC fast-chargers across the U.S. The new chargers will each dispense up to 100 kw, which can deliver up to 150 miles of range in less than half an hour, and will have both a CHAdeMO plug to charge the Leaf and a CCS Combo plug to charge most other (non-Tesla) EVs as... 
If electric cars need more public places to charge, maybe they could just go to gas stations. That seems to be the approach behind the latest installations of EVgo stations in California. CHECK OUT: Gas stations OK, electric-car chargers too ugly? The company, which bills itself as the largest operator of DC fast charging stations in the U.S... 
![EVgo curbside DC fast chargers at Southside Park, Sacramento, California [CREDIT: EVgo]](https://images.hgmsites.net/tmb/evgo-curbside-dc-fast-chargers-at-southside-park-sacramento-california-credit-evgo_100700402_t.gif)
With wires running along almost every street in America where cars drive, putting EV chargers along the curb would seem a natural enough place to put them. While several other countries such as Britain have begun efforts to put charging stations on light poles, in America, chargers have been sited almost exclusively in parking lots and garages... 
Charging network EVgo has installed second-life batteries from two BMW i3s to its charging station in Union City, California, the company announced last week. The two batteries each store 22 kwh of electricity to help balance the load on the power grid when electric cars are charging at peak times, according to a report in Charged EVs. EVgo says... 
General Motors has consistently declined to fund public charging stations that increase the utility and long-distance potential of the electric cars it sells. The company said firmly two years ago it had no intention of spending money on a charging network, a stance that distinguished GM from BMW, Nissan, and Volkswagen, not to mention Tesla. On... 
Over the next three years, numerous long-range electric cars will come to market at prices below $40,000. That will expand the pool of potential buyers to those interested in plug-in vehicles but unwilling to consider one rated at less than 200 miles. Those new owners will learn the DC fast charging along highways to enable longer road trips... 
Seven years and almost 800,000 cars after the first modern electric cars went on sale, there's still a lot wrong with the national charging infrastructure in the U.S. There's little central planning, little standardized signage or public signposting, virtually no awareness among non-EV drivers, and roaming among networks with a single membership... ![2015 Nissan Leaf at evGo fast charger at Livingston Mall, Livingston, NJ [photo: John Briggs]](https://images.hgmsites.net/tmb/2015-nissan-leaf-at-evgo-fast-charger-at-livingston-mall-livingston-nj-photo-john-briggs_100558580_t.gif)
One way for electric-car charging networks to make the public charging experience more user-friendly is through the use of smartphone apps to replace the RFID cards that identify members and let them initiate charge sessions. Not only do they provide electric-car drivers a host of capabilities, but they allow drivers to pay for charging sessions... 
The 2017 Nissan Leaf might well be the hottest electric car deal on the market right now, with a slew of potential discounts. Nissan is working with numerous partners to provide $10,000 off a 2017 Leaf lease, which adds to the $7,500 federal income-tax credit, giving a total of $17,500 in incentives. Among the partners offering the $10,000... 
Drivers who want to use their electric cars for trips beyond a radius from their home charging site rely on DC fast-charging sites. Now Charged magazine has written a comprehensive guide to the current state and future of DC charging. Today, most publicly available chargers using the CHAdeMO and CCS standards have an output of 50 kilowatts or... 
Nissan is making it easier for electric-car owners to travel between the Boston area and Washington, D.C. The automaker has partnered with EVgo to add a network of nine charging sites along Interstate 95, with a total of 50 stations, each equipped with two fast-charge plugs. Dubbed the "I-95 Fast Charge Arc," the network will cover 500 miles and... ![Fast-charging 2015 Nissan Leaf at evGo station in Auburn, MA [photo: John Briggs]](http://images.hgmsites.net/tmb/fast-charging-2015-nissan-leaf-at-evgo-station-in-auburn-ma-photo-john-briggs_100558577_t.gif)
Much like the cell-phone network industry in the mid-1990s, the electric-car charging industry is on a fast pace of network expansions and mergers. EV charging companies are on the verge of rapid global growth as utility companies and large multinational corporations put up big money, according to a report from Navigant Research Blog. For... 
For a few years now, Tesla has shown what a nationwide network of DC fast-charging sites for long-range electric cars should look like. Its Supercharger network now covers virtually all of the lower 48 states, and until earlier this year, it was completely free to Tesla drivers. The Chevrolet Bolt EV, the first affordable battery-electric car with... 
When you drive into a U.S. gas station to pump gas, every pump works exactly the same way. The only choice to make is which grade of gasoline you want. If you want diesel fuel, of course, you may have to find one of the six out of 10 stations that offer it. DC fast charging for electric cars isn't nearly that simple, and it hasn't been since the... 
With about twice the range of any non-Tesla electric car, the 2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV has generated a great deal of excitement and won numerous awards over the last year. In combination with a nascent DC fast-charging infrastructure, it offers the possibility of much longer road trips powered solely by grid electricity. One early Bolt EV owner is... 
Two days ago, BMW and Nissan announced the latest expansion of their jointly funded DC fast-charging sites for electric cars, which is operated by the EVgo charging network. Those sites now cover more than 50 metropolitan areas in 33 states. This morning, BMW announced that its ChargeNow by EVgo program for owners of its plug-in cars would... 
At the end of 2015, BMW and Nissan announced that the two companies had partnered to fund the installation of 120 DC fast-charging stations for electric cars across 19 states. All the sites had one or more 50-kilowatt stations with a pair of charging cables: one with the CHAdeMO connector that accommodates the Nissan Leaf electric car, the other a... 
Longer-range electric cars will add flexibility for drivers, but they will also require changes to charging infrastructure. More powerful DC fast-charging stations will be needed in order to charge cars with larger-capacity battery packs in a reasonable amount of time. The EVgo charging network is taking a step in that direction with a new...