EVgo Teams Up with This Automaker on DCFC Stations in California

Yahoo

12-03-2025

Toyota and EVgo launch the first of a series of co-branded DC fast-charging stations, as part of its Empact agenda announced in 2023 aiming to bring stations to underserved communities.
The first co-branded stations have spots for eight cars, with each stall featuring 350-kW chargers.
The DCFC stations will be operated and owned by EVgo.
Two years after Toyota revealed its "Empact" agenda to improve EV charging in underserved communities, the automaker along with EVgo opened the first of a series of DC fast-charging stations in Sacramento and in Baldwin Park, California.
Each of the co-branded stations can charge eight EVs at the same time, and each stall will feature 350-kW fast chargers. The stations will still be operated and owned by EVgo.
The new stations themselves will be located in areas where there are ample choices for restaurants, grocery stores, and other types of shopping, so unlike in the early years of EV charging these stations won't be tucked away in some obscure corner of a mall parking lot.
Toyota's Empact plan has focused on three main pillars in bringing DC fast-charging to communities that had often been overlooked in the early years of EV station development: providing affordable mobility solutions, access to EV charging, and reducing carbon emissions.
"Our vision will be our guide as we work with local and state officials to identify communities where Empact might help address issues related to EV charging access and affordability," Christopher Reynolds, executive vice president and chief administrative officer, Corporate Resources, Toyota Motor North America, said at the time of Empact plan's launch.
As part of this effort Toyota has been working with cities to find badly needed and particularly suitable locations, including those near multi-family housing, that might have been largely ignored a decade ago.
In announcing the Empact plan, the automaker also noted that DC fast-charging often costs up to three times the rate of charging at home with a slower system.
Overall, station-building efforts are slowly entering a different era, with more focus on driver convenience if not an actual convenience store on the site of a charging station.
Stations operators are still skeptical of building new on-site retail, aside from a few experiments with vending machines.
Various station developers still rely on existing, nearby restaurants and shopping locations, skipping typical gas station features like bathrooms and a protective canopy over the chargers.
So some corners and costs are still being cut at many stations when it comes to protection from weather and other convenience and safety features, even though solar canopies are slowly being adopted by a handful of station builders with the capability to add energy to battery energy storage systems (BESS).
"Together with EVgo, we are supporting broader access to charging infrastructure for all battery EV drivers, including those driving Toyota and Lexus BEVs," said Toyota Motor North America's General Manager of EV Charging Solutions, James George.
It will take some time to feel the impact of Toyota and EVgo's initiative, and it will also take some time for American buyers to try Toyota EVs that aren't the bZ4X. The EV era is just getting started for Toyota in the US.
Is charging infrastructure the main barrier to EV adoption at the moment, or is it other factors like the prices of new EVs? Let us know what you think in the comments below.