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Fast chargers are expected to be available at grocery stores, outlets, entertainment centers and other high-traffic locations. Drivers can conveniently load their vehicles at an EVgo station while performing their errands.
Courtesy of GM
The famous line from the classic baseball movie Field of Dreams is: If you built it, they will come. In the case of the electric vehicle industry, the line should follow: they come, so you better build it.
Manufacturers of new and old cars plan to launch dozens of all-electric vehicles in the coming years, taking advantage of the incredible success of
Tesla
(ticker: TSLA). This will mean a greater demand for public infrastructure for recharging electric vehicles by drivers who want to recharge without being away from home.
For the adoption of electric vehicles to continue to grow at a rapid pace, the charging infrastructure will also need to keep up with vehicle sales. Seeing more plugs in the city could convince shoppers to move from internal combustion to battery with fewer sacrifices.
EVgo is a company that can help solve the chicken egg dilemma. The California-based startup is merging with a special-purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, called
Climate change crisis Real impact I Acquisition
(CLII) or CRIS. Announced on Friday, the transaction will make EVgo public, which will give investors a chance to get the trip. It will also provide EVgo with about $ 575 million in fresh capital to help speed up the building of its fast-charging network nationwide. The company says it currently has more than 800 chargers in 34 states and 220,000 customers.
The difference between slow and fast charging stations (which can also be charged level 2 and 3) is reduced to the amount of electricity that the charger can safely pump into the EV batteries. This fee depends on the car hardware, but it also depends on the charging infrastructure of electric vehicles.
Stock market investors who do not drive electric vehicles may have heard of EVgo before Friday.
General Motors
(GM) partnered with the company last summer, announcing plans to add more than 2,700 fast charging stations over the next five years. GM wants to sell many more electric vehicles in the coming years, and having the infrastructure installed for new battery-powered cars will help, according to the thought.
EVgo chargers work for cars from any manufacturer and are found in grocery store parking lots, office buildings and city streets. The company is aimed at both daily commuters and commercial operators. EVgo has partnerships with
Uber Technologies
(UBER) i
Lift
(LYFT) for its car-sharing drivers to charge their electric vehicles.
“The electric vehicle market is expected to grow 100 times by 2040,” said Cathy Zoi, CEO of EVgo De Barron. “So, the charging needs of these vehicles, and especially the fast charging, will grow phenomenally … More types of people will buy electric vehicles that have no charge at home, more commercial fleets will have electric vehicles and the cars themselves they’re getting bigger and heavier, so they need more juice. ”
There are other electric vehicle charging companies included
Load flicker
(BLNK) i
Beam Global
(BEEM). Blink’s market capitalization is about $ 1.9 billion. Beam is smaller with a market value of approximately $ 450 million.
Both are currently smaller than EVgo. Zoi did not address any competitors directly, but expressed confidence in his company’s technology and service capabilities, which include call centers to manage customer issues, software to control charging stations, and advanced hardware designed to minimize the time required to load an EV.
The CRIS-EVgo agreement values the combined shares at about $ 2.6 billion. Revenue includes $ 230 million from SPAC’s climate-focused trust, plus a $ 400 million private investment in public capital or PIPE. PIPE sponsors include a list of major institutional investors: funds managed by Pimco,
BlackRock,
Wellington Management, Neuberger Berman and Van Eck. All come in at $ 10 a share, compared to the $ 13.34 close of CRIS shares on Thursday.
CRIS, which went public on September 30, and several pre-emergence SPACs related to renewable energy, climate change and electric vehicles have been trading well above their confidence values in recent months.
QuantumScape
(QS),
Hyliion
(HYLN), i
Nikola
(NKLA) saw their share prices multiply after their SPAC mergers in 2020, and investors have wanted to start the next deal.
EVgo’s existing shareholders, which include energy-focused management and investment company LS Power, will own 74% of the merged entity. Pending shareholder approval, CRIS shares will become EVgo shares and change their ticker to “EVGO”.
(
Canoe,
an electric vehicle manufacturer that merged with another SPAC, now has the “GOEV” stock symbol.)
“It’s almost a certainty for me that this addressable market is realized,” says David Crane, CEO of CRIS who served as CEO of NRG Energy (NRG) from 2003 to 2015. “It’s not that this industry needs a great breakthrough that may or may not happen “.
Automakers have committed hundreds of billions of dollars in their electric vehicle programs and governments are committed to making a transition from the carbon-emitting vehicle industry to both carrot and stick. The Biden administration has talked about installing half a million charging stations in the U.S. and consumers like to drive electric vehicles.
Investors have also become convinced that electric vehicles are the future of personal transportation. Various actions of electric vehicles De Barron the tracks have increased by about 500% on average over the last year. Tesla is now the most valuable car manufacturer in the world, by a wide margin. And electric vehicle manufacturers, taken together, are worth about the same amount as all traditional car manufacturers, despite delivering a fraction of the vehicles.
Write to Al Root at [email protected] and Nicholas Jasinski at [email protected]